launchpad-dev team mailing list archive

[Martin Pool <mbp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

2009/10/7 Maris Fogels <maris.fogels@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
> When will we check back on the process to see how well it is meeting it's
> stated goals, and improve it?
>
> There is a great method from Lean and Project Management called
> Plan-Do-Check-Act, or PDCA for short.  The mail lays out 'P' and 'D' very
> well, it just needs 'C' ('A' comes later).

This question pattern seems to come up a lot at Canonical recently,
and personally I find it quite strange.  Why do you need a 'when'?

People here have a lot of interest in improving or deleting things
that are not working well.  It is not always possible to fix things
immediately, but I do think we do reasonably well at detecting things
that ought to be fixed, without needing a specific reminder to assess
them.  For instance, jml proposed this change (I presume) not because
we'd got to an assessment gate for the previous CHR process, but
rather because he noticed it was suboptimal.

Perhaps the correct answer is "always": we will always and
continuously check if we are meeting our goals and always improve our
process.  Setting a date to do something that could be done when it
becomes necessary is anti-lean.

-- 
Martin <http://launchpad.net/~mbp/>