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Recommended posts: Process Improvement and Innovation - Write it Down - Find the Root Cause Not the Person to Blame - How to Improve - How Toyota Turns Workers Into Problem Solvers - Standardized Work Instructions
Related: articles on process improvement - PDSA improvement cycle
An Essential Primer on Full and Fractional Factorial Test Design
Even if you are using full factorial to get the same amount of information as a fractional factorial test, it will take more time since you need more data to see statistically relevant differences between the many experiments. You might be wondering how fractional factorial can be accurate if interactions are possible?
Random interactions of high relevance are very rare, especially when looking for interactions of more than 2 factors. You really need to design tests where you look for meaningful interactions that are based on true business requirements rather than hoping for a random and low influence interaction between a red button, a hero shot and a headline.
I am a fan of design of experiments as long time readers know (see posts on design of experiments).
Some good resources for more on the topics discussed above: What Can You Find Out From 8 and 16 Experimental Runs? by George Box - Statistics for Experimenters - Design of Experiments in Advertising.
Related: Google Website Optimizer - factorial experiment articles - Using Design of Experiments - Marketers Are Embracing Statistical Design of Experiments
In Keeping Good Employees I talked about asking some simple questions. The biggest mistake I see managers make is to fail to deliver on what they say in such meetings.
There is the saying “It is better to be thought a fool than speak, and prove it.” Well it is better to be thought a pointy haired boss than to ask for feedback, then ignore it, and prove you are a PHB. This behavior is extremely common with a survey of employee satisfaction but can extend to any failure of management follow through. If you are not going to act on what good employees tell you - don’t ask.
If some of what they mention is something you disagree with, then explain that to them. Even bad decision making that is explained is better than no explanation and no action. If you end up explaining why no action can be taken on any suggestion then employees should rightfully (most likely) find you lacking. One aspect of the explanation is to educate them for future suggestions - there may well be factors they don’t think about that you must. But, even in such a case the best practice is normally to adjust the idea a bit to make it workable.
Related: Encourage Improvement Action by Everyone - Bring Me Problems and Solutions if You Have Them - Standardized Work Instructions - How to Improve - Write it Down - What Could be Improved?
HP shatters excessive packaging world record
Sadly not. What the überbox did contain was 16 smaller boxes “which in turn [each] contained (wrapped in foam so they wouldn’t get broken) exactly two sheets of A4 paper”
It is hard to imagine what management system creates such solutions. But it is not hard to image Dilbert’s pointy haired boss fitting right in there.
Related: Is Poor Service the Industry Standard (HP)? - Muda/waste - Customers Get Dissed and Tell - Companies in Need of Customer Focus
An outcome measure is used to measure the success of a system. For example, the outcome measure could be the percentage of people who do not get polio (the result). An output measure, for example, would be the number of people vaccinated with the polio vaccine (the output). Often we measure inputs (amount of money spent) or outputs (number of people vaccinated). They are usually easy to measure but obviously less valuable proxies for what the objective of the system (reducing the incidence of polio).
You should have all these types of measures but outcome measures are most likely to be missing so special care should be taken to make sure you are using them. It is important to define good outcome measures to use in determining the success of systems, and in determining the whether improvement projects actually result in improved outcomes.
In-process measures can be valuable in providing actionable information sooner than the outcome measure would allow action. In the polio example, an in process measure example could be % of vaccination by the time a babies is 18 months old. And looking across a country say it might well make sense to stratify the data to see if certain areas were doing poorly on this measure. If so that might be where to focus improvement. You don’t need to wait until people not vaccinated start contracting polio (which will likely be delayed for years after the system starts to have processes fail, in this example) to then notice the problem and then react.
Waiting for the outcome measure to point to a problem in this case (and in many cases) is far too late for process improvement. So process measures are needed to aid in managing the system and reacting to process results, before those processes create poor outcome measures. More on outcome measures.
Related: Operational Definition - tampering - management improvement web search - Measuring and Managing Performance in Organizations - Data is a Proxy - posts on managing using data
Meetings are perennial problems. People sit through meetings and then complain about how big a waste of time it was. Here are a couple very simple tips to try and actually improve (instead of just agreeing that meetings are wasteful, but doing nothing to improve).
I would strongly suggest if someone thinks they need to answer emails… instead of pay attention to the meeting they should not be in the meeting. Some people love to multi-task and act like they are too important to focus on something. I don’t find that true, instead they are just people that like to seem busy but not actually accomplish tasks. If your staff are doing this stop them. If you are subjected to working with such people, try to exclude them from the meeting and deal with people that actually care to focus and get things done.
