Have you noticed that in most cities, every time there are lots of umbrellas, it’s raining?
From this analysis, the obvious way to make it rain is to be sure that everyone has an umbrella, preferably a black one, since that seems to be the kind that’s most visible during big storms.
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Continue Reading "Confused about causation and correlation (from Seth Godin’s blog)"
My wife ordered a set of monogrammed bath robes for our daughter and son-in-law from RedEnvelope. When they arrived, she checked them (unnecessaryinspection)…no monograms.
So she called (rework) and they told her to keep the two unmonogrammed ones (waste) and they would send two monogrammed ones.
A couple of days later, we did get two monogrammed bath robes (rework). The next day we got two more and the day after that we got two more (waste and rework). When we called (rework), they said, don’t return them because they’ve been monogrammed already.
So now, we have eight robes for the price of two.
Last weekend, a United Airlines computer glitch delayed and cancelled flights. Even the redundant backup system didn’t work properly.
In a world increasingly dependent on computers and software, IT has been steadfastly resistant to the methods of Six Sigma. While Agile (Lean) programming methods have accelerated software development, mistakes, errors, hitches and glitches continue to plague worldwide productivity. Hardly a day goes by that my PC doesn’t try to install an “upgrade” to some piece of software: Windows, Java, etc.
Sadly, most software escapes rather than releases. Maybe it’s time to start using Six Sigma to optimize delivered software.
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