8 ms·
Quality != Quality
- bryanrasmussen 9y agoIs Quality NaN?
- amelius 9y agoEverything is a Boolean.
- trisimix 9y agoYeah why are they trying so hard to objectify this?
- contingencies 9y agoIt's design or management thinking versus nuts and bolts engineering. Even if it seems superfluous for a given problem, it has value in generality (eg. broadly applicable to complex project management/planning) and optimization (eg. prioritization of development effort/resource allocation against perceived customer experience impact) at macro level.
- chiph 9y agoI think the important part of this is that all three circles in their Venn diagram must intersect. If they don't, you'll fail. Either because the production quality is non-existent, no business value is being added, or the product doesn't have the right attributes to be saleable. How big does this sweet spot intersection need to be? "As large as possible" doesn't sound right - because it says you've spent too much time polishing and not enough time getting it in front of customers. Too small and your value isn't obvious enough, inviting the competition to steal your lunch. So .. perhaps it should be "just right", whatever that means for your market.
- mannykannot 9y agoThe author says these are Venn diagrams, but he omits saying what the domain is. Are the members of these sets programs? If so, then he is saying that a program may have any combination (including possibly none) of these three concepts of quality, but a given program (or whatever the elements are) either possesses a given quality, or it does not - the model, as presented, does not allow for degrees of quality. In this interpretation, as large as possible a sweet spot would simply mean that you have many programs having all three qualities, and if that is not optimal, then the model is not complete. To be clear, I don't think this is what the author meant; I suspect either I have guessed wrongly about the set's domains, or he has just chosen a flawed way of expressing himself.
- entropy_ai 9y agothere is one important aspect of "quality" that leads to all other: quality is achieved at global maximum. A lot of engineering methodology is focused finding a local maximum.
- contingencies 9y agoGreat summary! Added to https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup as 'Entropy's Edict'. (FYI: Passed over "Jobs' Jib", though it really does seem to shortcut the average serenade of the Steve Jobs worshipper with a concise and clear, engineer-comprehensible explanation of his management style! Hehehe.)
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- sago 9y agoUnfortunately, for even highly simplified idealised problem spaces of only moderate complexity, the best algorithm would take longer than the life of the universe to find the global maximum. Worse, for most of them, even if I gave you the global maximum solution, it would take you longer than the life of the universe to verify that. Or, put another way, actually producing something before the heat-death of the universe is, imho, a prerequisite for quality.
- contingencies 9y agoGreat artists ship.
- troymc 9y agoVan Gogh was a great artist, but he sold almost none of his paintings. One source: https://www.thoughtco.com/van-gogh-sold-only-one-painting-4050008 https://www.thoughtco.com/van-gogh-sold-only-one-painting-40...
- kuwze 9y agoI have a book on quality (I forget the title) that pointed out the fact that while everyone talks about quality, it is rarely defined. The book went on to define quality thusly: "Quality is the ability to meet a specification" (that's my rephrasing as I can't find the book).
- atom058 9y agoVery close to the classic definition by Joseph Juran, where quality is the ability to meet and exceed customer expectations
- DonbunEf7 9y agoI have a book that is along these same lines, and it says, "Quality is what you like." Quality is between an observer and an object.
- troymc 9y agoAs I noted in another comment, that's _not_ the conclusion of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. In fact, it's one he ruled out.
- eqmvii 9y agoDefining quality is easy enough that I always had a hard time fully buying into Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
- Tomminn 9y agoI think the definition implicitly described in that book is "Quality is the ability to satisfy the innately messy human value function". Which I think is a pretty okay definition. Though it's a better definition for beauty.
- abritinthebay 9y agoIf it's that easy - please provide a definition? Because quality is often subjective, I'll be shocked if you can provide a generalized definition.
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- mianos 9y agoWhy not just go for an ISO standard definition, like 9000 or 9001? It means to meet specifications. Specifications specify sold gold and it is solid, then it is quality. If it is gold plate then it is not.
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- Chiba-City 9y agoThere are no private languages. Quality is a social determination. Preferences are idiomatic to exposure. They never matter in defining words.
- pcunite 9y agoduh != dough