Available online at www.worldscientificnews.com ( Received 09 February 2019; Accepted 25 February 2019; Date of Publication 26 February 2019 ) WSN 122 (2019) 206-217 EISSN 2392-2192 The DMAIC cycle in managing the development of work potential in service enterprise Kamila Kowalik Faculty of Management, Czestochowa University of Technology, 19 B Armii Krajowej, 42-200 Czestochowa, Poland E-mail address: kamilakowalik93@gmail.com ABSTRACT The objective of the analysis conducted and described in this paper is to present the practical application of the DMAIC cycle in managing the development of work potential in service enterprise. The first part of the article contains the theoretical framework of work potential, its development, and the DMAIC methodology. Afterwards, based on the process approach to work potential development, practical application of the DMAIC cycle has been presented with using an anonymous survey to measure and analyze the problem, the 5Why method for finding the causes, and the Impact and Effort Matrix in improvement phase to choose the solutions worth implementing. Keywords: DMAIC cycle, management, work potential development 1. INTRODUCTION Work potential is the term that in the literature of management and human resources does not have one unequivocal and straightforward definition. The basic division distinguishes the quantitative and qualitative aspect. The first one concerns work time, the second one consists of set of elements such as knowledge, experience, skills, abilities, and motivation. Both dimensions creates work potential that can be understood as the time in which these listed factors are disposed by the enterprise.