🧭💹Business Intelligence: Perspectives (Part XXI: Data Visualization Revised)

Data Visualization Series

Creating data visualizations nowadays became so easy that anybody can do it with a minimum of effort and knowledge, which on one side is great for the creators but can be easily become a nightmare for the readers, respectively users. Just dumping data in visuals can be barely called data visualization, even if the result is considered as such. The problems of visualization are multiple – the lack of data culture, the lack of understanding processes, data and their characteristics, the lack of being able to define and model problems, the lack of educating the users, the lack of managing the expectations, etc.

There are many books on data visualization though they seem an expensive commodity for the ones who want rapid enlightenment, and often the illusion of knowing proves maybe to be a barrier. It's also true that many sets of data are so dull, that the lack of information and meaning is compensated by adding elements that give a kitsch look-and-feel (aka chartjunk), shifting the attention from the valuable elements to decorations. So, how do we overcome the various challenges? 

Probably, the most important step when visualizing data is to define the primary purpose of the end product. Is it to inform, to summarize or to navigate the data, to provide different perspectives at macro and micro level, to help discovery, to explore, to sharpen the questions, to make people think, respectively understand, to carry a message, to be artistic or represent truthfully the reality, or maybe is just a filler or point of attraction in a textual content?

Clarifying the initial purpose is important because it makes upfront the motives and expectations explicit, allowing to determine the further requirements, characteristics, and set maybe some limits in what concern the time spent and the qualitative and/or qualitative criteria upon which the end result should be eventually evaluated. Narrowing down such aspects helps in planning and the further steps performed. 

Many of the steps are repetitive and past experience can help reduce the overall effort. Therefore, professionals in the field, driven by intuition and experience probably don't always need to go through the full extent of the process. Conversely, what is learned and done poorly, has high chances of delivering poor quality. 

A visualization can be considered as effective when it serves the intended purpose(s), when it reveals with minimal effort the patterns, issues or facts hidden in the data, when it allows people to explore the data, ask questions and find answers altogether. One can talk also about efficiency, especially when readers can see at a glance the many aspects encoded in the visualization. However, the more the discovery process is dependent on data navigation via filters or other techniques, the more difficult it becomes to talk about efficiency.

Better criteria to judge visualizations is whether they are meaningful and useful for the readers, whether the readers understood the authors' intent, the further intrinsic implication, though multiple characteristics can be associated with these criteria: clarity, specificity, correctedness, truthfulness, appropriateness, simplicity, etc. All these are important in lower or higher degree depending on the broader context of the visualization.

All these must be weighted in the bigger picture when creating visualizations, though there are probably also exceptions, especially on the artistic side, where artists can cut corners for creating an artistic effect, though also in here the authors need to be truthful to the data and make sure that their work don't distort excessively the facts. Failing to do so might not have an important impact on the short term,considerably. though in time the effects can ripple with unexpected effects.

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🧭Business Intelligence: A Software Engineer's Perspective I (Houston, we have a Problem!)

Business Intelligence Series

One of the critics addressed to the BI/Data Analytics, Data Engineering and even Data Science fields is their resistance to applying Software Engineering (SE) methods in practice. SE can be regarded as the application of sound methods, methodologies, techniques, principles, and practices to obtain high quality economic software in a reproducible manner. At minimum, should be applied SE techniques and practices proven to work, for example the use of best practices, reference technologies, standardized processes for requirements gathering and management, etc. This doesn't mean that one should apply the full extent of SE but consider a minimum that makes sense to adopt.

Unfortunately, the creation of data artifacts (queries, reports, data models, data pipelines, data visualizations, etc.) as process seem to be done after the principle of least action, though least action means here the minimum interaction to push pieces on a board rather than getting the things done. At high level, the process is as follows: get the requirements, build something, present results, get more requirements, do changes, present the results, and the process is repeated ad infinitum.

Given that data artifact's creation finds itself at the intersection of two or more knowledge areas in which knowledge is exchanged in several iterations between the parties involved until a common ground is achieved, this process is totally inefficient from multiple perspectives. First of all, it takes considerably more time than planned to reach a solution, resources being wasted in the process, multiple forms of waste being involved. Secondly, the exchange and retention of knowledge resulting from the process is minimal, mainly on a need by basis. This might look as an efficient approach on the short term, but is inefficient overall.

BI reflects the general issues from SE - most of the issues can be traced back to requirements - if the requirements are incorrect and there's no magic involved in between, then one can't expect for the solution to be correct. The bigger the difference between the initial and final requirements elicited in the process, the more resources are wasted. The more time passes between the start of the development phase and the time a solution is presented to the customer, the longer it takes to build the final solution. Same impact have the time it takes to establish a common ground and other critical factors for success involved in the process.

One can address these issues through better requirements elicitation, rapid prototyping, the use of agile methodologies and similar approaches, though the general feeling is that even if they bring improvements, they don't address the root causes - lack of data literacy skills, lack of knowledge about the business, lack of maturity in planning and executing tasks, the inexistence of well-designed processes and procedures, respectively the lack of an engineering mindset.

These inefficiencies have low impact when building a report occasionally, though they accumulate and tend to create systemic issues in what concerns the overall BI effort. They are addressed locally by experts and in general through a strategic approach like the elaboration of a BI strategy, though organizations seldom pay attention to them. Some organizations consider that they are automatically addressed as part of the data culture, though data culture focuses in general on data literacy and not on the whole set of assumptions mentioned above.

