First Steps from Managing the Design Factory

The next steps from Managing the Design Factory are actually a good summary of what the book is about:

• Do Your Math: Use economic analysis, not "best practices", to select the right course of action.
• Use Decision Rules: Frame important decisions as economic trade-offs and made on the basis of facts.
• Pay Attention to Capacity Utilisation: Grasp the economics of queues.
• Pay Attention to Batch Size: Explicitly measure and reduce batch sizes and design-in-process inventory.
• Respect Variability: Development is inherently variable and we should design our development process to be tolerant of uncertainty.
• Think Clearly About Risk: Treat risk taking as a process of placing rational bets on the future. Celebrate prudent risk taking that generates new learning.
• Think Systems: Ensure incentives do not encourage sub-optimisation.
• Respect the People: Success is equally dependent on creating a workable system and populating the system with excellent people.
• Design the Process Thoughtfully: Be less tolerant of shallow thinking. Encourage deeper analysis and careful design.
• Pay Attention to Architecture: Treat architecture as a business-level issue.
• Deeply Understand the Customer: Focus on why over what. Get high percentages of the development team out in contact with customers.
• Eliminate Useless Controls: Ground controls in economic analysis.
• Get to the Front Lines: Senior managers should regularly get out to where the work is done.
• Avoid Slogans: There is no shortcut to wisdom.  Instead, rely on careful observation and reflection.