How do new ideas occur to us? What is the secret mixture that enables this spark that creates something new? I have long wondered this, including when watching my son build things that I found interesting, and with no clear sign of what of the source of that idea that became reality. I saw him […]
For those familiar with the lean approach to the work or the Toyota Way, you my already know about the concept of Muda. Muda is one of the three categories associated with lean that impact performance and costs to the organization. Muda is regarded to have seven waste types or areas or actions that cause waste. Over […]
I recently saw a post on Twitter from the Great John Cutler on allow the team to pick the tools that they use to do the work. Generally, this is not a bad idea, but not necessarily a great idea either. It sort of depends. My experience in companies that also have hardware […]
Kanban and Visual Management Kanban is a lean method for identifying and managing the work and the flow, and it does so by creating a pull through environment. We will start by identifying the work we need to do. Each work item we need to do will end up on an individual card. The cards […]
In preparation for our trip to Eindhoven University of Technology to lecture on Configuration Management, we provide a brief excerpt on the evolution of the horseless cariage. Traditionally new market segments open due to the need to solve a problem. Such problems may be real as in the case of the environmental crisis solved by […]
Career; of Motorcycles and Trucks This blog continues from my last post describing the first part of my career. We continue with the tire pressure monitoring system. In those days, and for many years before that, my preferred form of transport was motorcycle. I had an accident a few years before taking this job that […]
My Career I have been very fortunate in my career, and that really means very lucky. Upon graduating from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, I had two job offers after sending my resume to more than 100 companies. That is not a very good yield, but it would be good enough. I selected […]
Value, Scope and Change Requests Change requests are part of any development project. Change requests are sometimes necessary as we learn by building and doing the work. In my experience, change requests often are born from requirements we thought we understood, only to learn by working with the product or system that we really did […]
Value Business is predicated on providing value to the customer, but it does not end there. The business itself needs to see value in the work, so this is really a value chain that is only as strong as the weakest link. If the value to the customer is too low or not existing, no […]
Queuing Theory Queuing theory is the study of waiting lines and is associated with business in determining resources needed to achieve service business throughput objectives, but it does not just apply to services and material handling. Queuing Theory and Billable Hours I have worked at companies that had a target for billable hours, that well […]