An experienced data professional sees more likely the inefficiencies, tries to address them locally in his interactions with the various stakeholders, he/she can build a business case for addressing them, though it depends on organizations to recognize that they have a problem, respective address the inefficiencies in a strategic and systemic manner!

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📊Graphical Representation: Graphics We Live By II (Discount Rates in MS Excel)

Graphical Representation Series

It's difficult, if not impossible, to give general rules on how data visualizations should be built. However, the data professional can use a set of principles, which are less strict than rules, and validate one's work against them. Even then one might need to make concessions and go against the principles or common sense, though such cases should be few, at least in theory. One of such important principles is reflected in Tufte's statement that "if the statistics are boring, then you've got the wrong numbers" [1].

So, the numbers we show should not be boring, but that's the case with most of the numbers we need to show, or we consume in news and other media sources. Unfortunately, in many cases we need to go with the numbers we have and find a way to represent them, ideally by facilitating the reader to make sense of the respective data. This should be our first goal when visualizing data. Secondly, because everybody talks about insights nowadays, one should identify the opportunity for providing views into the data that go beyond the simple visualization, even if this puts more burden on data professional's shoulder. Frankly, from making sense of a set of data and facilitating an 'Aha' moment is a long leap. Thirdly, one should find or use the proper tools and channels for communicating the findings. 

A basic requirement for the data professional to be able to address these goals is to have clear definitions of the numbers, have a good understanding of how the numbers reflect the reality, respectively how the numbers can be put into the broader context. Unfortunately, all these assumptions seem to be a luxury. On the other side, the type of data we work with allows us to address at least the first goal. Upon case, our previous experience can help, though there will be also cases in which we can try to do our best. 

Let's consider a simple set of data retrieved recently from another post - Discount rates (in percentage) per State, in which the values for 5 neighboring States are considered (see the first two columns from diagram A). Without knowing the meaning of data, one could easily create a chart in Excel or any other visualization tool. Because the State has categorical values, probably some visualization tools will suggest using bar and not column charts. Either by own choice or by using the default settings, the data professional might end up with a column chart (see diagram B), which is Ok for some visualizations. 

One can start with a few related questions:

(1) Does it make sense to use a chart to represent 5 values which have small variability (the difference between the first and last value is of only 6%)? 

(2) Does it make sense to use a chart only for the sake of visualizing the data?

(3) Where is the benefit for using a chart as long there's no information conveyed? 

One can see similar examples in the media where non-aggregated values are shown in a chart just for the sake of visualizing the data. Sometimes the authors compensate for the lack of meaning with junk elements, fancy titles or other tricks. Usually, sense-making in a chart takes longer than looking at the values in a table as there are more dimensions or elements to consider. For a table there's the title, headers and the values, nothing more! For a chart one has in addition the axes and some visualization elements that can facilitate or complicate visualization's decoding. Where to add that there are also many tricks to distort the data. 

Tables tend to maximize the amount of digital ink used to represent the data, and minimize the amount used to represent everything else not important to understanding. It's what Tufte calls the data-to-ink ratio (see [1]), a second important principle. This can be translated in (a) removing the border of the chart area, (b) minimizing the number of gridlines shown, (c) minimizing the number of ticks on the axis without leading to information lost, (d) removing redundant information, (e) or information that doesn't help the reader. 

However, the more data is available in the table, the more difficult it becomes to navigate the data. But again, if the chart shows the individual data without any information gained, a table might be still more effective. One shouldn't be afraid to show a table where is the case!

(4) I have a data visualization, what's next?

Ideally, the data professional should try to obtain the maximum of effect with minimum of elements. If this principle aims for the efficiency of design, a fourth related principle aims for the efficiency of effort - one should achieve a good enough visualization with a minimum of effort. Therefore, it's enough maybe if we settle to any of the two above results. 

On the other side, maybe by investing a bit more effort certain aspects can be improved. In this area beginners start playing with the colors, formatting the different elements of the chart. Unfortunately, even if color plays a major role in the encoding and decoding of meaning, is often misused/overused. 

(5) Is there any meaning in the colors used?

In the next examples taken from the web (diagram C and D), the author changed the color of the column with the minimal value to red to contrast it with the other values. Red is usually associated with danger, error, warning, or other similar characteristics with negative impact. The chances are high that the reader will associate the value with a negative connotation, even if red is used also for conveying important information (usually in text). Moreover, the reader will try to interpret the meaning of the other colors. In practice, the color grey has a neutral tone (and calming effect on the mind). Therefore, it's safe to use grey in visualization (see diagram D in contrast with diagram C). Some even advise setting grey as default for the visualization and changing the colors as needed later. 

In these charts, the author signalized in titles that red denotes the lowest value, though it just reduces the confusion. One can meet titles in which several colors are used, reminding of a Christmas tree. Frankly, this type of encoding is not esthetically pleasing, and it can annoy the reader. 

(6) What's in a name?

The titles and, upon case, the subtitles are important elements in communicating what the data reflects. The title should be in general short and succinct in the information it conveys, having the role of introducing, respectively identifying the chart, especially when multiple charts are used. Some charts can also use a subtitle, which can be longer than the title and have more of a storytelling character by highlighting the message and/or the finding in the data. In diagrams C and D the subtitles were considered as tiles, which is not considerably wrong. 

