Ative at Work

Hi Fernando Thanks for the excellent input. It is very good advice and very actionable. Thanks a lot for sharing. Martin

You are absolutely right that it is often difficult to identify the waste. If it were, I am sure it would have been already removed. The root cause is frequently that the causal dependencies between the things we do and the downstream outcomes are not always clear. Sometimes the scientific method is the great arbiter. You can make an experiment ...

The secret to writing good automated tests is to be a good software designer. It sounds trivial - but the sad fact is that more often than not the attempt to implement test automation falls due to poor software design where people are struggling with strong dependencies where you cannot test a single class or module without also configuring a ...

How would you like to be able to SMS or tweet your Excel data-crunching code? With Docjure, it is possible: (->> (load-workbook "spreadsheet.xlsx") (select-sheet "Price List") (select-columns {:A :name, :B :price})) This reads the A and B columns from the Price List sheet in the spreadsheet.xlsx file ...

I was talking to a group of project managers today in one of our inspiration meetings. One of the inspiring questions that came up was related to why we should use Scrum or agile methods. One short answer is this: if we routinely plan to spend 1/3 of our project on testing and fixing defects there is a big benefit even if Scrum only helps reduce ...

How would you rebuild a country after a world war? How would you reboot your management? This was the topic for my presentation at the Reboot conference. It concerned Deming's 14 principles for management, the humanistic, long-term thinking, keep learning, use the scientific method, and build from quality philosophy, that helped shape ...

Here is another great lean reading list on InfoQ: www.infoq.com/.../lean-books

Deming's work is the foundation of the Toyota Production System and modern-day lean. I recently conducted a workshop his 14 points for management. One exercise was to group them to get to their essence. Here is the the result: “Practise engaged leadership” - hands-on and collaborative (points 7 and 2 – institute leadership and lead the ...

The recipient's of this year's Shingo Prize have been announced. The Research and Professional Publication Prize category is a great reading list for new lean books:Steven Spear - Chasing the Rabbit. A book on how to catch up with your lean competiors. HBR review here. Mark Graban - Lean Hospitals. The book by the productive author of ...

I don't currently have the time to translate the text into English myself, but I would be happy to publish a translation if anybody is up for it. Thanks :-)