Author Archives: John Hunter

Finding Savings with Six Sigma

I don’t see any evidence six sigma is making a comeback but magazines like to talk about new ideas rather than just explore what continues. They like to discuss common cause variation as though it were special cause. Six Sigma … Continue reading

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How ‘Buy American’ Can Hurt U.S. Firms

How ‘Buy American’ Can Hurt U.S. Firms Canadian communities angered by perceived American chauvinism have started a Buy Canadian campaign to exclude U.S. bidders from municipal contracts. “If that sticks, well, there goes 25% of my business,” said Mr. Pokorsky. … Continue reading

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An Introduction to Deming’s Management Ideas by Peter Scholtes (webcast)

An Introduction to Deming’s Management Teaching and Philosophy by Peter Scholtes – webcast from the Annual W. Edwards Deming Institute conference in Madison, Wisconsin, November 9th, 2008. My previous post on this speech: 6 Leadership Competencies. Next month, the Annual … Continue reading

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Understanding How to Manage Geeks

The unspoken truth about managing geeks [the broken link was removed] by Jeff Ello IT pros are sensitive to logic — that’s what you pay them for. When things don’t add up, they are prone to express their opinions on … Continue reading

Posted in IT, Management, Psychology, Respect, Software Development | Tagged , , , , , | 6 Comments

Management Improvement Carnival #75

Agile Lessons from a Management Guru by Ahmed Yousuf – “Agile methodologies have a fundamentally different approach to quality – an approach that is inherent in this teaching from Deming. Quality cannot be achieved by testers inspecting work done by … Continue reading

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Loan Default Rates Continue to Increase

Chart showing loan default rates for real estate, consumer and agricultural loans for 1998 to 2009 by the Curious Cat Investing Economics Blog, Creative Commons Attribution, data from the Federal Reserve. Default rates on commercial (up another 151 basis points) … Continue reading

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The Best Leadership Is Good Management

The Best Leadership Is Good Management [the broken link has been removed] by Henry Mintzberg Let me suggest that you should, because what we’ve been calling a financial crisis is actually one of management. Corporate America has had too much … Continue reading

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Management Improvement Carnival #74

Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog Carnival What Else Can Software Development and Testing Learn from Manufacturing? Don’t Forget Design of Experiments (DoE). by Justin Hunter – “In short, Design of Experiments methods are a proven approach to creating and manage … Continue reading

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Workers Allowed Recreational Use of the Internet are More Productive

Freedom to surf: workers more productive if allowed to use the internet for leisure “People who do surf the Internet for fun at work – within a reasonable limit of less than 20% of their total time in the office … Continue reading

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Dr. Deming Webcast on the 5 Deadly Diseases

The W. Edwards Deming Institute has posted Dr. Deming’s 1984 video on the 5 deadly diseases of western management. Lack of constancy of purpose Emphasis on short term profits – “creative” accounting, focus on quarterly profits Annual Performance Appraisals – … Continue reading

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