In the media and presentations with influencing character, subtitles help the user understand the message or the main findings, though it's not appropriate for hardcoding the same in dynamic dashboards. Even if a logic was identified to handle the various scenarios, this shifts users' attention, and the chance is high that they'll stop further investigating the visualization. A data professional should present the facts with minimal interference in how the audience and/or users perceive the data. 

As a recommendation, one should aim for clear general titles and avoid transmitting own message in charts. As a principle this can be summarized as "aim for clarity and equidistance".

(7) What about meaning?

Until now we barely considered the meaning of data. Unfortunately, there's no information about what the Discount rate means. It could be "the minimum interest rate set by the US Federal Reserve (and some other national banks) for lending to other banks" or "a rate used for discounting bills of exchange", to use the definitions given by the Oxford dictionary. Searching on the web, the results lead to discount rates for royalty savings, resident tuitions, or retail for discount transactions. Most probably the Discount rates from the data set refer to the latter.

We need a definition of the Discount rate to understand what the values represent when they are ordered. For example, when Texas has a value of 25% (see B), does this value have a negative or a positive impact when compared with other values? It depends on how it's used in the associated formula. The last two charts consider that the minimum value has a negative impact, though without more information the encoding might be wrong! 

Important formulas and definitions should be considered as side information in the visualization, accompanying text or documentation! If further resources are required for understanding the data, then links to the required resources should be provided as well. At least this assures that the reader can acquire the right information without major overhead. 

(8) What do readers look for? 

Frankly, this should have been the first question! Readers have different expectations from data visualizations. First of all, it's the curiosity - how the data look in row and/or aggregated form, or in more advanced form how are they shaped (e.g. statistical characteristics like dispersion, variance, outliers). Secondly, readers look in the first phase to understand mainly whether the "results" are good or bad, even if there are many shades of grey in between. Further on, there must be made distinction between readers who want to learn more about the data, models, and processes behind, respectively readers who just want a confirmation of their expectations, opinions and beliefs (aka bias). And, in the end, there are also people who are not interested in the data and what it tells, where the title and/or subtitle provide enough information. 

Besides this there are further categories of readers segmented by their role in the decision making, the planning and execution of operational, tactical, or strategic activities. Each of these categories has different needs. However, this exceeds the scope of our analysis. 

Returning to our example, one can expect that the average reader will try to identify the smallest and highest Discount rates from the data set, respectively try to compare the values between the different States. Sorting the data and having the values close to each other facilitates the comparison and ranking, otherwise the reader needing to do this by himself/herself. This latter aspect and the fact that bar charts better handle the display of categorical data such as length and number, make from bar charts the tool of choice (see diagram E). So, whenever you see categorical data, consider using a bar chart!

Despite sorting the data, the reader might still need to subtract the various values to identify and compare the differences. The higher the differences between the values, the more complex these operations become. Diagram F is supposed to help in this area, the comparison to the minimal value being shown in orange. Unfortunately, small variances make numbers' display more challenging especially when the visualization tools don't offer display alternatives.

For showing the data from Diagram F were added in the table the third and fourth columns (see diagram A). There's a fifth column which designates the percentage from a percentage (what's the increase in percentages between the current and minimal value). Even if that's mathematically possible, the gain from using such data is neglectable and can create confusion. This opens the door for another principle that applies in other areas as well: "just because you can, it doesn't mean you should!". One should weigh design decisions against common sense or one's intuition on how something can be (mis)used and/or (mis)understood!

The downside of Diagram F is that the comparisons are made only in relation to the minimum value. The variations are small and allow further comparisons. The higher the differences, the more challenging it becomes to make further comparisons. A matrix display (see diagram G) which compares any two values will help if the number of points is manageable. The upper side of the numbers situated on and above the main diagonal were grayed (and can be removed) because they are either nonmeaningful, or the negatives of the numbers found below the diagram. Such diagrams are seldom used, though upon case they prove to be useful.

Choropleth maps (diagram H) are met almost everywhere data have a geographical dimension. Like all the other visuals they have their own advantages (e.g. relative location on the map) and disadvantages (e.g. encoding or displaying data). The diagram shows only the regions with data (remember the data-to-ink ratio principle).

(9) How about the shape of data?

When dealing with numerical data series, it's useful to show aggregated summaries like the average, quartiles, or standard deviation to understand how the data are shaped. Such summaries don't really make sense for our data set given the nature of the numbers (five values with small variance). One can still calculate them and show them in a box plot, though the benefit is neglectable. 

(10) Which chart should be used?

As mentioned above, each chart has advantages and disadvantages. Given the simplicity and the number of data points, any of the above diagrams will do. A table is simple enough despite not using any visualization effects. Also, the bar charts are simple enough to use, with a plus maybe for diagram F which shows a further dimension of the data. The choropleth map adds the geographical dimension, which could be important for some readers. The matrix table is more appropriate for technical readers and involves more effort to understand, at least at first sight, though the learning curve is small. The column charts were considered only for exemplification purposes, though they might work as well. 

In the end one should go with own experience and consider the audience and the communication channels used. One can also choose 2 different diagrams, especially when they are complementary and offer an additional dimension (e.g. diagrams F and H), though the context may dictate whether their use is appropriate or not. The diagrams should be simple to read and understand, but this doesn't mean that one should stick to the standard visuals. The data professional should explore other means of representing the data, a fresh view having the opportunity of catching the reader's attention.

