“Work-in-Process” is a fancy name for jobs which are started but not finished. You may have a collection of half-finished projects on your desk, or in your garage, or your sewing area. These are all …
Seven Wastes of Software Development – or Not
The seven wastes of Lean were originally used by Taiichi Ohno to categorize common sources of waste in a manufacturing process. A manufacturing process involves regular, fairly predictable chunks …
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Cadence – Why Rhythm is Good for You
One of the fundamental tools in Agile and Lean is cadence. A cadence is a regular, predictable rhythm within a process. For instance, your staff meeting is held every Monday at 10am, or your website …
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What is the Improvement Kata?
The Improvement Kata is a pattern for making improvements. It's based on practices used at Toyota, where they apply the scientific method via a deliberate practice pattern or (in Japanese) …
Best Practices – Not!
There are lots of good practices for software development and testing, and I recommend practices all the time. However, I'm very reluctant to call anything a "best practice" (except perhaps "Do unto …
Reviewing papers for PNSQC
I've reviewed papers for the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference for many years. I enjoy working with authors to help them develop a clear and coherent paper which advances knowledge in …