Critical people on the other hand I find valuable (while others don’t want to deal with them). Encourage people to be open if meetings are not an effective use of their time. Talk to them about how to improve the meeting process. I take as true the idea that meetings are a problem and so those willing to state this and help make them better should be valued.
The Team Handbook also has good information on running effective meetings.
Related: Most Meetings are Muda - Programmers see meetings as wastes of time - Arbitrary Rules Don’t Work - Be Careful What You Measure
An interesting article in this month’s Harvard Business Review looks at the seeming contradictions at Toyota - The Contradictions That Drive Toyota’s Success by Hirotaka Takeuchi, Emi Osono, and Norihiko Shimizu
A good explanation of how Toyota avoids the trap of arbitrary numerical goals (Innovation at Toyota).
This is another key point often overlooked. Experimentation is key to gaining knowledge and improving. And they have steadily improved their method of experimentation building on the PDSA/PDCA cycle:
There are actually examples of good management by airlines: CEO Flight Attendant - Engineering the Boarding of Airplanes. Here is another one: Hustle & Flow
Alaska’s embrace of the future came out of necessity. By the mid-1990s, it was running out of space to handle its Seattle passengers. “If you came here on a busy day, it was jammed,” White says. A new terminal, though, would have cost around $500 million. Alaska tried self-serve kiosks, but technology alone wasn’t the answer. Kiosks were pushed against the ticket counter, which only further stagnated the flow of passengers.
White assembled a team of employees from across the company to design a better system. It visited theme parks, hospitals, and retailers to see what it could learn. It found less confusion and shorter waits at places where employees were available to direct customers. “Disneyland is great at this,” says Jeff Anderson, a member of White’s skunk works. “They have their people in all the right places.”
Ok, it is a bit hard to understand the “spent more than a decade” line but still there are good ideas here. The article includes several examples of lean thinking, such as:
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Dr. Deming used to using the term continual improvement (rather than continuous improvement) later in his life because that would include continuous and dis-continuous improvement (innovation, etc.). I use continual improvement for that reason also. I think the improvement process
To me, continual improvement encompasses both continuous and discontinuous improvement.
Reflecting on: Continuous Improvement vs. Continual Improvement
Related: Process Improvement and Innovation - Better and Different - Kaizen the Toyota Way - Change is not Improvement - Think Long Term Act Daily - Encourage Improvement Action by Everyone
If a company is dependent on one (or more) people to perform then it is in danger. Processes should be in place that don’t risk the success of the company on the performance of a specific person. If your organization is dependent on a person start taking actions to place the success of the company in reliable processes instead of individual stars.
In many instances the start is as simple as starting to document processes using flowcharts. Another benefit of doing this is that you can then make sensible improvements. It is hard to make reliable improvement hen processes are not documented and instead remain the mysterious realm of individuals within the organization.
Do your outstanding people think their importance is in getting through another day with through hard work and individual expertise. While those qualities are good most important to the success of the organization is improving the system not getting through one day. If those seen as the stars are not improving the system and processes then get them to work doing so. They might miss the feeling that the organization is dependent upon them. But it is more important that the organization not improve. And there contributions will still be worthwhile but the organization will be much stronger.
Performance dependent on specific individuals is not robust and not capable of continuous high quality performance.
Related: Bring Me Problems and Solutions if You Have Them - How to Improve - Management is Prediction
A Case for Agile: Benefits for a Programmer’s Career by Theodore Nguyen-Cao
Most importantly, I still feel I’m growing as a developer. I honestly believe the best thing a developer can do in their career is to always be learning. Everything else will follow.
I am also a strong proponent of agile software development. Information Technology projects have a poor success rate. The best method, I have found, to provide better software solutions is agile development (and I find a grounding in management improvement techniques is useful - customer focus, process improvement, systems thinking, understanding variation, data driven management…). My experience is with custom application development (rather than developing Commercial Off The Shelf software - COTS) for which I think agile is a great fit.
Related: Joy in Work for Programmers - Agile Software Development Presentation - Metrics and Software Development - Management Science for Software Engineering - Programmers at Work - Joel Management
Comment on New or Different? by Matthew May:
I wrote a similar post on my blog awhile back: Better and Different:
Frankly, if you have to choose one, just being better will work most of the time. The problem is (using an example from Deming, page 9 New Economics) when, for example, carburetors are eliminated by innovation (fuel injectors) no matter how well you make them you are out of business.
I agree with Matthew May that it is often easy to see “new things”, when you look from a different perspective, as really just an enhancement of existing things or combining existing things in a somewhat novel way. Especially since so many things are packaged as amazing new breakthroughs when really they are nice enhancements.
