Hobo seifu okoru

At each step, the clear wind arises

It was the early days of computing, and an average project at Apple ran 3-4 years. It was then I started to notice something – the longer the project, the more the delays. Something about the complexity of people working together over a period of time in a new field called software. Was very hard to do the 3 things: Features, Time, and Quality. And over and over the teams ended up on features that took much longer or had poor quality, that took even longer to fix. Specially complex were the operating systems and large applications.

In one of these times, I was introduced to Deming.

Most people have not heard of Deming, or if they have, as a name after World War II – largely in manufacturing or sometimes as one of the core reasons Japan went from bad cheap transistor radios that break to the world leader in design and quality. Who was this man, and how was his learning essential for the web?

Here is what Wikipedia says about him:

“A number of Japanese manufacturers applied his techniques widely and experienced theretofore unheard of levels of quality and productivity. The improved quality combined with the lowered cost created new international demand for Japanese products.”

“The prevailing style of management must undergo transformation. A system cannot understand itself. The transformation requires a view from outside. The aim of this chapter is to provide an outside view—a lens—that I call a system of profound knowledge. It provides a map of theory by which to understand the organizations that we work in.

“The first step is transformation of the individual. This transformation is discontinuous. It comes from understanding of the system of profound knowledge. The individual, transformed, will perceive new meaning to his life, to events, to numbers, to interactions between people.”

Fast forward to 1992, the world wide web was still not known. A professor at Georgia Tech Gregory D. Abowd had decided to teach a course to computer science and design students on something that was developing in Silicon Valley called Rapid Prototyping Design based on the pioneering work that the team at Rae Technology was doing. The ideas started at Apple, but really got developed as a process at Rae.

In Alan Kay’s words – a point of view is worth a 100 IQ points.

What was interesting about this was by taking the view that projects should be done on very short time schedules, you not only change the point of view, you introduce the idea that it is far better to try and do and learn then plan and do perfectly. Or simply put, in Deming’s words, quality is not a by-product or secondary goal – it needs to be designed in the process. This simple notion is transformative- at a personal level in companies and in society at large.

One of the times I was with Nathaniel Brandon in LA, we spoke about this idea. His books talk about bringing 1% change in your life. The same principle here. How do you abandon the idea of a long term future where perfection exists, only to realize that you never actually can get there. And embrace the idea that you need short and mid-term projects with long term vision.

This idea that Deming had was a very big idea, and it has influenced my focus on the “process” and undoubtedly has lead to many successes in my life. What does this mean to me? This gets to the heart of creativity and productivity. After leaving Apple, I started to experiment with this – what would happen if we completely changed the way things were and instead of long large projects, we would start something small.

The largest change was to create a process around “Date, Quality, Features” instead of “Features, Date, Quality.” Today, this is deep in the vocabulary of the Internet and technology & media development. Getting products launched fast, that work, and then evolving creates an intimate bond with users. They are a part of what you build. As an example, NetObjects Fusion continued to have 10,000’s of “fans” because they helped participate in the building pf the product. Their ideas were heard and captured and responded to early part of the cycle.

Today, in the age of open source and Twitter, where information and media have become “real-time” it is good to look back and see how this was created. The human processes and focus are as much a part of the technological and social changes we have seen in the last decade as the ideas themselves. Also important is the notion of evolving and learning, as opposed to our focus on perfection. Being early or first makes a big difference.

Glam is a fascinating study in this. The company with focus on Vertical Media targeting women, is always on the technological try and build process. Some projects stick and have survived, others tried and merged into learning or newer projects. Perhaps it is this process and curiosity that allowed a company like Glam to launch one of the first “Real-time” applications on Twitter- before Twitter became a household name. This discovery and creativity allows for teams to come together and work and release things that can be category changing. I remain a firm believer that a culture that supports rapid prototyping, supports learning and evolving, ultimately supports innovation.

Even business plans can be like this. Startups in Silicon Valley wait far too long sometimes before trying something new. A culture of innovation needs to be flexible and above all – fast.

I launched one of the applications that was built using this process in 1992 for Macintosh. As many of you know, the entire architecture of Mac- hardware and operating system has gone through complete change, and to my surprise and excitement, it worked flawlessly. A great reminder to me of the Art of Continuous Change helping create long lasting value.