005 Steve Jobs

This post will be slight different, because the news of Steve Jobs' death has just hit us. Maybe lots of us thought it was going to happen soon, but you always think there is still hope.

It came the following day after iPhone 4s was presented. I will not say too much about his work, his ideas, his innovation. You all probably know better than me.

However, I wanted to hightligh the positive attitude, the illusion, the iEnergy he projected.

Thanks Steve. Welcome to the iHeaven, you left the iCloud here.

004 Paneríficos I

#ideas2improve: As I said in my first post, the end of our journey to CMMI-DEV5 v1.3 was the seed of this blog. At those hard times, I tweeted a collection of tweets (is there any other verb to show the action for a tweet?) that were born in an atmosphere of extreme efficiency and fantastic ideas of our #war-room. Some of those ideas were synthesized in golden sentences that we called #panerificos as an evolution of the Spanish term "panegírico" (panegyric in English) and the last name of the father of the idea (Panero). Although we ideated multiple paneríficos, I wanted to share here now only the 10 ones I created and tweeted during the 10 days the onsite SCAMPI-A lasted:

1. Use your money to improve your performance to achieve your objectives

2. Look for correlation between key factors to better understand your process and then improve it

3. Once you achieve a process improvement and close the cycle, translate it to euros and share the savings with your client and your team

4. Quantitatively control and measure your suppliers to ensure optimum service

5. Record defects found when you review and test to analyze them for issue patterns and best practices to improve

6. Establish your goals, measure to know where you are, measure to understand how to improve, enhance your objectives

7. Learn from what you do wrong (#PPQA) and right (#bestpractices) to keep improving and share it with your organization

8. When you plan to spend money in an initiative, ensure it will help you to go in a direction you want to go

9.  If one finding surprises you, improve. If two, analyze. If three, review your #ppqa process

10. This is fine as long as it ends well

The successful appraisal of CMMI-DEV v1.3 ML5 is a good end. Better said, it is a good re-start, just a "period (.)" to move one step beyond in the continuous improvement spirit.

Submit your @ideas2improve

003 chEckLists

#ideas2improve: A checklist is a collection of points to be reviewed after one activity has been accomplished.

A good checklist is very useful to catch defects soon, and the sooner a defect is fixed, the cheaper. The same checklist can also be used by the person that needs to perform the activity to ensure (s)he has everything in mind when doing so, and then to achieve better quality at first time. Doing things right at first time is even more efficient than having a good review process to catch them later.

Now, the question is:
Should a checklist contain ALL the points to be taken into account to produce with the required functionality and quality or ONLY those points that are most critical and typically may be forgotten?

The first alternative involves a long checklist with dozens of points that address every single detail to be considered. This also helps to transfer knowledge between people with more expertise to other colleagues less experienced, so these juniors will be able to perform the task, hereby reducing costs. On the other hand, there is a risk that long checklists are seen as bureaucracy and are passed faster than desired, skipping some important things, therefore converting the process in just (bad) "documentation".

The second alternative tries to synthesize the most critical steps even not including all the details. This helps to focus on what is important, reducing the cost of the review, agilizing the process and ensuring the imperative requirements are considered. However, the final result may not include all the requirements, and these will not be catched (contained), passing defects to the following stage. Moreover, some knowledge is not incorporated in the checklist (and therefore transferred to the other team members).

So, what's your choice?

Are your project people very skilled and you only need to ensure they don't miss essential things?

Do you have a team with senior and junior people where you need to transfer knowledge and rely on their discipline to follow a complex process to obtain great results?

Submit your #ideas2improve

002 Funny Flight

ideas2improve: Niki is the Austrian airline founded by 3 times F1 world championship and never too admired pilot and fighter Niki Lauda. Niki offers interesting flights between Austria and Mediterranean destinations such as beautiful and outstanding Malaga in Southern Spain.

In my last flight Wien-Malaga (30SEP at 6:40, HG2714) I lived  a curious situation that may make us think several #ideas2improve.

First, the situation: there are two toilets at the front of the plane (Airbus A321): one before and one after the curtain that preserves discretion for the stewardess when preparing meals (yes, Niki is one of few "green dogs" that still offer free onboard services such as sandwiches, drinks or newspapers). When the first toilet is busy but the second is free, the only light to show availabily is green.

Well, two guys went to the toilet, stopping in the first toilet (the curtain was closed). So they thought "it is the only toilet, the light is green, so even the door is closed showing a red Occupied label, it is free"

So, they used their creative mind to open the door. You know how toilet doors open and close in airplanes: just pushing slightly. Well, that is only true when it is not closed from inside. But they skipped that tiny point. So they pushed, pulled and looked for hidden mechanisms at the top or bottom (as Indiana Jones in his adventures), until they found a couple of small levers at the very top that they moved down and up until they took the door out of its rail. They were nearly removing the entire door (which would have put the person inside in an embarrasing situation) when fortunately the stewardess arrived, showing the second (empty) toilet to the guys to use it and staring at the newly discovered state-of-the-art "solution" with a face between surprise and laugh. She reacted profesionally, did not complain or scold them but called for help. The copilot came, looked at the door and could not believe what he was seeing. His deep studies included mechanics, geography, navigation, physics, and even cabotage, but not door fixing. However he did not stop because of the challenge, tested, investigated, tried and finally fixed it! Some passengers clapped and even shouted "Bravo"!

Now, the lessons learned that could be #ideas2improve:

-For everyone, think that things tend to be simpler than what a complicated mind could imagine because of a wrong signal (metric or kpi in your project): if the door says "Occupied" and with a couple of tries it does not open, probably it IS occupied. So, review your assumptions: either the metric is wrong or it meant something else that you skipped (the second -free- toilet).

-For everyone, when there is an issue, the best is: nice face, good spirit, better thinking only-looking-for-solutions and use your best combination of positive attitude, experience and innovation to solve it.

-For everyone, congratulate more than punish.

-For the company, value the work and professional attitude of the copilot and cabin crew, and maybe ask the plane manufacturer to put one light for each toilet, although I am afraid that will not avoid an improved version of the two guys ideating better adventures. So keep things as simple as possible.

001 ideas2improve

ideas2improve: This blog will try to be my humble contribution to innovation and improvement world.


The origin was several tweets I sent in May-July with ideas or thoughts that came to me when we were in the most stressful phase of the CMMI-DEV v1.3 ML5 appraisal.


Hope to be helpful at least for one person.


aaaeeeiii