Even management ideas are sold this way. And, for management ideas, I think they are most often actually degradations of what Deming, Ohno, Shewhart, Ishikawa, Ackoff… said - not enhancements. See: failures of management consulting advice.
Related: Process Improvement and Innovation - Toyota, Lean, Consultants… - Google Innovation - Management Improvement History - Doing the Wrong Things Righter - Six Sigma and Innovation - leading management thinkers
I like using Amazon, most of the time. But their decision to erect barriers for communication I find extremely annoying. Any time anything goes wrong you might as well be dealing with some organization in the middle of nowhere without phones, any internet connection or even physical mail. I ordered a printer from them a couple weeks ago. Today I get an email that “the following item from your order is not currently available for purchase. This item has been canceled from your order. If your credit card was charged, a refund has been processed.”
First, it is very lousy service to sell someone something and then figure out you don’t have it to sell a few weeks later. Second, if you find you have done such a lame thing - buy it from someone else and deliver it as promised. Third, don’t make it nearly impossible for the customer you just wronged to contact you. This is the equivalent of providing lousy service and then closing the door in someones face refusing to deal with your failure.
And if you really want your business to take those customer unfriendly actions: just sell stuff you don’t have, then tell people a couple weeks later you are not going to sell it to them after all and then tell them if you charged them (you can’t even bother to see if you did? pretty lame) then you will give them their money back it still makes sense to give them the chance to buy another printer from you instead of just closing the door.
Granted some people are going to decide they don’t want to deal with such bad service and chose to deal with a more customer focused company but some will actually still give you another chance - make it easy for them to buy another printer. For example write them instead of what I received something like: sorry for our bad service, and to show we really mean that (we are not just sending you meaningless drivel our consultant dreamed up to say we care when our actions say we don’t) we will discount a replacement printer you buy in the next two weeks by $50. Here are 5 similar printers. Follow the links to purchase one of these printers (or view many others on our site) and we will also express mail the printer selected at no additional cost.
The sad thing is that there are not many alternatives to Amazon that actually provide good service. Though Crutchfield is one - for electronics.
Related: Customer Hostility from Discover Card - Amazon Innovation - No More Lean Excuses - More Bad Customer Service Examples 
- 12 Stocks for 10 Years (yes including Amazon)
Great article on The Checklist - If something so simple can transform intensive care, what else can it do? by Atul Gawande
Related: Why Isn’t Work Standard? - Visual Work Instructions - posts on quality tools - European Blackout not Human Error-Not
Procedurally Enforcing Workflow by Michael Salamon:
You can’t force people to follow directions they deem arbitrary.
I bet if that gate spit out $100 bills people would use it.
Why matters. You can’t just expect people to act in a way that seems arbitrary. As I stated in Poka-Yoke Assembly, Do you Read Instructions Carefully Before Assembly? Nope, I don’t. I expect I can make a quick judgment if I really need to or I basically get it and can put things together well enough. I expect the supplier to make very obvious anything critical. It is not ok to expect people to think the way you want them to. You have to understand how people will react and create solutions based on that.
We have discussed similar ideas: Why Isn’t Work Standard? - Visual Work Instructions - Visual Instructions Example - European Blackout: Human Error-Not - Find the Root Cause Instead of the Person to Blame
A similar example I learned long ago. Many schools try to force students not to walk on the lawn and create ugly paths through the grass. A smart alternative. Wait for the students to wear a path. Then pave that. If you are frustrated because people won’t follow your rules your rules are probably bad. Fix the rules (or procedures…). Don’t expect telling people in a loud voice (or stern memo or…) that they must follow your rules.
Process improvement tools offer great resources to improve results. Dr. Deming included understanding psychology as one of the 4 areas of his management system. He understood organizations where not machines but systems made up of people. Therefore management needs to reflect that reality. -Lee Fried discusses these ideas in It is All About the People:
I see building improvement capacity of the organization, which largely means building the capacity of the people, as an extremely important focus of improvement efforts. As he mentions, it is at times, important to slow down the pace of change to ensure that people can adopt and incorporate the new concepts fully. If not the improvements tend to only take effect on the surface. Improvements in results are important but it is also critical to have management improvement concepts adopted as the natural way of doing business. And reaching that point most likely requires a focus on making that happen as well as improving processes… This split focus may seem to dilute effort but it is the most effective long term strategy (the time invested today in building capacity will make the management changes much more likely to sustain over the long term and will improve results over the long term).
Related: How to Improve - People are Our Most Important Asset - Management Recipe - articles on process improvement
Every so often an article appears discussing the need to change focus from process improvement to innovation (and recently they are followed with quite a bit of blog talk). I disagree on several grounds. First you have needed to focus on both all the time. Second, it is not an either or choice. Third, the process of innovation should be improved.
