Project Roadmap or Project Plan?

Quite frequently I see the two terms used interchangeably. I think there is a difference.

A road map is not a plan. To use a software term: A road map is just a data structure.

To get from city A to city B by road, one consults a map to decide on means of transportation; the route to take; contingency routes; what are the other cities on the way; road conditions; refuelling stops; weather conditions; ... That does not make it a travel plan. It is when we plug in estimates of dates and estimates of travel time and estimates of stop times, and decide on preparatory measures that it becomes a travel plan.

Different travellers can have the same road map for getting from city A to city B. Yet they may have different travel plans.

A Project Roadmap just has a set of paths to desired project outcomes. It is estimates of time, and allocation of resources, that create a Project Plan.

Toyota: Runaway Cars & Genchi Genbutsu

Genchi Genbutsu ("go and see for yourself") is one of the 14 principles of the Toyota Production System (TPS). Toyota applied Genchi Genbutsu to determine american driving conditions before designing cars for the american market


Was any Genchi Genbutsu done when reports started coming in about runaway cars? Or was it that TPS being a production system, the concept of Genchi Genbutsu did not extend to after-sales problems?

Toyota: What happened to the andon cord?

The Toyota Production System (TPS) empowers any worker on the production line to stop production for any suspected problem on the production line, by "pulling the andon cord" .

So why the problems of the runaway Toyotas? There is a perception that Toyota has been tardy in investigating problems - http://nyti.ms/c29NS2. I suspect the andon cord has not been "extended" to customer support.

As its name says, TPS is a production system. It includes upstream processes of Toyota's vendors and the famed JIT. But does it extend to customer support? Will customer incidents result in the andon cord being pulled? News reports, like the one referred to above,  seem to indicate, not.

Quality: Just Talking the Talk

I was instrumental in introducing some rudimentary processes for the business unit that I have been leading  since 2002. After it had been in place for sometime, my CEO visited a prospect in Japan, along with one of our senior engineers. The engineer had adopted the practices and was a role model. The prospect was a large semiconductor house. The presentation by the senior engineer included actual artefacts produced by the process. That gave some authenticity to the presentation. The president of the company was so impressed that he decided to visit us. The visit resulted in the company outsourcing work to us.

Needless to say my CEO became a convert to the process that I had been advocating. He used to tell everyone that the reason why we got a new customer was because of the process that was demonstrated. That indeed we were walking the talk.

Now that had an interesting side-effect. In subsequent presentation we started talking our process with great pride. But we forgot that good practices have to be re-inforced everyday and deviations have to be corrected. More importantly processes have to be evolved after due deliberation. Not by random variations caused by "practical" problems. We were no longer walking the talk. We had started talking the talk. We forgot: 6-pack abs need hard work to keep them that way

Has Toyota too fallen prey to talking the talk?

More on that in a subsequent post.

Did Newton Just Name Gravity?

This refers to an old post of Seth Godin's. In that he says that Newton did not discover gravity, he just named it.

What aboout Newton's Laws of Motion? Surely Newton did not name motion. He discovered, or formulated, the laws.

So too would it not be correct to say he discovered, or formulated, the Laws of Gravitation?

The story of the apple falling on his head is possibly apocryphal. It took genius to see that the force that pulled the apple also kept the moon in orbit

Note: Seth's post was on 02Dec2008. He does not allow comments. Instead asks you to blog. That has what got me into blogging - after my usual procrastination. Thanks Seth.

How Simple Should a Process be?

Talk I had last evening with a friend who has just launced a software start-up.

He was going to put a software development process in place. But it was going to be simple.

Me: How was simple going to be decided?
Friend: It had to be simple for the persons working with him, to follow.

My view: Choose your process according to the customers you address. if you are going to be working for NASA your process needs to conform to theirs. If your customer is Toyota. You need to conform to theirs. Then there is our Indian software industry environment. The process has to cater for 15~20% attrition rates and people moving out on short notice.

Process is dictated by business realities.

Hire - and train - for that process.

Keep in touch with reality. Keep adjusting the process in the light of reality.

First Post: Six-Pack Abs

I am not going to be blogging about working out.

I am going to blog about quality - in services, and in software development. Software development related activities is where i have spent most of my life - or at least the most interesting part.

Quality is like six-pack abs.

Every one claims to provide quality product/services, or at least wants to. Not many are prepared to put in the hard work needed to deliver quality. Some do manage to get to provide a quality product or service - for a while. Very few are able, or willing, to continue to to put in the hard work to provide qualityon a sustainable, day-in and day-out basis.

Not very different from getting and maintaing 6-pack abs!