Juran on Quality by Design (Chapter 2)

Reading Chapter Two of Juran on Quality by Design (paid link)

Chapter 2 "Establish Quality Goals"

NOTES

A goal is an "aimed-at" target. A quality goal is a quality target you are aiming for. The goal would typically include "a number" and a "time table"

Some consider that setting quality goals is part of quality planning, whereas others have the view that quality goals are set outside of quality planning -- the purpose of planning in this case is establishing how to achieve the quality goals.

A vision has no connection to reality until it is translated into quality goals.  Planning is impossible until goals are established.

Tactical quality goals refer to goals designed to meet human (customer) needs. These include product features, process control features, etc.  They are set by middle management in order to meet the strategic goals.

Strategic quality goals are set at the highest level of the organisation. They are often driven by the company's strategic vision and policies. Examples of strategic goals are: "Improve product and service quality ten times (Motorola)", and "Reduce billing errors by 90% (Florida Power and Light Company)". 

Upper management should not become involved with individual tactical quality goals as there are too many, but they need to be involved with them at the 'collective' level.

Quality goals do not only come from customer needs. They can be driven by a company's concept which may need to be marketed to customers (an example is Walkman, which no customer 'needed' or asked for). Goals can originate from regulations, or from internal human desires to be meticulous.

Some of the most important bases of quality goals:

• Technology - in the form of specifications and procedures
• Market - quality goals that affect saleability should be based on the market
• Benchmarking - quality goal made with reference to what other companies are achieving
• Historical - performance in the past is used as the basis for performance in the future. Sometimes the goal is to improve on past performance. Sometimes the goal is ensure stability with past performance.  This basis can be a double-edged sword.

Quality goals are a hierarchy. Primary goals are at the top. These include 'personal health' or, for a car, 'effective transportation'.  Secondary goals are essential in achieving the primary goal, tertiary goals help achieve the secondary goals, and so on until each sub-goal is achievable in technological terms.

Planning is an essential part of achieving generating and achieving quality goals. Planning helps identify what sub-goals are needed (by asking: how can we achieve the primary goals?) and how each sub-goal can be achieved.

Deployment of Quality Goals

'Deployment' means allocating the goal to someone who will deliver the goal.

Strategic goals are subdivided in smaller and smaller sub-goals which are then allocated to someone (eg a middle manager). In Japan, that someone determines what resources they need to accomplish the sub-goal. This arrangement enable participative two-way planning.

Strategic goals are too big and systemic to assign to one person. However, it is imperative that every goal be 'deployed' (ie, allocated). One solution is 'teams'. A team is formed and assigned to deliver the goal. The example mentioned in Chapter 2 is 'Team Taurus', tasked to deliver the strategic goal of making Taurus quality best in class.

Provision of Resources

Goals need resources to achieve them. A key blocker to achieving strategic quality goals is the non-provision of resources to achieve them. The practice of developing strategic quality goals seeks to reuse the existing practices in business. Businesses have processes to allocate resources to define, administer, and delivery business goals.  Strategic quality should be approached the same way.

Corporate Interference

Expect resistance from various areas of an organisation when developing strategic goals. The key cause of resistance is the reduction in autonomy of the various divisions and functions. Strategic goals are directions from above, plans to achieve them by the divisions are approved from above, and people from above will be monitoring the division's achievement of those goals.  All three aspects are reductions in the autonomy of the division, and can cause friction, even in the most harmonious relationships.

Idenitfying the Customer

It's curious that Juran says the "next step" after establishing the quality goals, is identifying the customers.  It seems counterintuitive. Wouldn't you need to know your customers first before meaningful quality goals can be established?

Make Up Your Mind (Chapter 2)

I have quite a number of books in my library, virtually all of them non-fiction. I'm starting to think there's not enough time to read them all. Skimming each one doesn't really help me absorb them, so I thought it might be interesting to explore the books by reading Chapter 2 of each.

Today's book is Make Up Your Mind, by Hal Mooz. The author is well-known in the Systems Engineering community as co-author of Visualizing Project Management, and Communicating Project Management.

Chapter 2 of this book is "Decision Fundamentals for Thinking Clearly". It's a short chapter and touches very briefly several topics relevant to thinking clearly.

We get a reminder that decision rigor is 'driven by the fear of a negative outcome'. This is something we all instinctly already know. We become more anxious when the decision has serious consequences (eg, which univerisity to go to), and are rightly less rigorous when the consequences are not serious (eg, what to have for lunch).

An interesting paragraph is on when do we actually 'make' a decision? Does deciding one way or another constitute making the decision or is further action required?  Some decision experts say you make the decision when you irrevocably allocate resources. (I had not heard of this before.  I think it's a good criteria). The author argues against it because it fails in some cases. His example is the decision to lose weight and deciding to eat less. Contrary to this criteria, the decider has actually decided NOT to allocate resources (food).

The author defines a good decision as 'applying informed judgment based on relevant facts and quality ethics to select an alternative and act on it'.

A short paragraph reminds us that the outcome does not define whether a decision is good or not. This is pretty much an obligatory topic in any decision making text.  Another paragraph covers another obligatory topic -- the fallacy of sunk costs.

Mooz introduces a concept new to me: 'Cost / Price of Indifference'. It is the purchase price at which you don't care (emotionally) whether you get the goods or not. He suggests this is a time saving concept when purchasing or selling anything. Rather than agonising hours and hours over how much to bid, just bid at this price.  He did not discuss this in the context of buying stock market shares. I think that will be interesting to consider. 

