Blog posts on best practices

Posts selected fromManagement Blog - Engineering Blog - Investing Blog and other blogs

• Design the Management System with an Appreciation of Confirmation Bias

  To create strong organizations we must create management systems using an appreciation of psychology. We must understand that people have tendencies that must be addressed by designing a management system built to take advantage of the strengths those people bring and mitigate the risks of the weaknesses (such as confirmation bias) that those people also bring.

  One way to do this is to seek out voices in your organization that question and challenge accepted positions...

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• Outcome and In-Process Measures

  An outcome measure is used to measure the success of a system. For example, the outcome measure could be the percentage of people who do not get polio (the result). An output measure, for example, would be the number of people vaccinated with the polio vaccine (the output). Often we measure inputs (amount of money spent) or outputs (number of people vaccinated). They are usually easy to measure but obviously less valuable proxies for what the objective of the system (reducing the incidence of polio).

  ...

  In-process measures can be valuable in providing actionable information sooner than the outcome measure would allow action...

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• Deming Companies

  I see Toyota as the best example of a Deming company. Dr. Deming did not propose a cookbook to follow. Instead he proposed a theory that requires learning and application within the specific institution. Toyota has created a management system that is based on Dr. Deming’s ideas and then they have evolved that over 60 years into something that is consistent with Deming’s management philosophy and has new ideas Deming did not mention. As odd as it may sound that very act of developing new concepts that were not mentioned by Dr. Deming is exactly what makes them the company that most exemplifies Deming’s management system.

  Other companies that have also done a great job applying his ideas. Peaker Services has done great things...

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• How Downsizing is Handled When Management Respects People

  Developer #1 is the guy you want to lead your development team. He will take a project and run with it, and it will come out better than you had hoped. He’ll find the fatal flaws in your specifications, either propose a change or work around them as appropriate, and do it in an extensible way that will save you time in the future. He really is the cream of the crop....

  Developer #2 is the guy you need if you already have a lead developer and he needs a code monkey who can get code out that works the first time...

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• Keeping Good Employees

  ...What can we do to keep you? What do you enjoy about your job? What do you dislike? What can I do to increase your joy in work? What one thing would you most like to see changed? What do you want to see continue? Would you like help in some aspect of your career development? What can I do better? Am I providing too much oversight, not enough?

  Give honest straight forward answers to questions. If someone wants to move ahead and needs to work harder to advance their career tell them that. If they need to be more cooperative, develop certain skills… tell them. The idea is not just to make the person happy in that meeting...

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• Cease Mass Inspection for Quality

  Deming’s point 3 is "Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. Eliminate the need for inspection on a mass basis by building quality into the product in the first place.

  Deming believed in improving the process, and doing so using process measures (which often may involve sampling) to guide improvement efforts. He did not believe in using inspection to select out the bad products, which is what inspection largely was before Deming...

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• Don’t Do What Your Users Say

  You must focus on customers but you must bring thought into how you react. Just doing what they say is likely a bad idea. Ignoring them is also bad. But listening and learning and then adjusting is good.

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• Improving Software Development with Automated Tests

  ... Thus automated testing mistake proofs the process. Now the mistake proofing is only as good as the test that are added. Software development is complex and if the code has an error (based on the business rules) that is not tested then the code can be deployed to production and affect customers. Automated software testing tools are a huge help in preventing many errors from affecting customers.

  It seems pretty obvious but until the widespread adoption of agile software development techniques and frameworks that make it easy to adopt automated testing (like Ruby on Rails) this sensible process improvement tool was used far less often than you would think.

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• Open Source Management Terms

  I like those encouraging the adoption of statistical tools to improve management but I find the practice of trademarking terms like Six Sigma and MVT a bad way to encourage innovation in the practice of management. While it is nice to see Six Sigma efforts and others use statistical tools (such as design of experiments) I would encourage people to stay with “open source” management terms and remain part of a community looking to improve the practice of management.

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• Managing Our Way to Economic Success

  there are two enormously valuable untapped resources in many companies: potential information and employee creativity. The two are connected. One of the best ways to generate potential information to turn it into kinetic information that can produce tangible results is to train all employees in some of the simple, effective ways to do this.

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• Better Meetings for Your Organization

  If meetings in your organization are frustrating and not effective then taking steps to improve the situation is likely wise. There are principles I believe will help:   

  • Have a written objective Document decisions and actions to be taken
  • Prepare people in advance (and don’t expect people to come if there isn’t a good reason for them to be there)
  • Talk to those involved in the meetings to learn what is working well, what needs to be improved...

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