Improving quality of a multi-component system

Suppose you have several product testing teams -- let's call them the "A", "B", "C", "D" [etc] teams.

Suppose each testing team focuses primarily on testing "their" component, but teams can also find defects in other components, so for example the "A" team mainly tests the "A" component, but they might happen to find a problem in the "B" component.

The "A" testing team has a manager, who is probably being rated on how well the "A" team is finding defects in the "A" component. The "B" test manager is rated on how well the "B" team finds defects in the "B" component. And so on.

Each manager will tend to say "I want the bugs in our component to be found by us, so whenever those other turkeys find bugs in our component, you guys explain to me why they found it and we didn't."

What will happen then? Whenever the "B" team finds a bug in the "C" component, say, the "C" team will be motivated to duplicate the portion of "B"'s tests that found the "C bug," and they will spend time on this that they could have spent writing new tests.

So here's a puzzle: how to put a stop to this behavior? Because if things go on like this, the "C" team will waste a bunch of time

• writing reports for their manager (who is also in a lousy position) explaining why the "B" team found bugs in the "C" component, and
• duplicating parts of the "B" tests.

In the worst case, everybody will copy everybody else's tests, which means the same tests will be run multiple times, rather than writing and running different tests. How does this improve product quality? (Really, the "C" team should be thinking of other ways to test the "C" component, and the system for that matter, rather than duplicating all the "B" tests that happened to find some "C" bug.)

Here's what needs to happen: The QA Director or VP needs to be told that this nonsense is going on, and they need to put a stop to this sort of internal competition. In particular, they must not ding the "C" manager if the "B" team finds a "C" bug, and so on.

I mean really, if the "B" team finds a bug in the "C" component, the "C" manager's response should not be "Grrr, we should have found that, not those turkeys"; it should be "Terrific! Let's see if we can learn anything from them and write new tests to more thoroughly test our stuff."

Because every bug found inside the company is caught before the customer hits it, and for that we should rejoice. The point of quality assurance is to assure quality of the product as seen by customers; it really shouldn't matter if the "B" team finds "C" bugs or the "D" team finds "B" bugs -- so long as we find and fix the bugs before they get to the customer.

When people don’t stay long on your team

In a conversation that hasn’t happened, I chatted with someone about the team he manages.

“People don’t stay on the team for long,” he says. The team is staffed entirely by volunteers who want to support the team’s purposes, which for purposes of this short essay I’ll describe as “helping people grow.”

Why might people not want to be on this team long? Is it because they don’t really understand what the team’s mission and vision are? That’s possible.

Another possibility is that the work is too difficult—either absolutely (Just Too Much Work) or relative to the results they can see (i.e., “What is the larger organization getting for all this effort I’m putting in?”).

Or there may be something about team dynamics: is the team hard to get along with, is there too much criticism and not enough encouragement for new members’ work? Is the leader hard to get along with?

Now that I think of it, I know of at least two teams with long-term (multi-year) recruiting challenges. Let’s call one of them the “G Team”; it’s hard to get people interested in joining this team. It’s kind of nerdy, to tell you the truth. I was on the team for a while, but then other responsibilities took me away from it. Today it’s still hard to get people to sign up for it. Once people do, though, they seem to stick with it, at least for a few years.

Another team, I’ll call it the “T team”, has people sign up, but they seem to stay on for a fairly short time. I’ve talked with two ex-members of the “T team”; one of them had the odd experience of showing up for a meeting and being put to work stuffing envelopes. This person left the team shortly after that meeting.

Another ex-member had a, ah, an altercation with the team leader. This ex-member apologized for their part in the unpleasantness, but the team leader never ’fessed up to theirs. As far as the leader was concerned, the issue was 100% the ex-member’s fault.

This sort of thing isn’t unique to the non-profit or volunteer world. There are some managers who have a hard time holding on to subordinates. You may have met them; some of them are like the engineer who was never wrong; some have multiple faults (hopefully your manager isn’t like Michael Wing’s composite anti-manager “Burt”), some just work in awful organizations.

