Quality through continual refinement

In improving Quality, continual improvement through the practice of incremental refinement is a powerful approach.

For example, as I drive home I have a route that works quite well. It is the most direct path between two points or the fastest path between two points. As I go along I start to notice things. Hey, people are turning off here, I wonder why or hey, Google disagrees with me and thinks it knows it better route. (Google maps that is, Google doesn’t talk to me yet…) Or hey, I wonder where that road goes it comes out at an intersection and looks busier than the road I took previously. Through experience we don’t become experts at driving down new roads but we become experts driving down the roads that we know. So with each opportunity to observe a contrary point of view each opportunity to experience the effect of plans. We are in a position to improve and to do better.

I believe in continual refinement. Let’s draft a document, present it to some other knowledgeable people and have them critique it. Then lets present it to our customers and have them shoot it full of holes. After each critique and review, we see problems and we fix them, so it becomes better and better and better until we have a really good document. The alternative is to try and get things perfect before we benefit from the insight and correction we might be offered. Producing PERFECT work is the realm of those who fear that the customer will discover they are not perfect.  In producing PERFECT work (which is really just unreviewed work) Those doing the writing will tend to overthink second guess and overcorrect the work in the hopes that it will not fail, this extra “dilligence” will result in an increased cost that may or may not pay off in acceptance by the customer.

So, let’s put it out so the customers can test it.  Every time the work encounters a problem, we hear about it and we’re able to improve our documentation. Things that we anticipated would be a problem, are not.  However those that we never would have anticipated become problems. We let our customers help us achieve quality through continual and repeated refinement.

In the case of a business process that is being refined, where incremental change is possible (and it isn’t always) staff experience less disruption, maintain more productivity and generally experience less stress caused by change.

Some customers I worked with had been drafting some webpages which would represent their department and department’s initiatives.  They had these pages in draft form for 3 years, during which time, none of their customers could read the information they had been thoughtfully compiling.  The information by that point, ironically was out of date and would require updating.  Their desire to get the information absolutely perfect had effectively removed the entire benefit of compiling the information in the first place.

Often in the IT environment where I work, we wrestle with the need for information that should be documeted, but which has not been. Even if we had partial information, outdated information, or incorrect information that would be preferable to NO INFORMATION.  At least partial information gives you a place to start. A contact, a server name, a vendor’s 1800 number.  So I am through my experience a fan of work that is created imperfect, and then refined as opportunity presents itself. 

Well, this document has been sitting in draft for a while, so I’m going to kick it out there.  Maybe though it it incomplete, it will be of some benefit.  Let me know what you think, and I’ll improve it as we go.