Category Archives: Management

Engineering Management Thoughts Based on Facebook Experience

Posted on March 8, 2012 by John Hunter

Yishan Wong is the new CEO at Reddit, an excellent social media site I have written about previously. In looking at his background I found some interesting articles he wrote on engineering management based on his experience at Facebook engineering. He starts with “make hiring your number one priority, always.” To me this is a specific knowledge worker issue. Hiring is always important but the importance in knowledge worker settings (especially when there is quite a bit of poaching good … Continue reading →

Posted in Management | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Keys to the Effective Use of the PDSA Improvement Cycle

Posted on March 6, 2012 by John Hunter

The PDSA improvement cycle was created by Walter Shewhart where Dr. Deming learned about it. An improvement process is now part of many management improvement methods (A3 for lean manufacturing, DMAIC for six sigma and many other modifications). They are fairly similar in many ways. The PDSA cycle (Plan, Do, Study, Act) has a few key pieces that are either absent in most others processes of greatly de-emphasized which is why I prefer it (A3 is my second favorite). The … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Deming, Management, Popular, Process improvement, Quality tools, quote, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 15 Comments

Management Improvement Blog Carnival #159

Posted on March 1, 2012 by John Hunter

David Kasprzak is hosting Management Improvement Blog Carnival #159 on My Flexible Pencil. Highlights from this edition include: 3 Ways to Go Agile in Your Workplace in the New Year Managing Your Logistics as You Grow Your Business Raising awareness of ROWE [Results Only Work Environment] and Lean Necessary and Valuable are not the same Make sure you check out the full carnival post on My Flexible Pencil.

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Learn to Code to Help Your Career

Posted on February 22, 2012 by John Hunter

I believe there are big benefits to knowing how to code (programing, software development). What is possible for your organization is often significantly impacted by understanding how to properly use software (and create it, coding, when needed). The lack of understanding of software is a significant problem not just for those wanting a job coding (that are available for those with the right skills) but also for those making decisions about what the organization should do. The profound ignorance (meant … Continue reading →

Posted in Career, Creativity, IT, Management, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Management Improvement Blog Carnival #158

Posted on February 20, 2012 by John Hunter

The Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog Carnival has been published since 2006. We find great management blog posts and share them with you 3 times a month. We hope you find these post interesting and find some new blogs to start reading. Follow me online: Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn, instant management consulting, and more. For complex systems there is no root cause by John Allspaw – “We like to simplify complex problems so we can work on them in a reductionist … Continue reading →

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Why Use Lean if So Many Fail To Do So Effectively

Posted on February 15, 2012 by John Hunter

If less than 1% of companies are successful with Lean, why are we doing it? Lots of us are not. I would say the efforts I see “fail” are because they don’t do it. They have something they call TQM, six sigma, lean management or whatever and try out 10-30% of it in some half-measures, with big doses of Dilbert’s pointy haired boss methods and then don’t get great results. Wow. The biggest complaint (with some merit) I see is … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Lean thinking, Management, Process improvement, Six sigma, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 11 Comments

Management Improvement Blog Carnival #157

Posted on February 10, 2012 by John Hunter

The Curious Cat management blog carnival is published 3 times a month with hand picked recent management blog posts. I also collect management improvement articles for the Curious Cat Management Articles site; you can subscribe via RSS for new article additions. Maximize Test Coverage Efficiency And Minimize the Number of Tests Needed by John Hunter – “The steeper the slope the more efficient your test plan is. If you repeat the same tests of pairs and triples and… while not … Continue reading →

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Management Improvement Blog Carnival #156

Posted on February 1, 2012 by John Hunter

The Curious Cat Management blog carnival highlights recent management blog posts 3 times each month. The posts generally focus on the areas I have focused on in the Curious Cat Management Guide since 1996 (Deming, evidence based management, lean manufacturing, agile software development, systems thinking…) The Key Questions for a Minimum Viable Product Project by Anthony Panozzo – “What are you trying to learn with this particular MVP? What data are you collecting about your experiment? What determines the success … Continue reading →