I do not believe process improvement is bad for innovation. Bad process changes can be bad for innovation. But if we are looking at a research and development organization where the output is new products then process improvement would be focused on improving the processes to make that happen. The type of process improvement would be different than those made to manufacturing a product better.
Some six sigma efforts are little more than cost cutting efforts. And those efforts might claim a “process improvement” that is really just cutting costs in R&D. But we should not confuse bad management with the good practice of process improvement. Yes, cutting costs for the sake of cutting costs often leads to problems. Waste should be eliminated (which can reduces cost). Focus on eliminating waste. Eliminating waste in innovation activities is no worse than eliminating it anywhere. It might be more difficult to determine what is waste (that is where management skill and knowledge come into play) but the idea that process improvement (including eliminating waste is bad for innovation is something that should be rejected). And process improvement in innovation should not be limited to eliminating waste.
A good example of process improvement in innovation activities: Fast Cycle Change in Knowledge-Based Organizations (pdf format) by Ian Hau and Ford Calhoun, published by the Center for Quality and Productivity Improvement, University of Wisconsin - Madison.
Related: Better and Different - New Rules for Management? No! - Quality and Innovation - “New” Management Needs - Management Advice Failures
I ran across a specific example of standard policy that I found amusing (related to the post earlier today on Why Isn’t Work Standard). Like the authors, I can’t really see a reason for why you would want a policy that no more than two prepaid cell phones can be purchased. But if it is important, couldn’t you design a much better system to assure this policy was followed. And, at the very least, let customers hear your reasoning (so make an accurate explanation part of the standard work instruction stopping the sale of more than 2) behind such a restraint on their options. Doing so wouldn’t really help solve the problem (if they want more phones) but it seems it would be better customer service not to make up stuff like claiming it is the law - which is what happens when you tell people to do things without explaining why. Why Wal-Mart Will Refuse to Sell You Prepaid Cell Phones:
Later, the post author explains the answer he receives after calling Walmart headquarters and being directed to the District manager - “the only person that could quote policy.” The person that answers says the district manager is busy but she can answer, there is no policy that only the district manager can quote policy:
Verizon seems to be doing a good job keeping poor customer focus as a guiding policy (double trouble at Verizon):
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Be Careful What You Measure by Mike Wroblewski:
Excellent points. Behavior can be changed by what is measured. The problems with arbitrary numerical targets (to take one measurement related example) is not that attempts to achieve those targets won’t have an affect. They very well may have an affect. However they may not have the desired result. When focused on improving a number (which can happen when focused on measures - especially as the focus on those measures is tied to bonuses, favorable treatment…) the focus is not necessarily on on improving the system. Often distorting the system is the result.
Measures need to be used with a conscience effort to remember the data is merely a proxy to quantify the results (not the end themselves). Taking care in choosing the measures is one necessary step to assure the best improvement results. One strategy is to include some measures that are outcome measures. Often those measures are difficult to pin to specific process improvements tightly so you will also want to include specific process measures. The outcome measures help make sure you maintain a focus on the important system level results. Process measures will help you test and improve processes (as well as monitor and react, when necessary to ongoing processes).
Often improving the process measures can be mistaken for the aim. Care needs to be taken to underscore the role of process measures (process management). Also measures should be re-examined periodically to determine if they are still the correct measures. Systems with people are heavily influenced by what is measured. People will often react to what is measured and make adjustments to how the work is done to make the numbers better. The danger is that those attempts to make the measures look better can actually harm the overall system (when poor measures are used).
Related: Targets Distorting the System - Understanding Data - Operational Definitions and Data Collection - Dangers of Forgetting the Proxy Nature of Data
Peter Abilla (shmula blog) is hiring a Manager for Process Improvement to work with him at eBay. A great opportunity, in my opinion.
Here are some highlights of what he is looking for:
See the Curious Cat Management Improvement job board for more lean manufacturing, six sigma, quality engineering… jobs.
Standardized work instructions are in important part of Deming and lean manufacturing management systems. Processes need to be standardized and continually improved (kaizen). Without a documented standard process variation normally increases over time as processes drift away from the desired standard. As new ideas for improved are proposed those changes can be tested using PDSA and adopted if successful.
The key is not having a document saying this is what the standard process is, the key is having a document that is actually used. For that reason it is essential that the work instructions are easy to use (visible and as simple as possible) and easy to update (to avoid the common problem of the process changing and the work instructions losing touch with what is actually done).
Resources on standard work instructions:
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