Category Archives: IT

Involve IT Staff in Business Process Improvement

Posted on July 6, 2010 by John Hunter

I started out basically working on management improvement from the start of my career. My makeup (I am never satisfied and figure things should always be better) along with a few traits, experiences and probably even genes made this a … Continue reading →

Posted in Career, Deming, IT, Management, Popular, Process improvement, quote, Software Development, Systems thinking | Tagged agile management, Career, commentary, curiouscat, IT, John Hunter, management, Popular, Process improvement, quote, Software Development, Systems thinking | 5 Comments

Net Neutrality, Policy, Economics and Intelligent Engineering

Posted on April 13, 2010 by John Hunter

I believe net neutrality should be championed to prevent decay of the usability of the internet. It seems to me internet connectivity is a natural monopoly that economic theory says should be a regulated monopoly. Smart countries have invested in … Continue reading →

Posted in Economics, Google, Innovation, IT | Tagged commentary, Economics, economy, engineering, internet, IT | 3 Comments

Toyota’s Journey to Lean Software Development

Posted on March 18, 2010 by John Hunter

Toyota’s journey from Waterfall to Lean software development by Henrik Kniberg Toyota builds cars (duh). In the past that didn’t involve much software, and the little software that was needed was mostly developed by suppliers and embedded in isolated components. … Continue reading →

Posted in Innovation, IT, Lean thinking, Management, Quality tools, Software Development, Toyota Production System (TPS) | Tagged agile management, IT, Japan, Lean thinking, Software Development, Toyota, Toyota Production System (TPS) | Comments Off

Improving Software Development with Automated Tests

Posted on March 8, 2010 by John Hunter

Automated software testing is a mistake proofing (poka-yoke) solution for software development. The way automated testing works is that software code is written that tests the software code of the application. This automated testing code test that business rules are … Continue reading →

Posted in IT, Lean thinking, Management, Process improvement, Quality tools, Software Development | Tagged agile management, Deming, John Hunter, Lean thinking, poka yoke, Process improvement, Quality tools, quote, Ruby, Software Development, software testing | 8 Comments

Observations of a New Googler

Posted on February 6, 2010 by John Hunter

Some interesting thoughts from a new Google engineer, Things I’ve learned at Google so far I would describe Google’s culture as “creative chaos”. There was some confusion about where I was supposed to be when I started. This resulted in … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Google, Innovation, IT, Management, Software Development | Tagged Creativity, Google, Innovation, management, Software Development | 2 Comments

Managing to Test Result Instead of Customer Value

Posted on October 19, 2009 by John Hunter

Computer hardware and software creators use benchmarks as one tool to compare the performance of alternative products. At times this can be very useful. You can learn what software of hardware is faster and that may be a very valuable … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, IT, Management, Software Development, Systems thinking | Tagged Creativity, Data, programming, Software Development, Systems thinking, targets | 7 Comments

Understanding How to Manage Geeks

Posted on September 12, 2009 by John Hunter

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 IT, managing people, programming, Psychology, respect for people, Software Development | 6 Comments

YouTube Uses Multivariate Experiment To Improve Sign-ups 15%

Posted on August 17, 2009 by John Hunter

Google does a great job of using statistical and engineering principles to improve. It is amazing how slow we are to adopt new ideas but because we are it provides big advantages to companies like Google that use concepts like … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Data, Design of Experiments, Google, IT, Management, Process improvement, Quality tools, quote, Science, Software Development, Statistics | Tagged curiouscat, Customer focus, Data, Design of Experiments, experiments, Google, Innovation, internet, management, Science, Software Development, Statistics | 2 Comments

Baking in Quality to Software Development

Posted on August 15, 2009 by John Hunter

One of the reasons my organizations switched to Ruby on Rails for software development was the great integration with automated testing. We always wanted to have good test coverage on our software applications (which are web applications – some used … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, IT, Lean thinking, Management, Process improvement, Quality tools, Software Development | Tagged agile management, Deming, inspection, Lean thinking, Quality tools, Ruby, Software Development, software testing | 2 Comments

Don’t Hide Problems in Computers

Posted on August 11, 2009 by John Hunter

Making things visible is a key to effective management. And data in computers can be easy to ignore. Don’t forget to make data visible. Paul Levy, CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston recently hosted Hideshi Yokoi, president … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, IT, Lean thinking, Management, Quality tools, Toyota Production System (TPS) | Tagged Data, Health care, IT, lean healthcare, lean management, lean manufacturing, Lean thinking, Toyota Production System (TPS) | 3 Comments