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We are Being Ruined by the Best Efforts of People Who are Doing the Wrong Thing

Posted on January 30, 2012 by John Hunter

Deming’s Second Theorem: “We are being ruined by best efforts.” What did Dr. Deming mean by this? Another quote by Dr. Deming might give you a clue? “Best efforts will not substitute for knowledge.” Irwin, the porcupine at the Animal Rescue League Wildlife Center has to work a little harder for his breakfast in this clip. The wildlife center likes to provide animals in captivity puzzles and challenges to keep them interested in their environment so they stuck his breakfast … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Management, Psychology, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , | 8 Comments

ASQ Influential Voices

Posted on January 26, 2012 by John Hunter

I am joining the ASQ Influential Voices project for 2012. The effort started last year when ASQ chose a few people to participate in a group effort to share their thoughts on various topics in quality improvement. I have been asked to join for 2012, along with a couple lean bloggers (Mark Graban and Tim McMahon) and others. Each month the ASQ executive director will post on a topic and I, and the other influential voices participants, will share out … Continue reading →

Posted in Management | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Web Seminar with Gerald Suarez: Better Thinking About Leadership

Posted on January 23, 2012 by John Hunter

In2In offers some great opportunities for those interested in management improvement. Their conference is excellent. They also offer various conference calls with speakers knowledgeable about Deming and Ackoff’s ideas. These normally take the form of conference call presentations (similar to a podcast) followed by some question and answers. The consistently get remarkable people like, Gerald Suarez, and earlier: Peter Scholtes and Brian Joiner. Gerald Suarez is kicking off the new InThinking Network monthly webinar series. I worked for Gerald at … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Management, Public Sector, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Management Improvement Blog Carnival #155

Posted on January 22, 2012 by John Hunter

The Curious Cat management blog carnival is published 3 times a month with hand picked recent management blog posts. I also collect select management improvement articles and blog posts in the Curious Cat management article library. The annual management blog roundup event covered #151 – #154, so this is #155. We Don’t Know quote by David York, via Mike Wroblewski- We don’t know what the problems are…..that’s why we make them visible. We don’t know what the root causes of … Continue reading →

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Trust But Verify

Posted on January 16, 2012 by John Hunter

The following are my comments, which were sparked by question “Trust, but verify. Is this a good example of Profound Knowledge in action?” on the Linked In Deming Institute group. Trust but verify makes sense to me. I think of verify as process measures to verify the process is producing as it should. By verifying you know when the process is failing and when to look for special causes (when using control chart thinking with an understanding of variation). There … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Deming, Management, quote, Respect, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

More 2011 Management Blog Roundup Posts Added

Posted on January 3, 2012 by John Hunter

As we start 2012, the 4th Annual Management Blog Roundup continues. Once again some of the most popular management bloggers are taking a look back at the last year in the management blogging world. The following reviews have been added since my last update: Jamie Flinchbaugh, on his blog of the same name, took a look at 3 blogs, including this one, Curious Cat Management Improvement, as well as: Old Lean Dude and Brad Power’s posts at the Harvard Business … Continue reading →

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Eliminate the Waste of Waiting in Line with Queuing Theory

Posted on December 15, 2011 by John Hunter

One thing that frustrates me is how managers fail to adopt proven strategies for decades. One very obvious example is using queuing theory to setup lines. Yes it may be even better to adopt strategies to eliminate as much waiting in line as possible, but if there is still waiting in line occurring and you are not having one queue served by multiple representatives shame on you and your company. Related: Customer Focus and Internet Travel Search – YouTube Uses … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Data, Management, Process improvement, Quality tools, Statistics, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

4th Annual Management Blog Roundup

Posted on December 12, 2011 by John Hunter

The Curious Cat Management blog carnival highlights recent management blog posts 3 times each month. This is the 4th year that the normal rhythm is being broken to review the past year in management blogging. From now until January 12th some excellent management blogs will be hosting reviews of what has transpired on great management blogs over the last year. You can find links to all the reviews, as they are posted, on the home page for Management Blogs: 2011 … Continue reading →

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