Checklists for Successful Projects and Quality Products -
[Cached Version]
Published on: 5/5/1999
Last Visited: 5/24/2009
Arnold Goodman
Associate Director, UCI Center for Statistical Consulting
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After leaving Stanford with a PhD in Mathematical Statistics, Dr. Goodman spent 35 years working with information technology (aka data processing) in aerospace, petroleum and then county government.
He has been responsible for problem solving, planning, performance evaluation, management science, computer chargeback and computer capacity planning.
In addition, he has been involved in the Quality Movement since attending Ed Deming's very first 4-day seminar.
Meeting Summary
Dr. Goodman presented a very interesting talk on use of a checklist and use of surveys of both managers and customers to determine the important things to do in order to assure successful projects with high quality results.
The history of software projects in recent years has not been good.
Surveys have indicated that 34% fail and 50% are 200% over budget, leaving only 16% regarded as completely (in these terms) successful.
Something has to be done to improve this situation.
The work that Dr. Goodman has done stems from that of W. Edwards Deming and Joseph M. Juran.
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Dr. Goodman was able to map Deming's 14 points onto Juran's 15 and Goodman constructed an extra point from Deming's published views to match Juran's.
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Dr. Goodman was able to map Deming's 14 points onto Juran's 15 and Goodman constructed an extra point from Deming's published views to match Juran's.
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Dr. Goodman also presented some longer sets of detailed items that were given decimal rating values indicating their importance.
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Dr. Goodman said that outsourcing is usually justified by claimed reductions in cost and by the availability of better outside technology.
However, it usually means that the internal customer is dissatisfied with results of (previous) projects and especially their usability in meeting customer needs.
After Dr. Goodman had gone over the generic checklist, he presented a more specific list for Data Processing Success.
He followed by presenting the results of a real checklist filled out by patients at a hospital.
He concluded by noting that scorecards are excellent devices for management to use in budgeting and quality control.
You may contact Dr. Goodman by email at agoodman@uci.edu.
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