As a closing remark, nowadays data visualization tools allow building such diagrams without much effort. Conversely, it takes more effort to go beyond the basic functionality and provide more value for thyself and the readers. One should be able to evaluate upfront how much time it makes sense to invest. Hopefully, the few methods, principles and recommendations presented here will help further!

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Resources:
[1] Edward R Tufte (1983) "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information"

🧮ERP: Implementations (Part II: It’s a Matter of Complexity)

 

There are many factors to blame for implementation process’ inefficiency, however many of the factors can be associated with the complexity of the project itself, respectively of the application(s) involved. The problem of complexity can be addressed by either answering to complexity with complexity, building a complex team to handle the tasks, which is seldom feasible even if many organizations do it, respectively by simplifying the implementation process and/or the application.

In what concerns the project, the complexity starts with requirement’s elicitation, the iterative transformations they suffer until the final functional requirements document is finalized, their evaluation and mapping to features, respectively gap’s identification. It’s a complex task because it involves understanding the business as well the functionality available in the target system(s). Then comes the effort estimation, which, as the name suggests, is just a guess based on available historical numbers and/or experts’ opinion. High-level requirements are easier to manage than low-level requirements, however they allow for more gaps in understanding. The more detailed the specifications, the more they should help in the estimation process, though that’s the theory. A considerable number of factors can impact the process.

Even if there are standard activities in the implementation process, the number of resources involved from the customer as well from the partner(s) side makes the whole planning process a nightmare for any Project Manager, no matter how experienced he/she is.

Ideally, each member of the team should behave like a trooper, knowing by instinct when and what needs to be done, which are the expectations, etc. This might be close to expectation on the partner side as the resources more likely participated in similar projects, though there’s always a mix between levels of expertise, resources migrating between projects. Unfortunately, that’s seldom (never) the case on the customer side as the gap between reality and expectation is considerable.

Each team member requires a minimum of information/knowledge so he/she can perform the activities assigned. Moreover, the volume of coordination and cooperation is considerably higher than in other projects, complexity that increases with organization’s size and is inverse proportional with organization’s maturity in managing projects and implementation-related activities. There’s thus a minimum of initial communication needed, and furthermore communication needs to occur between the parties involved. Moreover, the higher the lack of cohesion between the parties, the higher the need for communication and this applies especially when multiple organizations are involved in the project.

The triple constraint of Project Management between scope, cost, and time, respectively on quality has an important impact on the project. Resources need to be available when the project needs them and, especially on the partner side, only when they are needed. The implementation project to be feasible for the partner, its resources must work on several projects in parallel or the timing must be perfect, that no waiting times are involved, respectively the effort is concentrated only when needed. Such precision is possible maybe at project’s beginning, though the further the project evolves, the more challenging becomes the coordination of resources. Similar considerations apply to the customer as well.

Thus, a more realistic expectation is to have resources available only at certain points in time, and the resources should be capable of juggling between projects, respectively between project and other activities. Prioritizing is a must, and sometimes the operations or other projects have higher priority. When the time is not available, resources need to compromise by reducing the level of quality.

On the other side, it would be great if most of the effort could be concentrated at the beginning of the project, the later interactions being minimal.  

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🌡Performance Management: Mastery (Part II: First Time Right - The Aim toward Operational Excellence)

 

Performance Management Series

Rooted in Six Sigma methodology as a step toward operational excellence, First Time Right (FTR) implies that any procedure is performed in the right manner the first time and every time. It equates to minimizing the waste in its various forms (inventory, motion, overprocessing, overproduction, waiting, transportation, defects). Like many quality concepts from the manufacturing industry, the concept was transported in the software development process as principle, process, goal and/or metric. Thus, it became part of Software Engineering, Project Management, Data Science, and any other similar endeavors whose outcome results in software products. 

Besides the quality aspect, FTR is rooted also in the economic imperative – the need to achieve something in the minimum amount of time with the minimum of effort. It’s about being efficient in delivering a product or achieving a given target. It can be associated with continuous improvement, learning and mastery, the aim being to encompass FTR as part of organization’s culture. 

Even if not explicitly declared, FTR lurks in each task planned. It seems that it became common practice to plan with the FTR in mind, however between this theoretical aim and practice there’s as usual an important gap. Unfortunately, planners, managers and even tasks' performers often forget that mistakes are made, that several iterations are needed to get the job done. It starts with the communication between people in clarifying the requirements and ends with the formal sign off. All the deviations from the FTR add up in the deviations between expected and actual effort, though probably more important are the deviations from the plan and all the consequences deriving from it. Especially in complex projects this adds up into a spiral of issues that can easily reinforce themselves. 

Many of the jobs that imply creativity, innovation, research or exploration require at least several iterations to get the job done and this is independent of participants’ professionalism and experience. Moreover, the more quality one needs, the higher the effort, the 80/20 being sometimes a good approximation of the effort needed. In extremis, aiming for perfection instead of excellence can make certain tasks a never-ending story. 

Achieving FTR requires practice - the more novelty, the higher the complexity, the communication or the synchronization needs, the more practice is needed. It starts with the individual to master the individual tasks and ends with the team, where communication, synchronization and other aspects need to be considered. The practice is usually achieved on hands-on work as part of the daily duties, project work, and so on. Unfortunately, it’s based primarily on individual experience, and seldom groomed in advance, as preparation for future tasks. That’s why sometimes when efficiency is needed in performing critical complex tasks, one also needs to consider the learning curve in achieving the required quality. 