But if you’re leading a team of volunteers, or managing a group of employees, and you’ve got high turnover (you get to define the term), you might want to look in the mirror. Some questions to ask (and not ask):

• How have I solicited input from the team about my leadership style, my strengths and weaknesses, things I could change? And how have I responded to that feedback?
• How do I show each team member that their efforts are important? How willing am I to delegate decisions (rather than tasks)? And if they decide something in a way other than I would have, how often have I overridden their decision?
• How often do I give direct, specific encouragements to my team members? The “specific” part is really important. “You’re great” is nice, but it could be insincere. And it could sound insincere. Better to find something they’re doing right and making a sincere and appropriate affirmation about that: “Thank you for putting in the extra effort to find those details supporting our plan; that really improves our chances...” or something like this, is much more powerful.
• When a team member does something I don’t like, how often do I to tell them, vs complaining to someone else? And if I tell them, do I do that in a punishing or a non-punishing way?
• How readily do I admit my own mistakes, misjudgments, failures, to my team?
• Don’t ask: Why are you leaving? (And don’t ask HR what was said in the exit interview, either, if there was one.) Really. An employee leaving the firm knows there’s no percentage in saying anything negative about their ex-manager. And in the non-profit world, what’s the point of saying anything negative to you? If they thought you would/could change, wouldn’t they have said it earlier?
• When was the last time I showed concern for each team member’s personal or emotional life?

The best thing in the world

It happened at lunch: “Tim” caught the vision. What captured him was the hope that “Whenever someone sees me, they see Christ in me.” We were looking at Deepening Our Prayer by Adele Gonzales (link), where an exercise encouraged us to consider 2 Corinthians 3:18:

And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

“Bill” pointed out that the verse says that we all reflect the Lord’s glory; we all are being transformed into his likeness. This put me in mind of Genesis 39:3, which was in a recent sermon on the “With God” life: “[Joseph’s] master saw that the Lord was with him and that the Lord caused all that he did to prosper.”

Joseph, as you may know, was sold into slavery, but the Lord was with him. Though he was a slave, he didn’t despair; he pursued his tasks with intelligence and energy. And the text doesn’t say his master “saw that Joseph was intelligent and energetic”; it says he “saw that the Lord was with Joseph.” What was it about Joseph, I wondered, that his master saw the Lord was with him? How would I have to change so my boss would see the Lord is with me, rather than seeing my talents or whatever?

At our church, we’ve also been praying a shortened version of a prayer of St. Patrick:

I arise today through a mighty strength, the blessing of the Trinity:
God’s strength to pilot me,
God’s might to uphold me,
God’s wisdom to guide me
… and so on

I recently read a longer version which includes these lines:

Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.

http://www.2heartsnetwork.org/Patrick.htm

which I take to mean “may all who see me see Christ in me; and may my words reflect Christ in me.”

It was somewhere in this discussion that Tim’s whole face lit up. The idea really captured him—the idea of being so much like Christ that everyone who sees him would see Christ in him. And rightly so!

Lunch with Tim and Bill was a high point of my week: it’s a joy being with brothers in Christ who remind me how magnificent God’s promises are and who share my joy in partaking of his goodness. It’s the best thing in the world.

Collin reads the November 2012 California ballot propositions

The state ballot pamphlet came the other day, and here's my whack at November's propositions.

30. Temporary taxes to fund education…: YES

    This measure increases taxes on those who can certainly afford to pay them, to relieve the burden on those who can't afford an education -- and we as a state can't afford to destroy the dream of the UC and CSU systems. For more on this, google the "price of civilization" (with or without quotes).

31. State budget. State and local government. Initiative constitutional amendment…: NO

    I was in favor of this until I heard the league of women voters were against it. Their argument makes sense to me: the bill has many flaws and that such minute details don't belong in the constitution.

32. Political contributions by payroll deduction…: NO

    This would tilt the balance of power even more toward the rich and away from labor and the unions that represent them. I hate to disagree with my buddy Charles, and maybe before Citizens United I might have voted for 32. But corporations and super-PACs can raise and spend tons of money, anonymously in some cases, and this bill would make it even easier for them to crush workers.

    Sorry to sound like a Communist, and by the way I don't believe unions are all sweetness and light either. But golly, wasn't Citizens United bad enough? It's like the one side has machine-guns and we want to give them helicopter gunships, while the other side has only stone knives and slingshots.

33. Auto insurance companies.…: YES

    Here's how I understand this, based upon the legislative analyst's summary: today, auto insurance companies can't offer you a discount based upon your being insured by some other company for some time. The proposal is to let them give you a discount for being continuously insured by some other company.

