The Next Leap in Productivity: What Top Managers Really Need to Know about Information Technology
by Adam Kolawa
4.22. Insist on Standards
What IT needs to learn from manufacturing is the importance of standards. The manufacturing industry uses standards because they have learned that standards reduce defects by ensuring that the different pieces are built to spec, which in turn ensures that they fit together properly. That's why we have ADP Principles 2 and 3: Apply best practices to avert common problems and Customize best practices to meet project-specific needs. These both speak to the enforcement of standards.
When you proactively prevent problems by adhering to standards, there are certain things that you do not even need to test for, so you can really reduce testing time.
Deming took this one step further, into root cause analysis. To do this in IT, you need a process and an infrastructure that can be modified to correct the root causes of the problem. That is why we have ADP Principle 4: Customize best practices to meet project-specific needs.
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