How Effective can CBTs be!

The computer based training or CBTs have been talked about practically since the advent of the multi-media  age in personal computing. the potential is obviously very high. But, not too many examples exist that really fully exploit the media. to my mind, nothing can explain concepts better than the multi media tools of animation, sound and video etc. However, the multimedia show can very easily degenerate into gimmickry unless done thoroughly.

We have included quite a few CBT projects this year. We need to push it to the levels of effectiveness where they can be tools we could use for teaching the corresponding subject. I really do need to push for the typical project management style we used to adopt for the software development industry.

Whatever happened to Toyota Legend!

Everyone dealing with the topic quality used to swear by Toyota. Toyota's production system was an absolute benchmark everyone will cite as a benchmark. It was a legend and it endured for a long time! However this is totally shaken now. There has been several recalls of different models of Toyota cars on quality issues. So what happened! Difficult to say. May be the company got complacent and all those watchful eyes monitoring the assembly lines slipped. May be there was conscious cutting of corners. In a nutshell they must have deviated from their legendary quality assurance processes.

Some reports of bad component quality surfaced but then the vendor of the final product is responsible for the overall quality and these sound like passing the blame. If true, it'd still mean processes failed in determining the incoming quality of these components/sub-systems. It would be interesting to find out what really happened! Let's watch and see.

Content, SEO and Crap

Search engines decide what is an important web site by several methods. If a site had good content there will be a good use of keywords the topic it is dealing with. So keyword desity is an item on this chart. Lot of people will obviously refer to the content if it is good. There is that back-link concept.

As long as things worked on these assumptions, this was working reasonably. However along came the e-commerce revolution. People needed traffic to their sites. If you have a large enough number coming to your site, a certain percentage of them would become buyers of your products. Now, if visitors cannot find you in the millions of search results, you remain the store on the main street of some obscure town-the internet equivalent. You have to get on to the first page if not the number one position!

Along came the SEO experts and discovered the above among other things. I am sure they work. But one direct consequence is that a lot of content on the net is simply useless. They are aimed at generating these keyword densities and the backlinks. The actual content could actually be meaningless. It' gotten so bad, you'll find sites easily which has parts of a page simply repeating the keywords over and over again. Meaning of "ad nauseam" hits you straight! Generating backlings has taken over the comments on forums, blogs and networking sites. There only aim is to create a link back to the target site. What the comments say is irrelevant.

People have started realising this, I guess. There is a momentum building slowly about quality content. Just the stirrings now. Hopefully, things will work out.

It's Not Done Until It Is Shippable

James Shore is writing a book on agile methodology "The Art Of Agile Development" and parts of that was being published in his blog. The latest is "Done Done". His point is that whatever is the methodology a piece of software is not "done" until it is shippable. In the sense it has been tested, detectable bugs have been ironed out etc.

Surprising how wide a range of meaning is attached to something being done by individuals. It can really be a huge range of completeness. Some would consider it done when he has finished coding and may be the piece runs, nobody knows if rightly or wrongly. Other end of the spectrum obviously is a tested, tried, polished piece of functionality.

I still remember reading an article on "sense of closure". It was precisely this issue being discussed. I have always maintained with my colleagues that when reporting something being complete the only test one can use is, is it ready to be shipped? Would somebody pay money to buy that piece of functionality. That, of course applies to any kind of product be it software or hardware or a mix of both in the form of embedded product.

Toyota Way IS Different!

On two recent posts I had talked about how innovation is essential. Innovation in defining a new product rather than a "me too" one. However, we have noted that in the same class of product quality makes a large differentiator. How big!!

Toyota made a gain in sales of 34% in 2005 from three years before
Its profit per car is $1587
60% of its cars sold in America are made in America.

Contrast that with the struggles of the big 3 makers.Between Ford and GM, 46,000 jobs have been lost, and they are closing 26 factories over the next 5 years. Toyota opened a new factory in Texas already and planning another one in Ontario by 2008.

In a story, fastcompny.com magazine talks about how the focus on quality at the Georgetown, Kentucky factory let's Toyota make half a million cars a year that are perceived by consumers to be ultimate products. Continuous improvement is almost a cliche so is statement about taking care of process so that product quality takes care of itself!

Anybody with inetrest in product quality must read this article to understand how these principle need to become the way of thinking rather than a company dictated method or an way of documentation. Or even a one time project!

Getting everybody to change to a way of thinking is a wonder! I am just curious if this is a cultural/national thing ! But, obviously it's not, this plant is in US of A! From the description in the article, just about everybody in the plant are convinced that's the way to go, it has become their mental make up! While top guys bring it from Japan, everybody else is local! Right from hiring people with the right attitude to constant emphasis on the process oriented thinking seems to do the trick. The article talks about managers and improvement examples that clearly indicate this. For people in this plant, improvements are not destinations but a journey that never ends! These things become so entrenched in the minds of people that they get into thinking of improvements of things they do at home too. AMAZING!!!!