Fourteen Points

WilliamEdwardsDeming's management philosophy can be best summarized by the FourteenPoints for good management, from his book 'OutOfTheCrisis', ISBN 0911379010 .

: http://www.deming.org/theman/teachings02.html

-- SteveCline

Actually, when I re-read them, I find many of the points consistent with the philosophies of ExtremeProgramming - continuous improvement, end useless inspections, ensure quality as part of the process, bid work on best value rather than lowest cost, drive out fear, down barriers between departments, etc. -- SteveCline again

What Deming meant by inspection is closer to the idea system test than what we mean by code inspection. ExtremeProgramming does not eliminate code inspection, rather, it attempts to move inspection closer to to the time of defect injection by the practice of PairProgramming. -- CoreyLadas

As Deming's ideas took hold in Japan, they were refined by the people who created the Toyota Production System, particularly ShigeoShingo. They had some principles that converged even more to XP: just-in-time production (do nothing until it is needed); and PokaYoke or mistake-proofing, which meant techniques to prevent bad work from being produced. I think XP unit tests would be the software equivalent of PokaYoke. -- BobHaugen

Deming was actually very critical of PokaYoke methods, arguing against them in terms of the TaguchiLossFunction?. Like inspection, PokaYoke is an after-the-fact technique that masks root cause. Deming clearly demonstrated why it is counterproductive to intervene in a process that is in a state of statistical control. XP units are PokaYoke only if you think that the point of TestDrivenDevelopment is testing. If you think the point of TestDrivenDevelopment is design specification, then unit tests have nothing to do with PokaYoke, and everything to do with OperationalDefinitions?. -- CoreyLadas

For some reason, I am always amazed at how the very Deming-esque ideas presented by XP (or even the ideas and proposals put forth in the CluetrainManifesto) are considered "new-fangled" by a number of executives.

It's too bad Deming himself did not live long enough to see SoftwareEngineering emerge and the various processes introduced (like XP). It would have been interesting to hear his perspective.

-- ChadThompson

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