There are two stages to decision-making. The first is Decision Preparation. This is about getting the decision statement right, setting up the decision type frame, and the decision solution frame correct.  The second stage Deciding, which is about the act of selecting from the alternatives that were set up in the decision solution frame.  (The author didn't mention this, but I recognise this 2-stage framework as  classically systems engineering).

Other short topics covered is the decision maker's viewpoint, decision fitness, and decision fatigue. Decision Fitness is another concept I had not heard of before. This is a concept about the fitness of the person making the decision. They must be proficient at the following skills:

• Specifying the decision and context
• Determining the decision type
• Creating the decision type frame
• Developing the decision solution frame
• Creating viable alternatives
• Identifying and geting the comparative information
• Knowledgeably selecting the right judgment basis
• Skillfully applying the appropriate judgement process

A quick glance at the table of contents reveals many of these topics are covered in the rest of the book. 

This is a short book. At only 166 pages and with larger than normal font, it is misleadingly light-looking. Judging from the concepts introduced in the Chapter 2, it seems like a concept-heavy, deeply useful text.  Just considering the list of skills listed in order to be 'decision fit' shows you how much is required to be a good decision maker.  I'm not sure this thin book will be able to cover what is required to be decision fit, but if it gives exposure and awareness of the concepts, it will be worth further study. 

Book Review: Breaking the Code of Project Management

Breaking the Code of Project Management
Alexander Laufer

The genesis of this book come from Laufer’s observation that traditional project management principles need overhauling.  He argues that the growing realisation of the power of empowerment, the poor historical record of project management, the flawed foundation of a major project management tool (PERT), and ‘emerging paradigms’ in research and practice require a new investigation into what is needed to ensure project success.

Laufer is big on using stories as a means of learning and presents his reasons why.  The book brims with stories.

It gave me some discomfort when Laufer referred to the ‘Agile method’ as a ‘project management approach’, given its limited focus on product development (primarily software products).  He also makes the mistake of referring to the ‘four values’ (a pet peeve of mine).

No project management tools appear in this book.  You won’t find discussions of the WBS, PBS, Gantt Charts.  The focus is on what it takes to deliver projects successfully.

Laufer concentrates on what he calls ‘Results-Focused Leadership’, a framework of guiding principles, colour-coded for vividness: yellow for the spirit of will to win, green for planning, brown for implementation, red for people and organisations, and grey for communications.

Recommendation: A practical book on how to deliver projects, yet very different from the standard project management books which cover the tools and principles of project management.  It almost ignores traditional project management.

Book Review: The Power of Doing Less: Why Time Management Courses Don't Work And How To Spend Your Precious Life On The Things That Really Matter

Fergus O’Connell claims that the real reason why time management courses fail is because ironically, they try to teach time management.  This is the wrong approach, says the author. What they should be teaching instead is that people should aim to do less work. This is the aim of this book.

A major portion of the book is about convincing the reader that the right strategy is to reduce the work you need to do: decide which ones you need to do and which ones you don’t need to do.
 
The rest of the book provides quick and easy techniques to drop unnecessary work, and prevent new work from coming to you, or back to you.

Apart from the main point about reducing what you need to do, this is a basic work on regaining more time for yourself.

Mini Book Reviews

Reframing Organizations: Artistry, Choice, and Leadership 4th Ed.   Lee G. Bolman and Terrence E, Deal.

Recommends viewing organisations through 4 frames or lenses: factory, family, jungle, and temple, to get a better understanding of how an organisation works and avoid being clueless about problems in the organisation.  ‘Reframing’ is about dismantling existing frames of mind about the organisation and rebuilding into a new frame.

Scenario-Driven Planning: Learning to Manage Strategic Uncertainty. Nicholas C. Georgantzas and William Acar. (1995).

Scenario-planning is a management tool against ‘dogmatism’ and ‘fads’. It enable articulation and validation of mental models about the future. The book is full of practical and diverse examples, plus a plethora of references to relevant literature.

Book Review of ‘Fundamentals of Project Performance Measurement’

This short book (119 pages) covers the basics of measuring project progress via earned value management.

The author (Robert R. Kemps) argues that you cannot measure project progress simply by monitoring cost expenditures versus budgeted expenditures. If your actual expenses by a certain date is less than the budgeted expenses by that date, that information doesn’t really tell you anything – are spending less than expected or are you simply running behind schedule? Adding the work completed to the measure gives you better understanding: you can now tell why your project is spending less than expected. It could be because, some of the work that was expected to being had not yet begun.

Kemps also underlines the importance of technical performance as the third measure to factor in. Just because work is reported as being complete does not mean it is complete.  Unfortunately there is not much information in the book as to how to measure technical performance besides ensuring that it is tracked.

A baseline is important, the author asserts, because without it, the integrity of the project progress measures (and by extension, project management), is at risk, because readjustments to cost and schedule and technical performance leaves no trace behind.

It lists neither references nor a bibliography.

Recommendation: A basic book on earned value measurement, useful as an introductory reference for both the motivation behind earned value and how to do it.

Book Review ‘Capability Cases’

Capability Cases: A Solution Envisioning Approach
Irene Polikoff, Robeert Coyne, Ralph Hodgson

Introduces the concept of ‘Capability Cases’ – a concept made up one or more functions that collectively provide a business value.

 

 

 

Titles referenced in the book:

Title	Author	Remarks and link to Amazon
Towards an Architecture Handbook	Bruce Anderson
The Timeless Way of Building	Christopher Alexander
Real Options:Managing Strategic Investment in an Uncertain World	Martha Amram and Nalin Kalatilaka
Creativity – The Magic Synthesis	Silvano Arieti
Information Systems Development	D. E. Avison and G. Fitzgerald
Learnings and Inquiry Based Reuse Adoption	S. Bailing, M. Simos, L. Levine, and R. Creps
Web Services and Service-Oriented Architectures	Douglas K Barry
Extreme Programming Explained	Kent Beck
Designing Hard Software – The Essential Tasks	Dougla Bennett
Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis: An Integrated Approach	Val Belton and Theodoer J. Stewart
Software Configuration Management Patterns: Effective Teamwork, Practical Integration	Stephen Berczuk, Brad Appleton
The Creative Mind: Myths and Mechanisms	Margaret A. Boden
The Mythical Man-Month and Other Essays on Software Engineering	Frederick P. Bookrs
The Social Life of Information	John Seely Brown and Paul Duguild
Web Services, E-Business, and the Semantics Web	C. Bussler, R. Hull, S.A. McIlraith, M.E.Orlowska, B. Pernici, and J. Yang
The Mind Map Book	Tony Buzan
Scenario-Based Design	J.M. Carroll
Enterprise Service Bus	David A. Chappell
To be continued…

Lean Bibliography

Deming, W. Edwards. Out of the Crisis. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2000.

Among the greatest causes of wastes are variation, poor utilisation of human potential, and managing the organisation without an appreciation of it as a system. Deming’s ideas is widely acknowledged as a major contributor to Japan’s transition to a producer of quality products. (Link to Amazon).

Fujimoto, Takahiro. The Evolution of a Manufacturing System at Toyota. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

The word ‘Lean’ is a Western conception, but the idea originated from observing how Toyota’s production system operated. (Link to Amazon).

Goldratt, Eliyahu M., and Jeff Cox. The Goal. Abridged; 3rd Rev. Ed., 20th Anniversary ed. Minneapolis, MN: HighBridge, 2006.

Lean is about removing flow bottlenecks to help smooth the flow of value. There’s no better introduction to the phenomenon of bottlenecks than this novel by the late Goldratt. (Link to Amazon).

Liker, Jeffrey K. The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from the World's Greatest Manufacturer. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2004.

Definitive description of Toyota’s principles by a Western author. (Link to Amazon).

Liker, Jeffrey K., and Gary L. Convis. The Toyota Way to Lean Leadership: Achieving and Sustaining Excellence through Leadership Development. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011.

(Link to Amazon).

Modig, Niklas, and Pa M. This Is Lean: Resolving the Efficiency Paradox. Stockholm: Rheologica, 2012.

Short and engaging introduction to Lean. The opening example of a 500% more efficient health care is memorable. Focused on the tensions between resource availability, resource utilisation, and flow throughput, and how they can be addressed. (Link to Amazon).

Ohno, Taiichi. Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-scale Production. Cambridge, Mass.: Productivity Press, 1988.

(Link to Amazon).

Seddon, John. Freedom from Command & Control: Rethinking Management for Lean Service. New York: Productivity Press, 2005.

Recommended by the authors of “This is Lean”. (Link to Amazon).

Taylor, F. (1911). The principles of scientific management. Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications.

Though not directly about Lean, Taylor’s work began the science of scientific management – how to maximise work efficiency by maximising utilisation of resources. Depending on how you interpret maximising resource utilisation, you either end up as lean or as a heavy organisation. (Link to Amazon).

Womack, James P., and Daniel T. Jones. Lean Solutions: How Companies and Customers Can Create Value and Wealth Together. New York, NY: Free Press, 2005.

Lean production is focused on producing goods with a minimum of waste. But what happens after you’ve produced the products?  There is a lot of waste delivering the product’s value to the customer. This book addresses that question. (Link to Amazon).

Womack, James P., and Daniel T. Jones. Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation. New York: Free Press, 2003.

Popular introduction to the concepts of Lean production. (Link to Amazon).

Womack, J., & Jones, D. (2007). The machine that changed the world: The story of lean production--Toyota's secret weapon in the global car wars that is revolutionizing world industry. New York: Free Press.

The book that introduced the Toyota Production System to the popular business literature. (Link to Amazon).

Woollard, F., & Emiliani, B. (2009). Principles of mass and flow production: Including some notes on British methods of continuous production 1925.

Recommended by the authors of “This is Lean”. (Link to Amazon).

Book Review of 'All You Gotta Do Is Ask' by Norman Bodek and Chuck Yorke

This is the kind of book that I would normally pick up at a bookstore shelf, flip through, and then return back to the shelf. It covers a topic that feels pretty shallow for a whole book.

The whole book, essentially, is about the benefits of putting up suggestion system within your organisation, and some tips and traps when you do so. The topic of an organisation putting up and maintaining such a suggestion system, to let it benefit from employees' ideas, and to boost their morale, sounds like something that can be covered by a web article or at most, a chapter in a book on continuous improvement.  A whole book on the topic feels like overkill, and I imagined it would contain a lot of fluff to pad it out.

But I noticed something in the blurb that attracted my attention.  The book’s author was Norman Bodek, the ‘founder of Productivity Press.’  As it happens, there are currently two publishers I automatically associate with material worth reading. 

One of them is 'Productivity Press', a publisher of books related to quality control and continuous improvement. They are especially known for introducing Japanese classics on these topics into the Western mainstream.  Although a fan of this publisher for many years, I did not know of Norman Bodek.  (The other publisher is The Free Press).

‘All You Gotta Do Is Ask’ is a simple book.  All it does is provide the motivation to implement a suggestion system, and provide proven tips and principles to make sure it is a success.

The book compares the average American company and a Japanese company which encourages its employees to send in suggestions.  The Japanese company receives anywhere from 50 to a couple of hundred ideas per year per employee. Of course, the latter receives the benefits, often in the range of millions of dollars in savings per year.  Almost literally, a goldmine for that Japanese company.

The book covers a whole range of topics about suggestion systems, including the psychological obstacles such as supervisors feeling threatened by inferiors suddenly realising they too possess a brain, or managers co-opting ideas and presenting them as their own, or employees being unsure what to suggest and therefore end up anxious.

In the appendix, you’ll find examples of actual improvement suggestions.  I was surprised by how mundane some can be. Here’s an example:

Before Improvement: It was hard to get a good grip on the shrink-wrap when trying to pull it off the spindle. 

After Improvement: Used a rag to hold on to the shrink-wrap to (tear) it off the spindle.

Simple as it is, it’s nevertheless an improvement. 

A key message the book continually injects is respect for the employees.  Managers must work hard to protect employees and their sense of self-respect. Ideas must be treated with respect.  This is particularly important because not all ideas will be good, and not all will be implemented.  It is important to balance reality. These are important, yet sensitive points, and the book provides recommendations on how to handle them.

There were some other useful insights.  Bodek and Yorke (the co-author) point out that the best suggestions for improvement are those that involve the suggester's work and how they can improve their own work.  It is quite easy to submit suggestions telling how others can improve how they work.  Such suggestions are useful, but because they impose on others, they are often resented, resisted, and not easy to implement.

The one thing I felt missing, which I think very important, is that the focus of the book was on employees coming up with ideas and solutions on how they can improve their own work. For professionals with a relatively large berth in terms of how they do their job, it feels weird to think about how to improve one's work and then put it up for suggestion. Most just execute their ideas for improvement without seeking (or being required to seek) approval. 

Overall, this is a short, easy-to-read book with good ideas about putting up and maintaining a suggestion system.  It cannot be the last word on the subject, but some of the ideas it presents are essential to a successful system.

Recommended.

Investing Bibliography

Value Investing

Calandro, Joseph. Applied Value Investing: The Practical Applications of Benjamin Graham's and Warren Buffett's Valuation Principles to Acquisitions, Catastrophe Pricing, and Business Execution. 2009.

Graham, Benjamin, and David L. Dodd. Security Analysis. 1996.

Graham, Benjamin, and Jason Zweig. The Intelligent Investor. 2003.

Klarman, Seth A. Margin of Safety: Risk-averse Value Investing Strategies for the Thoughtful Investor. 1991.

Risk Management Bibliography / Library

Some key works on various risk management topics either in my library or I have read.  I plan to update this list every now and then.

Risk, Risk Management, and Uncertainty in General

Aven, T. Misconceptions of Risk. Chichester, West Sussex, U.K.: Wiley, 2010.

Bernstein, Peter L. Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1996.

Kammen, Daniel M., and David M. Hassenzahl. Should We Risk It?: Exploring Environmental, Health, and Technological Problem Solving. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1999

Moore, P. G. The Business of Risk. Cambridge [Cambridgeshire: Cambridge UP, 1983.

Morgan, M. Granger. Risk Communication: A Mental Models Approach. 2002

Rowe, William D. An Anatomy of Risk. New York: Wiley, 1977.

Wilson, Richard, and Edmund A. C. Crouch. Risk-benefit Analysis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, 2001.

Yoe, Charles E. Primer on Risk Analysis: Decision Making under Uncertainty. Boca Raton, FL: CRC/Taylor & Francis, 2012. Print.

Business / Enterprise Risk Management

Culp, Christopher L. The Risk Management Process: Business Strategy and Tactics. New York: J. Wiley, 2001.

Fraser, John, and Betty J. Simkins. Enterprise Risk Management: Today's Leading Research and Best Practices for Tomorrow's Executives. Hoboken, NJ: J. Wiley & Sons, 2010.

Hampton, John J. Fundamentals of Enterprise Risk Management: How Top Companies Assess Risk, Manage Exposures, and Seize Opportunities. New York: American Management Association, 2009.

Monahan, Gregory. Enterprise Risk Management: A Methodology for Achieving Strategic Objectives. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2008.

Young, Peter C., and Steven C. Tippins. Managing Business Risk: An Organization-wide Approach to Risk Management.  2001.

Project / Program Risk Management

Chicken, John C. Managing Risks and Decisions in Major Projects. 1994.

Conrow, E. H. Effective Risk Management: Some Keys to Success. Reston, 2nd Ed. 2003.

Dorofee, Audrey J. Continuous Risk Management Guidebook.  1996

Operations / Operational Risk Management

van Grinsven, Improving Operational Risk Management. Amsterdam: IOS, 2009.

Banking and Financial Risk Management

Bessis, Joël. Risk Management in Banking. New York: Wiley, 2002.

Greuning, Hennie Van., and Sonja Brajovic. Bratanovic. Analyzing and Managing Banking Risk. Washington D.C.: World Bank, 2009.

van Grinsven, Risk Management in Financial Institutions: Formulating Value Propositions. Amsterdam: Delft UP/IOS, 2010.

Safety and Risk Management

Duffey, R. B., and John Walton Saull. Know the Risk: Learning from Errors and Accidents : Safety and Risk in Today's Technology. Amsterdam: Butterworth-Heinemann, 2003.

Systems Engineering–Coping with Complexity

A readable introduction to Systems Engineering. 

 

Listed below are some of the books referenced by the above work.  This list is not necessarily complete (Sometimes, I list only those that interest me).  When there is a newer edition of a book than the one originally referenced, the link is to the newer version.  Items marked with a , are works I can recommend.

Title	Author	Remarks
Winning at New Products	Robert G Cooper	Amazon
Metrics and Case Studies for Evaluating Engineering Designs	William L. Chapman, F. David Van Voorhees, A. Terry Bahill, Jay Alan Moody	Amazon
The Anatomy of Major Projects	Peter Morris	Amazon
Systems Thinking, Systems Practice	Peter Checkland	Amazon
Turn Signals are the Facial Expressions of Automobiles	Donald Norman	Amazon
21sr Century Jet – The Making of the Boeing 777	Karl Sabbagh	Amazon
The Sources of Innovation	Eric Von Hippel	Amazon
Object-Oriented Software Engineering: A Use Case Driven Approach	Ivar Jacobson	Amazon
Principles of Software Engineering Management	Tom Gilb	Amazon
UML Distilled: Applying the Standard Object Modeling Language	Martin Fowler, Kendall Scott	Amazon
Real Time Structured Methods	Keith Edwards	Amazon
Object-Oriented Modeling and Design	James Rumbaugh	Amazon
Notes on the Synthesis of Form	Christopher Alexander	Amazon
The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning	Henry Mintzberg	Amazon
Normal Accidents: Living with High Risk Technologies	Charles Perrow	Amazon
MANPRINT – An Approach to System Integration	Booher	Amazon
Value Analysis and Value Engineering	Frederick Oughton	Amazon
Invention by Design: How Engineers Get From Thought to Thing	Henry Petroski	Amazon
The House of Quality	J. Hauser, D. Clausing	Amazon
To Engineer is Human	Henry Petroski	Amazon
Product Development Performance	Clark	Amazon
Design Methods	Christopher-Jones	Amazon
Software Inspection	Tom Gilb, Dorothy Graham	Amazon
The New Rational Manager	Kepner	Amazon
Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk	Peter Bernstein	Amazon
The Sciences of the Artificial	Herbert Simon	Amazon
Managerial Economics	Evan Douglas	Amazon
Mastering the Dynamics of Innovation	James Utterback	Amazon
The Product Manager’s Handbook	Linda Gorchels	Amazon
Intellectual Capital	Thomas Stewart	Amazon
New Products: The Key Factors in Success	Elko Kleinschmidt	Amazon
Systems Engineering Guidebook: A Process for Developing Systems and Products	James N. Martin	Amazon
A Quantitative Approach to Software Management	Kevin Pulford	Amazon
Skunk Works	Ben Rich	Amazon
The New Organizational Wealth	Svieby	Amazon
Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams	Tom DeMarco, Tim Lister	Amazon
A Methodology for Systems Engineering	A. D. Hall	Amazon This is a classic.
The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization	Peter Senge	Amazon
Guns, Gems and Steel: The Fate of Human Society	Jared Diamond	Amazon
The Blind Watchmaker	Richard Dawkins	Amazon

Visualizing Project Management

The 2nd edition of this book was my introduction to the subject of systems engineering.  Because it is one of the very few that discusses the critical importance of systems engineering to project management, I still consider it one of the best project management texts around. 

Project management is about organising the work required to deliver a product or service.  Its competence is in organising the work and making it go forward to completion within the planned cost and schedule.  It has no competence in determining whether the end product is going to be effective or not.  Systems engineering provides this competency.

Listed below are some of the books referenced by the above work.  This list is not necessarily complete (sometimes I list only those that interest me).  When there is a newer edition of a book than the one originally referenced, the link is to the newer version.  Items marked with a , are works I can recommend.

Title	Author	Remarks
Search for the Real and Other Essays	Hans Hoffman (ed.)	Amazon
Communicating Project Management	Hal Mooz, Kevin Forsberg, Howard Cotterman	Amazon
A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge	Project Management Institute	Amazon
Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea	Gary Kinder	Amazon
General and Industrial Management	Henri Fayol	Amazon
Star Teams, Key Players	Michele Jackman	Amazon
Superior Teams: What They Are and How to Develop Them	Dennis Kinlaw	Amazon
Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation	James Womack	Amazon
Final Report of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board	NASA	Amazon
Theories of Human Communication	Stephen W. Littlejohn	Amazon
Phenomenology of Communication: Merleau Ponty’s Thematics in Communicology and Semiology	Richard L. Lanigan	Amazon
Communicate with Confidence! How to Say it Right the First Time and Every Time	Dianna Booher	Amazon
Powerful Conversations: How High-Impact Leaders Communicate	Philip J. Harkins	Amazon
How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work: Seven Languages for Transformation	Robert Kegan, Lisa Laskow Lahey	Amazon
Jack Welch and the GE Way: Management Insights and Leadership Secrets of the Legendary CEO	Robert Slater	Amazon
The Power of Little Words	John L. Beckley	Amazon
The Professor and the Madman	Simon Winchester	Amazon
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Mechanical and Design Engineering	Sybil Parker, ed	Amazon
Tutorial: System and Software Requirements Engineering	R. H. Thayer, M. Dorfman, eds	Amazon
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People	Stephen R. Covey	Amazon
People and Performance: The Best  of  Peter Drucker on Management	Peter F. Drucker	Amazon
Dynamic Project Management	Deborah S. Kezsbom, Donald Schilling, Katherine A. Edward	Amazon (links to the new version of the book)
NASA GPG 7120.5 System Engineering	Systems Management Office, NASA GSFC	Amazon
NASA NPG 7120.5C Program and Project Management Processes and Requirements	AE/Office of Chief Engineer, NASA HQ	Amazon
DoDI 5000.2 Acquisition Management	DoD	Amazon
ISO 15288, “Systems Engineering: System Life Cycle Processes”	ISO	Amazon
Microsoft Secrets	Michael Cusumano,  Richard Selby	Amazon
Partnership Pays: Project Management the Øresund Way	Helena Russell	Amazon Website
The Path Between the Seas	David McCullough	Amazon
The Art of Systems Architecting	Eberhardt Rechtin, Mark W. Maier	Amazon (link to 3rd edition).  Some people prefer the older version authored by Rechtin
Systems Engineering: Coping with Complexity	Richard Stevens, Peter Brook, Ken Jackson, Stuart Arnold	Amazon
Applying UML and Patterns: An Introduction to Object-Oriented Analysis and Design and Iterative Development, 3rd ed.	Craig Larman	Amazon
Apollo 13	Jim Lovell, Jeffrey Kluger	Amazon
Skunk Works	Ben R. Rich, Leo Janos	Amazon
Moving Mountains	William G. Pagonis	Amazon
The Bishop’s Boys: A Life of Wilbur and Orville Wright	Tom D. Crouch	Amazon
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding	John Locke	Amazon
The Innovator’s Dilemma	Clayton M. Christensen	Amazon
The QFD Book: The Team Approach to Solving Problems and Satisfying Customers through Quality Function Deployment	L. Guinta, N. Praizler	Amazon
Business @ the Speed of Thought	Bill Gates	Amazon
The New Rational Manager	Charles H. Kepner, Benjamin B. Tregoe	Amazon
Engineering Complex Systems with Models and Objects	David Oliver, Timothy P. Kelliher, James G. Keegan Jr.	Amazon
Tropic of Capricorn	Henry Miller	Amazon
Team-Based Project Management	James P. Lewis	Amazon
In Search of Excellence	Tom I. Peters, R. H. Waterman Jr	Amazon
Project Management	Harold Kerzner	Amazon
The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Project Management	Sunny Baker, Kim Baker	Amazon
Risk Management: Tricks of the Trade for Project Managers	Rita Mulcahy	Amazon
Identifying and Managing Project Risk: Essential Tools for Failure-Proofing Your Project	Tom Kendrick	Amazon
Making Hard Decisions	Robert T. Clemen	Amazon
Into Thin Air	Jon Krakauer	Amazon
Principles of Management	Leonard J. Kazmier	Amazon
The Wiley Guide to Managing Projects	Peter W. G. Morris, Jeffrey K. Pinto	Amazon
How to Make Meetings Work	Michael Doyle, David Straus	Amazon
Gnomologia, Adagies and Proverbs, Wise Sentences and Witty Sayings, Ancient and Modern, Foreign and British	Thomas Fuller	Amazon
The Visual Display of Quantitative Information	Edward R. Tufte	Amazon
Visual Explanations	Edward R. Tufte	Amazon
Blind Man’s Bluff: An Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage	Sherry Sontag, Chistopher Drew	Amazon
The Leadership Moment	Michael Useem	Amazon
The Human Side of Enterprise	Douglas McGregor	Amazon
Theory  Z:  How American Business Can Meet the Japanese Challenge	William G. Ouchi	Amazon
The Motivation to Work	Frederick Herzberg, Bernard Mausner, Barbara Snyderman	Amazon
Punished by Rewards	Alfie Kohn	Amazon
Management of Organizational Behavior: Utilizing Group Resources	P. Hersey, K. H. Blanchard	Amazon
Please Under-stand Me, Character & Temperament Types	David Keirsey , Marilyn Bates	Amazon
Have Blue and the 117A	David C. Aronstein, Albert C. Piccirillo	Amazon
Influence, the Psychology of Persuasion	Robert B. Cialdini	Amazon
Lewis Spacecraft Mission Failure Investigation Board Final Report	NASA Headquarters	Amazon
Death March	Edward Yourdon	Amazon

Software Project Management: A Unified Framework, Walker Royce

Software Project Management: A Unified Framework (paperback) (The Addison-Wesley Object Technology): Walker Royce: 9780321734020: Books

Books referenced or mentioned in this book:

Title	Author	Link
Software Engineering Economics	Barry W. Boehm	Amazon
Object Solutions: Managing the Object-Oriented Project	Grady Booch	Amazon
201 Principles of Software Development	Alan M. Davis	Amazon
Controlling Software Projects: Management, Measurement, and Estimates	Tom Demarco	Amazon
Managing the Software Process	Watts S. Humphrey	Amazon
A Discipline for Software Engineering	Watts S. Humphrey	Amazon
The Capability Maturity Model: Guidelines for Improving the Software Process	Carnegie Mellon Univ. Software Engineering Inst.	Amazon

Project Delivery System, 4th Ed

This book was highly recommended by a project manager I respected as someone very highly experienced.  The book presents the project delivery system used by the engineering firm CH2MHILL. It covers the topic at a very high level, and is very straightforward and practical.  It is by no means complete.  I doubt if CH2MHILL uses this and only this as their project delivery system.  For example, it does not tackle progress monitoring.

Project Delivery System: Fourth Edition: CH2M HILL Project Mangers: 9780965261616: Books ISBN: 0965261611 ISBN-13: 9780965261616

I found the chapters on planning the project, and the one on building customer relationships clear and enlightening.  They are the best parts of the book.

If you work in a project where there is no project management process, this book provides a framework (but no more than that).  It does not explain what they mean by ‘Project Delivery’ as opposed to ‘Project Management’. 

Listed below are some of the books referenced by the above work.  This list is not necessarily complete (sometimes, I list only those that interest me).  The Amazon links are to the latest editions of the book, not necessarily the edition cited in the above work. 

Items marked with a , are works I can recommend.

Title	Author	Remarks
Force For Change: How Leadership Differs from Management	John P. Kotter	Amazon
Principle-Centered Leadership	Stephen Covey	Amazon
The Leader-Manager: Guidelines for Action	William Hitt	Amazon
The Empowered Manager	Peter Block	Amazon
Crisis & Renewal: Meeting the Challenge of Organizational Change	David K Hurst	Amazon
Leadership, New and Revised: The Inner Side of Greatness, A Philosophy for Leaders	Peter Koestenbaum	Amazon
The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization	Peter Senge	Amazon
Engineering Management: People and Projects	Murray Shainis, Anton Dekom, and Charles McVinney	Amazon
Managing as a Performing Art: New Ideas for a World of Chaotic Change	Peter B. Vaill	Amazon)
Productive Workplaces: Dignity, Meaning, and Community in the 21st Century	Marvin R. Weisbord	Amazon
Stewardship: Choosing Service Over Self Interest	Peter Block	Amazon
Customer Bonding: Pathway to Lasting Customer Loyalty	Richard Cross and Janet Smith	Amazon
Service Breakthroughs	James L. Heskett	Amazon
The One to One Future - Building Relationships One Customer at a Time	Don Peppers and Martha Rogers	Amazon
Value Pricing for the Design Firm	Frank A. Stasiowski	Amazon
Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change	William Bridges and Susan Bridges	Amazon
Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In	Roger Fisher, William L. Ury and Bruce Patton	Amazon

Review of "The Failure of Risk Management: Why It's Broken and How to Fix It" Part 2

In Chapter two of his book, Douglas Hubbard's discusses where the risk management industry has been and where it currently thinks it is.

The chapter starts out with a very brief history of risk management ('800 words' according to the author), tracing the route from the discovery of mathematical probabilities, to its initial commercial application in insurance, and finally down to the modern day emerging 'new character' or risk management, incarnated in regulations like Basel II, and in applications like Enterprise Risk Management. His history is not very complimentary, comparing today's state of risk management as similar to the Old West gold rush towns, where things look brightly painted and pretty, but built on shaky foundations and filled with snake oil peddlers.

His history aligns quite well with Peter Bernstein's own summary, although at a very very high level and, I suspect, very much framed to support his thesis (which I suppose is what the rest of the book is about).

Hubbard then makes a brief discussion of the common risk assessment approaches (expert intuition, weighted scoring, probabilistic models, etc) and suggests that some of these are not up to par for the role risk management is playing (corporate growth survival, after all) and will probably need to be dispensed with.

The next section covers risk mitigation approaches. He has a brief treatment of the common approaches (what risk management book doesn't?): avoid, reduce, transfer, retain. The most interesting part of this section is his list of examples of concrete manifestations of risk mitigation approaches (in contrast to the abstract approaches of
avoid, reduce, etc. His list includes selection processes, contractual risk transfer, insurance, liquid asset position, etc.).

In the final section, Hubbard discusses 3 major surveys of enterprise risk management, conducted by Aon, The Economist, and Protiviti. The surveys show what the executives in these companies thought about what their top risks are (reputation, market, human capital, and regulatory environment figure very high). The surveys indicate that risk management is present in those companies primarily because they are being required to have it (a necessary evil). It also shows that risk
management is well represented and increasingly so at the board level.  The executives seem pretty confident that they are doing risk management well.

Hubbard suggests that that is not the case at all.

7 Deadly Sins – Illusory Correlation

Or ‘magical thinking’ as Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini calls it.  This is about making positive correlations even though the supporting data is weak.  Sometimes we notice only data that supports our hypothesis and ignore data that doesn’t.

An example of magical thinking goes like this. We come across a few people who exhibit a certain symptom and also a certain illness, and we associate that symptom with the illness, such that if we see that symptom, then we decide that the illness is also present.

You see someone with red spots, and you diagnose measles.

We forget that sometimes the same symptom appears for a different illnes.  Or the illness is present without that symptom.

7 Deadly Sins – Overconfidence

Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini writes in his deliciously written book “Inevitable Illusions” about the 7 deadly sins of our cognitive illusions.

His first sin is overconfidence. This is where we feel certain about our knowledge of something, but our knowledge does not really warrant such confidence.

He describes experiments where subjects are asked to answer questions and then rate how confident they are about each answer.  Experiments show that our confidence leads our knowledge.

We think we know something more than we really know.

The results of the experiments also bring about something sobering: we are most overconfident in areas we are more knowledgeable about.  That is, the difference between the level of our overconfidence and knowledge in these areas is bigger than the difference between our level of overconfidence and knowledge in other areas - hence we tend to make mistakes of overconfidence in our areas of expertise.

In Praise of Bibliographies

One of the best things about books are their bibliographies.  Sometimes a book's bibliography is worth more than the book itself.  If it is any good, the bibliography arms you with a map, or a mini-library, to other treasures about the subject you are reading about.   

When you are reading the very first book you have read about a subject, the bibliography is often a map to a new world. If it's a good bibliography, it leads you to treasure. But sometimes it can lead you to a rubbish pile. 

I always skim through the bibliographies of each book I read, marking down titles that may interest me next. 

It’s still vivid in my mind the occasion when I first came across Patrick Henry Winston’s “Lisp”. I remember exactly where I was.  I found a copy at our school library. I was in university, somewhat new to programming, but already infected by an intense interest in computer science, a subject I only had recently discovered. 

I had already read perhaps a dozen Pascal and Fortran books before picking up “Lisp”, but Winston’s was the most wonderfully strange computer programming book I had come across then (and still since). 

First was the very strange programming language (Lisp was not like normal procedural languages).  Then the domain was very new to me (it was the first book I read about Artificial Intelligence).  But it was also because Winston had a quirky writing style.  Looking back later, and understanding his academic interest in how humans learn, I’m sure this style was deliberately designed.

His book imprinted in my mind the names of dozens of computer scientists in the AI field. Names like Marvin Minsky, Douglas Lenat, Elaine Rich, and others whose very unusual sounding names (to me back then) felt like they were not normal humans, but members of a different breed, a strange breed, an alien breed. I swore to read all of them.   

Not all bibliographies are good (and by bibliography I include ‘References’). But, off the top of my head, authors who are great at compiling bibliographies include Andrew S. Tanenbaum, C. J. Date, Jeffrey D. Ullman, Douglas Comer.

Sometimes I forget how I learned about a book. I estimate that of all the books I’ve read or intend to read, the vast majority were inspired from a bibliography of some book I read.

So I thought it might be a fun exercise to list down some key books that have influenced me, write down their bibliographies (I’ll limit it to books only), and see how they are connected.

This is a tedious exercise so it will happen slowly, and when time permits.

Seeing Tomorrow, III

Continuing book review of Dembo & Freeman’s “Seeing Tomorrow: Rewriting the Rules of Risk”

In chapter 2, the authors introduce four elements they consider to be core to any forward-looking approach to risk management:

• Time horizon
• Scenarios
• Risk measure
• Benchmarks

Time horizon refers to the future period that we are interested in.  It is a distinct period (with a distinct begin and end, as opposed to simply ‘the future’).  An investor who wants to assess the risks involved in an investment needs to think about the timeframe of his investment.  This timeframe (or time horizon)  is very different for someone who wants to cash in in two years than for someone who plans to cash in 15 years into the future.

Of the four elements, the authors give the longest treatment to scenarios.  A scenario is a projection of what could possibly happen in the future.  The purpose of creating scenarios is to help us plan for that event if it occurs. 

The key here, the authors say, is not merely generating a scenario but several scenarios.  These set of scenarios will help us gain a clearer understanding of the range of dangers (and opportunities) we might face. 

If a scenario eventuates, and we had anticipated that scenario, and made plans for it, then we are in a better position to react and perhaps exploit the new situation.  We will be better placed, relative to our competitors and relative to where would be had we not planned for it.

The third element of risk management is deciding on a risk measure. This is about deciding we measure riskiness.  Apparently this is very tricky, since choosing a measure like Value at Risk (VaR) could protentially produce similar values to very different risk situations, effectively obscuring the reality that they are very different propositions.

The final element is Benchmark, or having something to compare with.  Choosing the appropriate benchmark is key to understanding how well we are managing our risks.  Do we choose to benchmark our investment performance relative to Warren Buffet’s or the DOW index or something else?

After the discussion on the four elements, the authors also touch on Risk-Adjusted Valuation.  This is the ‘real’ price tag of something and is almost always ignored.  For example, suppose you buy an expensive ring for $20,000.  Now, you would want to insure something that valuable since you cannot afford to self-insure it (absorb the loss if it gets lost).  So let’s say you pay $100 per year to insure that ring.  That total amount (comprised of the original amount of the ring, plus its ongoing insurance) is the Risk-Adjusted Value of that ring.  The authors want the reader to begin thinking always about the Risk-Adjust Value of everything.

The chapter ends by tying up all the four elements in a short example using a model called Marking-to-Future, a model developed by one of the authors.