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> My remaining fantasy is to encounter a software manager who is familiar with Deming's work and has thought about how to apply it to software management. Am f

> My remaining fantasy is to encounter a software manager who is familiar with Deming's work and has thought about how to apply it to software management. Am familiar and in my experience TQM is just as cargo-cult as Six Sigma, Waterfall, Agile, etc etc. You get these highly-stylized idealist models, often which have books and courses, then the consultants... Ugh. IDK - all of this crap is noise to me. I found Deming's work super thick, and honestly I'm probably too much of a simpleton to really "get it"... =| In contrast, my personal commandments are near-100% inspired from the two lists: * Tom Sach's "10 Bullets" (how to work) * Joel Spolsky's "The Joel Test" (how to run an effective software company)

Jach 6y ago
Haven't come across Tom Sach's list, I'll give them a look and reflect. I still like Spolsky's list though. It's always fun to think about which points the industry (or one's own employer) has consolidated on by now and which it hasn't -- hard to imagine there exist many 12s on the prevalence of this item's open offices topic alone, and even Microsoft isn't a 12 anymore as far as I know. (Maybe parts are.) It doesn't surprise me to hear there's a ton of BS around Deming's work (it's had even longer to build itself up) but I still think there are valuable things there that software companies, especially larger ones, are missing... And we seem to have the existence proof of there being something to it (i.e. Japan's rise, and later on US companies adopting things... though as Jobs once noted (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kib6uXQsxBA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kib6uXQsxBA) customers won't think highly of your quality if you keep shipping garbage despite winning a Deming Award or having all sorts of advertising that claims high quality). Even starting from the surface root level with Deming's "System of Profound Knowledge" -- his 4 key components -- I see a total lack of "Knowledge about variation" all over the place. Without some intuition of variation you can't even appreciate what you mentioned about how programmers sometimes just seem to have "off weeks", and from what I've read Deming wanted the understanding to be more deep than a basic "yeah things vary" instinct, and to know it applies not only to individuals or individual units of work (e.g. red beans experiment) but to larger scopes as well. Ultimately the knowledge needs mathematical grounding (specifically in probability and statistics), which is something else sorely lacking in management trees (and even more and more on the programming side). If there are things like TQM certifications out there that don't imply a holder has a certain level of mathematical sophistication with statistics, that's all the more damning to the certificates and bodies of work around them, but not I don't think to the importance of such knowledge...
- folkhack 6y ago
  I've been thinking since yesterday and I think I'm going to jump back into Deming's work... do you have a good starting point? I had the realization that I hadn't read "Out of the Crisis" since my early 20's, and I've had a few bad run-ins with super-corporate weirdos slinging his theory like snake oil after that. > Ultimately the knowledge needs mathematical grounding (specifically in probability and statistics), which is something else sorely lacking in management trees (and even more and more on the programming side) This is one of the biggest struggles of my career... dealing with quantifying something that's incredibly difficult to quantify. --- Glad you're checking out Tom Sachs' list! It's an odd one for sure - weird artsy video and all. It's about an art studio in NY and how it manages it's people/process. It's sorta hokey I'll admit, but I find the simplicity of it helps me get back on the rails myself during those times of variation =)

Jach 6y ago

Haven't come across Tom Sach's list, I'll give them a look and reflect. I still like Spolsky's list though. It's always fun to think about which points the industry (or one's own employer) has consolidated on by now and which it hasn't -- hard to imagine there exist many 12s on the prevalence of this item's open offices topic alone, and even Microsoft isn't a 12 anymore as far as I know. (Maybe parts are.) It doesn't surprise me to hear there's a ton of BS around Deming's work (it's had even longer to build itself up) but I still think there are valuable things there that software companies, especially larger ones, are missing... And we seem to have the existence proof of there being something to it (i.e. Japan's rise, and later on US companies adopting things... though as Jobs once noted (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kib6uXQsxBA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kib6uXQsxBA) customers won't think highly of your quality if you keep shipping garbage despite winning a Deming Award or having all sorts of advertising that claims high quality). Even starting from the surface root level with Deming's "System of Profound Knowledge" -- his 4 key components -- I see a total lack of "Knowledge about variation" all over the place. Without some intuition of variation you can't even appreciate what you mentioned about how programmers sometimes just seem to have "off weeks", and from what I've read Deming wanted the understanding to be more deep than a basic "yeah things vary" instinct, and to know it applies not only to individuals or individual units of work (e.g. red beans experiment) but to larger scopes as well. Ultimately the knowledge needs mathematical grounding (specifically in probability and statistics), which is something else sorely lacking in management trees (and even more and more on the programming side). If there are things like TQM certifications out there that don't imply a holder has a certain level of mathematical sophistication with statistics, that's all the more damning to the certificates and bodies of work around them, but not I don't think to the importance of such knowledge...

folkhack 6y ago
I've been thinking since yesterday and I think I'm going to jump back into Deming's work... do you have a good starting point? I had the realization that I hadn't read "Out of the Crisis" since my early 20's, and I've had a few bad run-ins with super-corporate weirdos slinging his theory like snake oil after that. > Ultimately the knowledge needs mathematical grounding (specifically in probability and statistics), which is something else sorely lacking in management trees (and even more and more on the programming side) This is one of the biggest struggles of my career... dealing with quantifying something that's incredibly difficult to quantify. --- Glad you're checking out Tom Sachs' list! It's an odd one for sure - weird artsy video and all. It's about an art studio in NY and how it manages it's people/process. It's sorta hokey I'll admit, but I find the simplicity of it helps me get back on the rails myself during those times of variation =)