Tag Archives: inspection

Software Testing and the Impact on Quality

My response to a question on Reddit. “Software quality does not come from testing” Does anybody have any thoughts on the validity of the above statement? That statement is similar to the idea you can’t inspect in quality. Basically “Inspection is too late. The quality, good or bad, is already in the product.” W. Edwards Deming I agree with those ideas. Software testing is a bit different (at least some of it is) from the inspection mentioned above. You are … Continue reading →

Posted in IT, Software Development | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Baking in Quality to Software Development

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 only inside our organization) but didn’t actually find the time to do so. Since we adopted Ruby we have been doing much better in this regard. It isn’t just the switch to Ruby, of course, but the switch to Ruby … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, IT, Lean thinking, Management, Process improvement, Quality tools, Software Development | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Customers Get Dissed and Tell

There are those rare companies where interacting with them is not a dreaded experience: Trader Joe’s, Southwest Airlines, Ritz Carlton, Crutchfield, Cannon, Groovix. There are not many. And even just providing something that just works is seen as a treat. The all too common dis-service, combined with the internet, leads to Consumer Vigilantes: a growing disconnect between the experience companies promise and customers’ perceptions of what they actually get. … A swell of corporate distrust – exacerbated by high executive … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Deming, Management, Psychology | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Cease Mass Inspection for Quality

Comment in response to, Re-Discovering W. Edwards Deming, a partial quote from that post: Not all of the Deming approach is part of core TPS thinking. In particular, Deming advocated a statistical sampling approach to quality inspection, while Toyota focuses on 100% inspection or eliminating the need for inspection through via the concepts of Poka Yoke and Jidoka. As much as I admire Deming and his philosophy, I agree with the Toyota innovation that it is better to prevent defects … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Deming, Lean thinking, Management, Process improvement, Quality tools | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments