Today, I received this question from a friend: "Tell me, in your opinion where is ISO 9000 on the continum from waste-of-time to essential? Is TQM really dead leaving 6Sigma to reign?"
I think this was a pretty relevant question for Managers overseeing product development and manufacturing, so here is my response:
"Six Sigma has definitely become the quality model of choice within
manufacturing (led by the automotive and electronics industries). ISO9000 and TQM provide some meaningful guidelines, but in my experience, too much emphasis was put on passing the audits versus focusing on the right actions to actually improve quality. ISO9000 emphasizes documentation and specifies a format that seems more in line with legal contracts than with internal working documents. TQM has strong emphasis on process definition, but is best known for its Malcolm Baldridge award. When a methodology causes businesses to spend MORE money than can be gained through quality efficiencies, it has been taken too far."
"I believe it is this reaction that led to the popularity of Six Sigma which is more a collection of tools and methods employed through different phases of production. I have spent quite a bit of time learning a very small piece of Six Sigma called VOC (Voice of the Customer) and portions of QFD (Quality Functional Deployment). The tools and methods include excellent ways to capture and prioritize product requirements, and to measure results against the original requirements. The mother of all tools in QFD is something known as "the House of Quality". Good and useful stuff!"
A note to readers: Some years ago, I helped head-up an effort to make a 450 person software development organization "audit ready". We achieved ISO9000 certification and won the Malcolm Baldridge award as a result of our efforts. Early this year, I studied Six Sigma QFD with a friend who was completing his Black Belt certification. I found the tools useful and went on to apply them to my product management and design work. I therefore consider myself a quality practician, not an expert. I welcome other informed contributions on this topic.
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
Monday, September 19, 2005
The Art of Market Research
When can listening to your customers be hazardous to your company's future? This is a question I have been contemplating for a couple of months. It began with a reference by Roy H. Williams (see Wizard of Ads post) to the taste tests that led to the New Coke introduction.
On the surface, Coca Cola appeared to have conducted a textbook study to pick a soft drink formula that would help them gain market over Pepsi. Instead, the New Coke introduction was one of the most costly errors of the decade.
There are many lessons we can learn from experiences such as these. The first lesson is that it may be inappropriate to apply a scientific study (such as a blind taste test) to a product with Coke's nostalgic connections. Malcolm Gladwell, in his excellent book, Blink, pointed out other flaws in the study inherent to taste tests: the order and amount of beverage consumed can alter one's preference. The idea that a less sweet beverage can taste "sour" after drinking a sweeter beverage is something we have all experienced. A lesser known factor in "taste" tests is that most people prefer sweeter tastes in small quantities and less sweet tastes when drinking larger servings. So lesson #2 is to plan your experiments carefully: be as realistic as possible.
Yet another difficulty in collecting and interpretting data lies in the communications and thought processes of most customers. Kathy Sierra noted recently in her blog Creating Passionate Users that "people don't necessarily know how to ask for something they've never conceived of! Most people make suggestions based entirely around incremental improvements, looking at what exists and thinking about how it could be better. But that's quite different from having a vision for something profoundly new. True innovation will rarely come from what users say directly. This doesn't mean that you don't listen to users--because the truth is embedded in what they say...but you have to look for the deeper meaning behind what they ask for, rather than always taking them at their word."
The conclusions I have reached echo those stated above. As a Product Manager, I have found great value in conversations with customers and in opportunities to observe people working with products I am trying to improve. Theses activities can provide the creative spark for new ideas and perspectives that those of us too close to a specific product may have overlooked. We get into trouble, however, when we try to treat people's opinions and preferences as a scientifically controlled experiment. It is amazingly easy to create bias in experiments when dealing with personal preference - a bias that then becomes magnified through our own biased interpretation of the results. The more we delude ourselves into believing our experiment is scientific and our results conclusive, the more we set ourselves up for errors on the magnitude of New Coke. By recognizing the inherent flaws in approaching human preference as science, we can still reap the benefits of new perspectives while avoiding the pitfalls of over-confidence.
On the surface, Coca Cola appeared to have conducted a textbook study to pick a soft drink formula that would help them gain market over Pepsi. Instead, the New Coke introduction was one of the most costly errors of the decade.
There are many lessons we can learn from experiences such as these. The first lesson is that it may be inappropriate to apply a scientific study (such as a blind taste test) to a product with Coke's nostalgic connections. Malcolm Gladwell, in his excellent book, Blink, pointed out other flaws in the study inherent to taste tests: the order and amount of beverage consumed can alter one's preference. The idea that a less sweet beverage can taste "sour" after drinking a sweeter beverage is something we have all experienced. A lesser known factor in "taste" tests is that most people prefer sweeter tastes in small quantities and less sweet tastes when drinking larger servings. So lesson #2 is to plan your experiments carefully: be as realistic as possible.
Yet another difficulty in collecting and interpretting data lies in the communications and thought processes of most customers. Kathy Sierra noted recently in her blog Creating Passionate Users that "people don't necessarily know how to ask for something they've never conceived of! Most people make suggestions based entirely around incremental improvements, looking at what exists and thinking about how it could be better. But that's quite different from having a vision for something profoundly new. True innovation will rarely come from what users say directly. This doesn't mean that you don't listen to users--because the truth is embedded in what they say...but you have to look for the deeper meaning behind what they ask for, rather than always taking them at their word."
The conclusions I have reached echo those stated above. As a Product Manager, I have found great value in conversations with customers and in opportunities to observe people working with products I am trying to improve. Theses activities can provide the creative spark for new ideas and perspectives that those of us too close to a specific product may have overlooked. We get into trouble, however, when we try to treat people's opinions and preferences as a scientifically controlled experiment. It is amazingly easy to create bias in experiments when dealing with personal preference - a bias that then becomes magnified through our own biased interpretation of the results. The more we delude ourselves into believing our experiment is scientific and our results conclusive, the more we set ourselves up for errors on the magnitude of New Coke. By recognizing the inherent flaws in approaching human preference as science, we can still reap the benefits of new perspectives while avoiding the pitfalls of over-confidence.
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