    So who could be against this? Incumbent insurers, that's who! If today my car is insured by, say, Allstate, and I'm considering switching to, say, GEICO... then Allstate can hold on to me by giving me a discount (if I've been insured by them for some years). GEICO might like to give me a discount, but Allstate doesn't want them to be able to do that.

    I think GEICO ought to be able to say "Sure, you've been insured with Allstate for 10 years continuously, we'll give you a discount on your rate."

34. Death penalty…: YES

    For two reasons. First, if you execute an innocent prisoner, you can't give him anything back. We really are not 100% sure about all those guys on death row. Even if you think it's OK to kill a criminal, it's not OK to kill someone innocent.

    Second, it costs a lot of money, much of it from taxpayers, to go through all the court proceedings necessary to execute the prisoner. Or to change their sentence to life in prison. We do not need to spend this money.

35. Human trafficking…: YES

    Human trafficking is an abomination. If the price of more vigorous enforcement is that the "erotic services industry" (read the ballot arguments) finds it a little more difficult to do business, I rally have a hard time feeling sorry for them.

36. Three strikes law…: YES

    The point of this is the three strikes law currently means: "if you have two serious/violent felonies, and one not serious/violent, the judge may or may not be forced to give you a life sentence, depending on the order. If the non-violent/serious one is the third one, the judge must give you that life sentence—but not if it was the 1st or the 2nd."

    Huh? The proposition would change the law to require a life sentence to be imposed for the 3rd serious/violent felony. This only makes sense.

37. Genetically engineered foods. Labeling.…: YES

    Some people think the law is too vague and will cause various problems. But it seems to me a step in the right direction, vs doing nothing.

38. Tax to fund education…: YES

    The story I heard is that the worst case for schools is having both 30 and 38 fail. Some education advocates prefer 30, some prefer 38. But if they attack each other too much and both 30 and 38 fail, that's not a good situation for California's future. Thus I want to give both of them the best possible chance of succeeding.

39. Tax treatment for multistate businesses…: YES

    Why should we give any company a tax break if it's selling a lot of stuff in California? Money from the state is going to the company; it should pay taxes here in proportion to sales.

40. Redistricting. State senate districts…: YES

    The citizens' redistricting commission drew new districts and prop 40 ratifies those state senate districts. There isn't even an argument against 40 in the voter's pamphlet.

"Be transformed," he said

We were talking the other day about how to become less apathetic, which in my case means "how to become less self-centered."

It's part of a more general question: how do we change, how do we grow? How does someone become warmer, more patient, less anxious? The Apostle Paul gave us a command ("Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind," Romans 12:2) and other biblical writers gave us various clues, but we don't have a lot of step-by-step instructions. I know a couple of ways that don't work:

1. Just Trying Harder (Galatians 3:3)
   This doesn't work because my spiritual growth or formation isn't my project; it's God's! John Ortberg gave a terrific sermon on this topic January 10-11, 2009 (link). That command in Romans 12 wasn't worded "Transform yourself"!
2. Hoping for change but not doing anything (James 2:14-17)
   My growth is God's project (we are his workmanship, Ephesians 2:10) but that doesn't mean I just sit like a block of wood. "Be transformed" is a command, as is "Clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, love...." (Colossians 3).

So what does work? I actually wrote an essay on this topic in February 2009, shortly after the sermon mentioned above. I still believe what I wrote back then (except for the links that have since broken), though I might summarize things a bit differently today.

The fact is that God must change us; we cannot change ourselves, as I think the Greeks knew too (besides Paul's rhetorical storm in Galatians 3). Our part is to put ourselves in the way of the means of grace.

Okay, sorry for the jargon, but there's a story of a boy who needed sunlight to be cured from some childhood malady. The cure was in the sun's rays, but the boy's part (or his parents' part) was to make sure he got in the way (the path) of sunlight. In a similar way, God must change me but I must stay connected to him.

If I never read the Bible, never pray, never listen to sermons, never share or celebrate or study with fellow Christians, never participate in the sacraments; if I spend my non-working hours watching television, reading pulp fiction and playing first-person shooter games... then I'm not putting myself in the means of grace and am not doing anything to be transformed.

So does this stuff work? If you put yourself in the way of the means of grace, where the sunshine of God's curative rays so to speak can reach you, will you be transformed?

