Monthly Archives: March 2007

NCAA Basketball Challenge 2007

Posted on March 12, 2007 by John Hunter

Once again I have created a group on the ESPN NCAA Basketball Tournament Challenge for curiouscat basketball fans. To participate, go to the curiouscat ESPN group [the broken link was removed] and make your picks. Go Badgers and Go Davidson,

Posted in curiouscat.com, Fun

Jeffrey Pfeffer on Evidence-Based Practices

Posted on March 11, 2007 by John Hunter

Jeffrey Pfeffer Testifies to Congress About Evidence-Based Practices [the broken link was removed]: In this short statement, I want to make five points as succinctly as possible, providing references for background and documentation for my arguments. First, organizations in both the public and private sector ought to base policies not on casual benchmarking, on ideology or belief, on what they have done in the past or what they are comfortable with doing, but instead should implement evidence-based management. Second, the … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Data, Management, Performance Appraisal, Public Sector, Statistics, Systems thinking | Tagged ,

Investors Business Daily on Deming

Posted on March 10, 2007 by John Hunter

He Pointed Firms To Quality [the broken link was removed] by Kirk Shinkle: Management responsibility took on an almost moral role for Deming. Failure in business and the resulting unemployment could be blamed almost entirely on leadership. Leaders, he believed, should commit to their employees, not hop around from job to job. He would likely have eschewed today’s renewed climate of zealous private equity buyouts and an increasing trend toward mobile management. In the introduction to his 1983 book “Out … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Economics, Investing | Tagged | 1 Comment

Kanban In Software Engineering

Posted on March 9, 2007 by John Hunter

Kanban in Action [the broken link was removed]: The kanban system allows us to deliver on my 3 elements of my recipe for success: reduce work-in-progress (in fact it limits it completely); balance capacity against demand (as new CRs [change requests] can only be introduced when a kanban card frees up after a release); and prioritize. We hold a business prioritization meeting once per week with vice presidents from around the company. They get to pick new CRs from the … Continue reading →

Posted in Lean thinking, Process improvement, Quality tools, Software Development | Tagged

Change Health Care

Posted on March 8, 2007 by John Hunter

How Toyota Can Save Your Life…at the hospital by Mark Graban, another great manifesto from Change This:

Posted in Health care, Lean thinking | 1 Comment

Motivating Employees

Posted on March 7, 2007 by John Hunter

No Matter How Badly You Want It: “When it seems easy, it’s like they already wanted to do it in the first place.” Martin paused. “It seems impossible when they didn’t ever want to do it. So, it doesn’t seem to matter what you want, as the manager, or how badly you want it. The only thing that seems to matter is whether your team members want to do it?” The lights were circling in Martin’s head. The whole time, … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Management, Psychology, Respect | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Total Quality Software Development

Posted on March 6, 2007 by John Hunter

Total Quality Service podcast by Michael Tiemann, Redhat Software. Do we offshore the problem to somebody else, you know get more bad software cheaper? Or do we fix the problem? I think we fix the problem. Now, in going to Japan and talking about this software quality problem it was pretty obvious I had to go and study Deming… I think the first 10 minutes of the podcast is valuable to anyone. The last 8 minutes might not appeal to … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, IT, Software Development, Systems thinking, webcast

Website Data

Posted on March 5, 2007 by John Hunter

The Alexa toolbar, from amazon.com (and by the guy, Brewster Kahle, who created the internet archive too, by the way) is one way to get some idea of how popular a web site is (the toolbar shows the web site rank for each site you visit). It is very inaccurate, but is free, and easy, so it is used. Alexa Toolbar and the Problem of Experiment Design shows why data based decision making is not the solution to all your … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Deming | 1 Comment

All Models Are Wrong But Some Are Useful

Posted on March 4, 2007 by John Hunter

“All Models Are Wrong But Some Are Useful” -George Box A great quote. Here is the source: George E.P. Box, Robustness in the strategy of scientific model building, page 202 of Robustness in Statistics, R.L. Launer and G.N. Wilkinson, Editors. 1979. See more quotes by George Box. Related: Dangers of Forgetting the Proxy Nature of Data – articles by George Box – Quotes by Dr. W. Edwards Deming

Posted in Fun, quote | Tagged , , , , , | 6 Comments

Management Improvement Carnival #6

Posted on March 2, 2007 by John Hunter

Management Improvement ideas from around the web: Lean Q&A by Jamie Flinchbaugh – “There is no recipe, no three-ring binder approach to lean. If someone brings you an approach and says “here is the best way to implement lean,” please, run away.” Seven steps to remarkable customer service by Joel Spolsky – “The superficial and immediate solution is just to solve the customer’s problem. But when you think a little harder you can usually find a deeper solution” The Seven … Continue reading →

Posted in Carnival, Management

Write it Down

Posted on March 1, 2007 by John Hunter

Why Write it down? The longer I pursue Lean, the more I am amazed with its fundamentals. I may write more about this in the near future. Like the emphasis to write things down. In meetings, writing down decisions (what is the issue, who is going to do what…) is very helpful. It is very easy for people to think everyone agrees to some somewhat clear statements made in the meeting. Only later it becomes obvious several people have different … Continue reading →

Posted in Management, Process improvement, Quality tools, quote, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , | 6 Comments

Evolving Excellence – The Book

Posted on March 1, 2007 by John Hunter

Evolving Excellence – the book takes posts from the excellent Evolving Excellence blog by Keven Meyer and William Waddell. Those familiar with their work know that the authors provide great insight and take strong positions – they are not timid. The book is an enjoyable read and packed with great ideas focused on lean manufacturing and lean management thinking. I enjoyed the different format of reading the material presented in the blog (though I like the blog even better, linking … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Lean thinking, Management