If you want to be great, you need to learn about all the possible relevant ideas that have worked for others. You need to create new ideas, blend, adapt and prioritize them, and constantly test the best ideas to see which ones work for you. Only then can you fully implement — while continuously adjusting — the ideas that really work. — Apple’s People Have Dented the Universe — Can You? | OpenView Blog Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Continuous Improvement
5 Questions for Improvement
What is your target condition here? What is the actual condition now? What obstacles are now preventing you from reaching the target condition? Which one are you addressing now? What is your next step? (start of the next PDCA cycle) When can we go and see what we have learned from taking that step? — Mike Rother, Toyota Kata: Managing People for Improvement, Adaptiveness and Superior Results Read more →
Start by Visualizing Perfection
One can come at improvement from two angles: How can we make things suck less? or What is the ideal state that we should shoot for? I’m for the second option. It is the classic Lean approach to improvement, BTW: Start by visualizing perfection. — Mary Poppendieck Read more →
The Value is in the Struggle
I think it is very definitely worth the struggle to try and do first-class work because the truth is, the value is in the struggle more than it is in the result. The struggle to make something of yourself seems to be worthwhile in itself. — Richard Hamming Read more →
Why Don’t You Go Ahead and Do Something?
We place the highest value on actual implementation and taking action. There are many things one doesn’t understand and therefore, we ask them why don’t you just go ahead and take action; try to do something? You realize how little you know and you face your own failures and you simply can correct those failures and redo it again and at the second trial you realize another mistake or another thing you didn’t like so you can redo it once again. So by constant improvement, or, should I say, the improvement based upon action, one can rise to the higher level of practice and knowledge. — Fujio Cho, President, Toyota Motor Corporation, 2002 Read more →
Scrum Doesn’t Do Anything
In the end it doesn’t matter what names you use for your processes, good people will do good work and continuously improve what they do. So much of the discussion around Lean versus Scrum (etc.) is about marketing hype, selling consulting and training services, and cornering the market with new name-brands. . . . Scrum is not a methodology, it is not a process. It is a simple framework underpinned by some common sense principles. Scrum offers individuals and organizations the opportunity to continuously improve the way they work. It provides a space for people to behave like human beings, with trust, respect and passion. That’s about it. But that is huge. — Tobias Mayer Read more →