Of course, many organizations demand from job applicants experience and, when possible, they hire people with experience, however the diversity, complexity and changing nature of tasks require further practice. This aspect is somehow recognized in the implementation in organizations of the various forms of DevOps, though how many organizations adopt it and enforce it on a regular basis? Moreover, a major requirement of nowadays businesses is to be agile, and besides the mere application of methodologies, being agile means to have also a FTR mindset. 

FTR starts with the wish for mastery at individual and team level and, with the right management attention, by allocating time for learning, self-development in the important areas, providing relevant feedback and building an infrastructure for knowledge sharing and harnessing, FTR can become part of organization’s culture. It’s up to each of us to do it!

💼Project Management: Project Execution (Part IV: Projects' Dynamics II - Motion)

Motion is the action or process of moving or being moved between an initial and a final or intermediate point. From the tinniest endeavors to the movement of the planets and beyond, everything is governed by motion. If the laws of nature seem to reveal an inner structural perfection, the activities people perform are quite often far from perfect, which is acceptable if we consider that (almost) everything is a learning process. What is probably less acceptable is the volume of inefficient motion we can easily categorize sometimes as waste.

The waste associated with motion can take many forms: sorting through a pile of tools to find the right one, searching for information, moving back and forth to reach a destination or achieve a goal, etc. Suboptimal motion can have important effects for an organization resulting in reduced productivity, respectively higher costs.

If for repetitive activities that involve a certain degree of similarity can be found typically a way to optimize the motion, the higher the uncertainty of the steps involved, the more difficult it becomes to optimize it. It’s the case of discovery endeavors in which the path between start and destination can’t be traced beforehand, respectively when the destination or path in between can’t be depicted to the needed level of detail. A strategy’s implementation, ERP implementations and other complex projects, especially the ones dealing with new technologies and/or incomplete knowledge, tend to be exploratory in nature and thus fall under this latter type a motion.

In other words, one must know at minimum the starting point, the destination, how to reach it and what it takes to reach it – resources, knowledge, skillset. When one has all this information one can go on and estimate how long it will take to reach the destination, though the estimate reflects the information available as well estimator’s skills in translating the information into a realistic roadmap. Each new information has the potential of impacting considerably the whole process, in extremis to the degree that one must start the journey anew. The complexity of such projects and the volume of uncertainty can make estimation difficult if not impossible, no matter how good estimators' skills are. At best an estimator can come with a best- and worst-case estimation, both however dependent on the assumptions made.

Moreover, complex projects are sensitive to the initial conditions or auspices under which they start. This sensitivity can turn a project in a totally different direction or pace, that can be reinforced positively or negatively as the project progresses. It’s a continuous interplay between internal and external factors and components that can create synergies or have adverse effects with the potential of reaching tipping points.

Related to the initial conditions, as the praxis sometimes shows, for entities found in continuous movement (like organizations) it’s also important to know from where one’s coming (and at what speed), as the previous impulse (driving force) can be further used or stirred as needed. Metaphorically, a project will need a certain time to find the right pace if it lacks the proper impulse.

Unless the team is trained to play and plays like an orchestra, the impact of deviations from expectations can be hardly quantified. To minimize the waste, ideally a project’s journey should minimally deviate from the optimal path, which can be challenging to achieve as a project’s mass can pull the project in one direction or the other. The more the project advances the bigger the mass, fact which can make a project unstoppable. When such high-mass projects are stopped, their impulse can continue to haunt the organization years after.

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📦Data Migrations (DM): Quality Assurance (Part V: Quality Acceptance Criteria V)

Efficiency 

Efficiency is the degree to which a solution uses the hardware (storage, network) and other organizational resources to fulfill a given task. Data characterized by high volume, velocity, variety and veracity can be challenging to process, requiring upon case more processing power. Therefore, the DM solutions need to consider these aspects as well. However, efficiency refers on whether the available resources are used efficiently – the waste in terms of resource utilization is minimal. 

On the other side the waste of resources can be acceptable when there are other benefits or requirements that need to be considered, respectively when the ratio between resources utilization and effort to built more efficient processes is acceptable.

A DM solution involves iterative and exploratory processes in which knowledge and feedback is integrated in each iteration, therefore it might look like resources are not used efficiently. However, this is a way to handle complexity and uncertainty by breaking the effort in manageable chunks.

Learnability

Learnability is the degree to which a person can become familiar with a solution’s use, the data and the processes associated with it. A DM can be challenging for many technical and non-technical resources as it requires a certain level of skillset and understanding of the requirements, needs and deliverables. The complexity of the data and requirements can be overwhelming, however with appropriate communication and awareness established, the challenges can be overcome. 

Stability

Stability is the degree to which a solution is sensitive to environment changes (e.g. overuse of resource, hardware or software failures, updates), respectively on whether it performs with no performance defects or it does not crash under defined levels of stress. Stability can be monitored during the various phases and countermeasures need to be considered in case the solution is not stable enough (e.g. redesigning the solution, breaking the data in smaller chunks)

Suitability 

Suitability is the degree to which a solutions provides functions that meet the stated and implied needs. No matter how performant and technologically advanced a solution is, it brings less value as long it doesn’t perform what it was intended to do.

Transparency 

Transparency is the degree to which a solution’s stakeholders have access to the requirements, processes, data, documentation, or other information required by them. In a DM transparency is important especially important in respect to the data, logic and rules used in data processing, respectively the number of records processed. 

