Topic: Management Improvement
A fun post as we head into the weekend: If Tech Companies Made Sudoku by Kathy Sierra
Frankly, we’re a little baffled that your original design was so… simple. I’m sure we all recognize that our target market demands a much more media-rich, interactive, high-action experience. Love the whole grid thing, though.
The graphic on the original post is great. You can also read about an attempt to focus IT differently: The Declaration of Interdependance by Alistair Cockburn:
Lean manufacturing teaches us that having large inventories is inefficient. It also teaches us that the overall efficiency of a process improves as the batch size passed from stage to stage is reduced. Today this has become accepted in most (but not all) manufacturing circles, yet many people may be surprised that it also applies to software development.
June 27th, 2006 at 7:26 am
[...] Working in Information Technology myself I see many great uses for IT. I also see all sorts of poor attempts to try creating IT tool for quality (including lean) tools that work much better in there original state. I can also see why people make fun of IT: If Tech Companies Made Sudoku. [...]
August 31st, 2006 at 7:02 pm
Lean and other management improvement folks can learn a lot about eliminate non-value added steps, clean design, simplifying systems to improve performance… from this blog…
April 4th, 2007 at 12:12 pm
The basic idea: reduce the planning phase and increase the iterations (similar to turning the PDSA cycle quickly) and interaction with users. The application of agile methods does require some different thinking..
March 10th, 2008 at 8:55 am
The power of simplicity is often overlooked in stated preferences but we believe when given a choice a significant portion of users prefer (actually would use if given the option) “less is more” options…