I have to believe you will, if you want to be. What does Philippians 1:6 say? And what does the rest of Philippians say about how to have 1:6 happen in your life? Or mine? We need to practice humility, to give generously, to be aware that God is the one who changes us, to set our minds on what is true, noble, right, praiseworthy, to refrain from anxiety, to let our forbearance be evident to all, and so on. We put ourselves in the path of the means of grace, we walk in the road of grace, and we'll be transformed by the power of grace.

My February 2009 essay is a little less disjointed (and so is this November followup), but that's what I think. You and I can't just work ourselves into becoming better people without a change of heart, and we can't just wish ourselves there either. We need to focus on letting God work his change in us.

Come to think of it, I wonder if that's part of what Hebrews 4:11 means: "Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest."

When We Can't All Agree

Do you sometimes hear people say, "The Bible is clear on ________" and think, Clear to you, maybe; it's not quite clear to me?

Some issues, what I think are "essentials," really are clear: God created the world; Jesus commanded us to love each other; Jesus never sinned; he died for us.

But Christians who take the Bible seriously can disagree on other issues, particularly on certain "hot topics." On such topics, where sincere biblical Christians may in good conscience disagree, I find Greg Boyd's attitude and example tremendously helpful:

I can fully appreciate and understand how someone for exegetical reasons comes to the conclusion that Calvinism is true… I don't agree with that but I really understand how you can get to that position exegetically.

"Greg on the Open View: Video One"
recorded in 2008 at Azusa Pacific University (video link)

That view, of being able to appreciate and understand how someone can study the Bible and come to a different conclusion than I currently do, is a terrific example for me as I consider some "non-essential" issues.

With that background, let me outline four possible positions regarding an issue which is no longer controversial today, though it was at one time. Ready?

1. The only reasonable position is that it's absolutely OK.
2. I think the Bible permits it, but I understand others may disagree.
3. I don't think the Bible allows it, but I understand others may disagree.
4. The only reasonable position is that it's absolutely forbidden.

Oh, the issue I had in mind was slavery. On that issue I think I find myself at #4, though the viewpoints of 19th-century American Christians—even white American Christians—probably spanned the spectrum. American Christians moved over time away from #1 and toward #4 on slavery.

How about... can women be ordained as elders and pastors? There I think early 20th-century American evangelicals may have been mainly in the #3 and #4 camps, but over time more of us fall into #1 or #2 (though not all of us - click here for example). There we moved overall away from #4 and toward #1, but not all of us. Keller is a #3 on this issue but the PCUSA's position is #1 (link).

There are at least two hot-button non-essential issues in the American church today, which I need not mention here. But on these issues I think #2s and #3s can get along with each other. #1s don't seem to want to tolerate #3s, and #4s don't seem to want to tolerate #2s.

This model, with #1–4, is not original with me, but the originator didn't want to be quoted (I'll update this if they change their mind). I find these categories helpful as I think about these issues, and about others' positions on them.

Helping the Poor—a Traditional American Value

Conservative politicians talk a lot about traditional values. One that doesn't get much air-play from Republicans is unambiguously promoted in The New England Primer 1777 Edition [link]:

Give of your portion to the poor,
  As riches do arise;
And from the needy, naked soul,
  Turn not away your eyes.

For he who doth not hear the cry
  Of those who stand in need,
Will cry himself; and not be heard,
  When he does hope to speed.

If God hath given you increase,
  And blessed well your store,
Remember you are put in trust,
  And should relieve the poor.

I'm not making this stuff up! If you search on "new england primer" (no quotes) and look for these phrases, you'll see this and more.

As Marilynne Robinson notes in The death of Adam: essays on modern thought, we tend to think we know what these books say. I'll confess I had no idea what would be in The New England Primer and was pleasantly surprised to find that our country's history was not just about the so-called "pillars of pioneer wisdom" (self-reliance, industry, etc.), but also a lot of concern for the poor. This included slaves, by the way—at least for some parts of the country. (One selling point for domestically-produced maple syrup was that it was not harvested with slave labor—unlike, say, some sugar from the tropics.)

I wonder if the so-called pillar of self-reliance ever was a major part of early American thought. If it was in fact a modern invention, if it really wasn't ever a real pillar of pioneer wisdom, that would elevate my respect for those old pioneers. As the Bible tells us, He who trusts in himself is a fool (Proverbs 28:26), even as it talks about caring for the poor more than about almost anything else.

from January 2012