Trustability

Trustability is the degree to which a solution can be trusted to provide the expected results. Even if the technical team assures that the solution can deliver what was indented, the success of a DM is a matter of perception from stakeholders’ perspective. Providing transparency into the data, rules and processes can improve the level of trust however, special attention need to be given to the issues raised by stakeholders during and after Go-Live, as differences need to be mitigated. 

Understandability 

Understandability is the degree to which the requirements of a solution were understood by the resources involved in terms of what needs to be performed. For the average project resource it might be challenging to understand the implications of a DM, and this can apply to technical as well non-technical resources. Making people aware of the implications is probably one of the most important criteria for success, as the success of a migration is often a matter of perception. 

Usability 

Usability is the degree to which a solution can be used by the targeted users within the agreed context of usage. Ideally DM solutions need to be easy to use, though there are always trade-offs. In the end, a DM must fit the purpose it was built for. 

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💻IT: Efficiency (Definitions)

"A measure of the degree to which a system or component performs designated functions with respect to the resources it consumes to perform those functions." (Richard D Stutzke, "Estimating Software-Intensive Systems: Projects, Products, and Processes", 2005)

"a measure of the cost per time or cost per effort." (Bruce P Douglass, "Real-Time Agility: The Harmony/ESW Method for Real-Time and Embedded Systems Development", 2009)

"A quasimetric used throughout this book to describe how well memory and other resources of the processor and platform are utilized by a concurrent implementation." (Clay Breshears, "The Art of Concurrency", 2009)

"Efficiency measures the return on investment in using additional hardware to operate in parallel." (Michael McCool et al, "Structured Parallel Programming", 2012)

"A set of software characteristics (for example, execution speed, response time) relating to performance of the software and use of resources (for example, memory) under stated conditions (normally increasing load)." (Tilo Linz et al, "Software Testing Foundations" 4th Ed., 2014)

"In relation to performance/operational auditing, the use of financial, human, physical, and information resources such that output is maximized for any given set of resource inputs, or input is minimized for any given quantity and quality of output." (Sally-Anne Pitt, "Internal Audit Quality", 2014)

"Efficiency is the degree to which a resource is utilized for the intended task." (Hari K Kondaveeti et al, "Deep Learning Applications in Agriculture: The Role of Deep Learning in Smart Agriculture", 2021)

"a measure of whether the right amount of resources has been used à to deliver a process, service or activity" (ITIL)

"Resources expended in relation to the accuracy and completeness with which users achieve goals." (NISTIR 8040)

"The capability of the software product to provide appropriate performance, relative to the amount of resources used under stated conditions." (ISO 9126)

♟️Strategic Management: Efficiency (Just the Quotes)

"Motion study is the science of eliminating wastefulness resulting from using unnecessary, ill-directed, and inefficient motions. The aim of motion study is to find and perpetuate the scheme of least waste methods of labor." (Frank B Gilbreth, "Primer of scientific management", 1912) 

"If we view organizations as adaptive, problem-solving structures, then inferences about effectiveness have to be made, not from static measures of output, but on the basis of the processes through which the organization approaches problems. In other words, no single measurement of organizational efficiency or satisfaction - no single time-slice of organizational performance can provide valid indicators of organizational health." (Warren G Bennis, "General Systems Yearbook", 1962)

"But waste is often hard to find. The costs of not-doing tend to be hidden in the figures. […] Waste runs high in any business. Man, after all, is not very efficient. Special efforts to find waste are therefore always necessary." (Peter F Drucker, "Managing for Results: Economic Tasks and Risk-taking Decisions", 1964)

"The myth of efficiency lies in the assumption that the most efficient manager is ipso facto the most effective; actually the most efficient manager working on the wrong task will not be effective." (R Alec Mackenzie, "The Time Trap", 1972)

"Effectiveness is the foundation of success - efficiency is a minimum condition for survival after success has been achieved. Efficiency is concerned with doing things right. Effectiveness is doing the right things." (Peter Drucker, "Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Challenges", 1973)

"It is more important for the manager to get his information quickly and efficiently than to get it formally." (Henry Mintzberg, "The Nature of Managerial Work", 1973)

"When thinking about the absolute elimination of waste, keep the following two points in mind:" (1) Improving efficiency makes sense only when it is tied to cost reduction. To achieve this, we have to start producing only the things we need using minimum manpower." (2) Look at the efficiency of each operator and of each line. Then look at the operators as a group, and then at the efficiency of the entire plant" (all the lines). Efficiency must be improved at each step and, at the same time, for the plant as a whole." (Taiichi Ohno, "Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production", 1978)

"Someone adhering to the values of a corporate culture - an intelligent corporate citizen - will behave in consistent fashion under similar conditions, which means that managers don’t have to suffer the inefficiencies engendered by formal rules, procedures, and regulations. […] management has to develop and nurture the common set of values, objectives, and methods essential to the existence of trust. How do we do that? One way is by articulation, by spelling [them] out. […] The other even more important way is by example." (Andrew S Grove, "High Output Management", 1983)

"There is an especially efficient way to get information, much neglected by most managers. That is to visit a particular place in the company and observe what's going on there." (Andrew S Grove, "High Output Management", 1983)

"Most managers are rewarded if their unit operates efficiently and effectively. A highly creative unit, in contrast, might appear ineffective and uneven, and rather crazy to an outside or inside observer." (William G Dyer, "Strategies for Managing Change", 1984)

