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I would generally agree with that and we had many instances where we chose to have people perfect workflows prior to fully automating them (and there are lots o
by noahbrier 12y ago
I would generally agree with that and we had many instances where we chose to have people perfect workflows prior to fully automating them (and there are lots of situations where that remains the case now). With that said, and I don't know that it was perfectly expressed in the piece, I do think there's a concept that engineers take for granted around the attitude that goes into creating products and automation that needs to be pushed hard throughout the whole organization.
- calinet6 12y agoHave you looked into W. Edwards Deming at all? His ideas on quality and systems are echoed almost perfectly in this article and in what you're saying here, especially in bringing systems thinking to the entire organization, not just engineering (where abolishing repetitive tasks using scripting comes as second nature). Really astute stuff. I think he'd reply on the point above, that it's far better to build the system and have it be less than perfect than to rely on a brittle process. "A bad system will beat a good person every time." - Deming So, it will probably not be a waste of time. Has your experience proven this out in general?
- noahbrier 12y agoHaven't read any Deming, but will check it out. Any particularly good place to start? I'd say in general it has proven out, though there have certainly been some cases where we tried to build products prior to fully defining the challenge/process and they were basically DOA. Again, here internal tools are just like external products: Without a tightly defined challenge/opportunity it's really hard to deliver a useful product.
- pbreit 12y agoYep, that's the part that I like: getting more people in the org to think about what is entailed in delivering product to end users.