"Organizations are complex and paradoxical phenomena that can be understood in many different ways. Many of our taken-for-granted ideas about organizations are metaphorical, even though we may not recognize them as such. For example, we frequently talk about organizations as if they were machines designed to achieve predetermined goals and objectives, and which should operate smoothly and efficiently. And as a result of this kind of thinking, we often attempt to organize and manage them in a mechanistic way, forcing their human qualities into a background role. By using different metaphors to understand the complex and paradoxical character of organizational life, we are able to manage and design organizations in ways that we may not have thought possible before." (Gareth Morgan, "Images of Organization", 1986)

"The chain of command is an inefficient communication system. Although my staff and I had our goals, tasks, and priorities well defined, large parts of the organization didn't know what was going on. Frequent, thorough, open communication to every employee is essential to get the word out and keep walls from building within the company. And while face-to-face communication is more effective than impersonal messages, it's a good idea to vary the medium and the message so that no one" (including top management) relies too much on ''traditional channels of communication."" (William H Peace, Harvard Business Review, 1986)

"Corporate governance is concerned with holding the balance between economic and social goals and between individual and communal goals. The governance framework is there to encourage the efficient use of resources and equally to require accountability for the stewardship of those resources. The aim is to align as nearly as possible the interests of individuals, corporations and society." (Dominic Cadbury, "UK, Commission Report: Corporate Governance", 1992) 

"The manager [...] is understood as one who observes the causal structure of an organization in order to be able to control it [...] This is taken to mean that the manager can choose the goals of the organization and design the systems or actions to realize those goals [...]. The possibility of so choosing goals and strategies relies on the predictability provided by the efficient and formative causal structure of the organization, as does the possibility of managers staying 'in control' of their organization's development. According to this perspective, organizations become what they are because of the choices made by their managers." (Ralph D Stacey et al, "Complexity and Management: Fad or Radical Challenge to Systems Thinking?", 2000)

"The premise here is that the hierarchy lines on the chart are also the only communication conduit. Information can flow only along the lines. [...] The hierarchy lines are paths of authority. When communication happens only over the hierarchy lines, that's a priori evidence that the managers are trying to hold on to all control. This is not only inefficient but an insult to the people underneath." (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"Today’s big companies do very little to enhance the productivity of their professionals. In fact, their vertically oriented organization structures, retrofitted with ad hoc and matrix overlays, nearly always make professional work more complex and inefficient." (Lowell L Bryan & Claudia Joyce, "The 21st century organization", 2005)

"Traditional organizational charts tend to institutionalize inefficiency, and misalignment of natural talents to job descriptions." (John Hoover, "Unleashing Leadership", 2005)

"Most dashboards fail to communicate efficiently and effectively, not because of inadequate technology" (at least not primarily), but because of poorly designed implementations. No matter how great the technology, a dashboard's success as a medium of communication is a product of design, a result of a display that speaks clearly and immediately. Dashboards can tap into the tremendous power of visual perception to communicate, but only if those who implement them understand visual perception and apply that understanding through design principles and practices that are aligned with the way people see and think." (Stephen Few, "Information Dashboard Design", 2006)

"Management can be defined as the attainment of organizational goals in an effective and efficient manner through planning, organizing, staffing, directing, and controlling organizational resources." (Richard L Daft, "The Leadership Experience" 4th Ed., 2008)

"An organization’s culture is the underlying set of key values, beliefs, understandings, and norms shared by employees. These underlying values and norms may pertain to ethical behavior, commitment to employees, efficiency, or customer service, and they provide the glue to hold organization members together. An organization’s culture is unwritten but can be observed in its stories, slogans, ceremonies, dress, and office layout." (Richard L Daft, "Organization Theory and Design", 3rd Ed., 2010)

"Efficiency refers to the amount of resources used to achieve the organization’s goals. It is based on the quantity of raw materials, money, and employees necessary to produce a given level of output. Effectiveness is a broader term, meaning the degree to which an organization achieves its goals." (Richard L Daft, "Organization Theory and Design", 3rd Ed., 2010)

"Knowledge is in some ways the most important" (though intangible) capital of a software engineering organization, and sharing of that knowledge is crucial for making an organization resilient and redundant in the face of change. A culture that promotes open and honest knowledge sharing distributes that knowledge efficiently across the organization and allows that organization to scale over time. In most cases, investments into easier knowledge sharing reap manyfold dividends over the life of a company." (Titus Winters, "Software Engineering at Google: Lessons Learned from Programming Over Time", 2020)

"Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall." (Stephen R Covey)

✨Performance Management: Efficiency (Just the Quotes)

"Simplicity is the soul of efficiency." (Austin Freeman, "The Eye of Osiris", 1911)

"Efficiency and economy imply employment of the right instrument and material as well as their right use in the right manner." (Louis D Brandeis, "St. Louis & Ohio Railway v. U.S.", 1928)

"If we view organizations as adaptive, problem-solving structures, then inferences about effectiveness have to be made, not from static measures of output, but on the basis of the processes through which the organization approaches problems. In other words, no single measurement of organizational efficiency or satisfaction - no single time-slice of organizational performance can provide valid indicators of organizational health." (Warren G Bennis, "General Systems Yearbook", 1962)

"But waste is often hard to find. The costs of not-doing tend to be hidden in the figures. […] Waste runs high in any business. Man, after all, is not very efficient. Special efforts to find waste are therefore always necessary." (Peter F Drucker, "Managing for Results: Economic Tasks and Risk-taking Decisions", 1964)

"The myth of efficiency lies in the assumption that the most efficient manager is ipso facto the most effective; actually the most efficient manager working on the wrong task will not be effective." (R Alec Mackenzie, "The Time Trap", 1972)

"Effectiveness is the foundation of success - efficiency is a minimum condition for survival after success has been achieved. Efficiency is concerned with doing things right. Effectiveness is doing the right things." (Peter Drucker, "Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Challenges", 1973)

"It is more important for the manager to get his information quickly and efficiently than to get it formally." (Henry Mintzberg, "The Nature of Managerial Work", 1973)

"Overemphasis of efficiency leads to an unfortunate circularity in design: for reasons of efficiency early programming languages reflected the characteristics of the early computers, and each generation of computers reflects the needs of the programming languages of the preceding generation." (Kenneth E Iverson, "Notation as a Tool of Thought", 1979)

"The practice of first developing a clear and precise definition of a process without regard for efficiency, and then using it as a guide and a test in exploring equivalent processes possessing other characteristics, such as greater efficiency, is very common in mathematics. It is a very fruitful practice which should not be blighted by premature emphasis on efficiency in computer execution." (Kenneth E Iverson, "Notation as a Tool of Thought", 1979)

"There is an especially efficient way to get information, much neglected by most managers. That is to visit a particular place in the company and observe what's going on there." (Andrew S Grove, "High Output Management", 1983)

"Most managers are rewarded if their unit operates efficiently and effectively. A highly creative unit, in contrast, might appear ineffective and uneven, and rather crazy to an outside or inside observer." (William G Dyer, "Strategies for Managing Change", 1984)

"The chain of command is an inefficient communication system. Although my staff and I had our goals, tasks, and priorities well defined, large parts of the organization didn't know what was going on. Frequent, thorough, open communication to every employee is essential to get the word out and keep walls from building within the company. And while face-to-face communication is more effective than impersonal messages, it's a good idea to vary the medium and the message so that no one (including top management) relies too much on ''traditional" channels of communication." (William H Peace, Harvard Business Review, 1986)

"The premise here is that the hierarchy lines on the chart are also the only communication conduit. Information can flow only along the lines. [...] The hierarchy lines are paths of authority. When communication happens only over the hierarchy lines, that's a priori evidence that the managers are trying to hold on to all control. This is not only inefficient but an insult to the people underneath." (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"Management can be defined as the attainment of organizational goals in an effective and efficient manner through planning, organizing, staffing, directing, and controlling organizational resources." (Richard L Daft, "The Leadership Experience" 4th Ed., 2008)

"An organization’s culture is the underlying set of key values, beliefs, understandings, and norms shared by employees. These underlying values and norms may pertain to ethical behavior, commitment to employees, efficiency, or customer service, and they provide the glue to hold organization members together. An organization’s culture is unwritten but can be observed in its stories, slogans, ceremonies, dress, and office layout." (Richard L Daft, "Organization Theory and Design", 3rd Ed., 2010)

"Efficiency refers to the amount of resources used to achieve the organization’s goals. It is based on the quantity of raw materials, money, and employees necessary to produce a given level of output. Effectiveness is a broader term, meaning the degree to which an organization achieves its goals." (Richard L Daft, "Organization Theory and Design", 3rd Ed., 2010)

"I think there is a profound and enduring beauty in simplicity; in clarity, in efficiency. True simplicity is derived from so much more than just the absence of clutter and ornamentation. It's about bringing order to complexity." (Jonathan Ive, 2013)

"Simplicity in a system tends to increase that system’s efficiency. Because less can go wrong with fewer parts, less will. Complexity in a system tends to increase that system’s inefficiency; the greater the number of variables, the greater the probability of those variables clashing, and in turn, the greater the potential for conflict and disarray. Because more can go wrong, more will. That is why centralized systems are inclined to break down quickly and become enmeshed in greater unintended consequences." (Lawrence K Samuels,"Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action", 2013)

🚧Project Management: Cost Performance Index (Definitions)

"A measure of cost efficiency on a project. It is the ratio of earned value (EV) to actual costs (AC). CPI = EV divided by AC. " (Cynthia Stackpole, "PMP® Certification All-in-One For Dummies®", 2011)

"The ratio of budgeted costs to actual costs (BCWP/ACWP). To forecast the cost at completion, multiply the original cost baseline by CPI." (Bonnie Biafore, "Successful Project Management: Applying Best Practices and Real-World Techniques with Microsoft® Project", 2011)

"The ratio of earned value to actual cost, indicating how close the planned cost for completed work is to the actual cost. A CPI greater than 1 means the project is under budget. A CPI less than 1 means the project is over budget." (Bonnie Biafore & Teresa Stover, "Your Project Management Coach: Best Practices for Managing Projects in the Real World", 2012)

"A measure of the cost efficiency of budgeted resources expressed as the ratio of earned value to actual cost." (For Dummies, "PMP Certification All-in-One For Dummies" 2nd Ed., 2013)

"The ratio of Earned Value of an activity to its Actual Cost. CPI = BCWP/ACWP or CPI = EV/AC." (Christopher Carson et al, "CPM Scheduling for Construction: Best Practices and Guidelines", 2014)

"A measure of cost efficiency on a project. It is the ratio of earned value (EV) to actual costs (AC). CPI=EV divided by AC." (Jeffrey K Pinto, "Project Management: Achieving Competitive Advantage 5th Ed.", 2018)

"Ratio of earned value to actual cost to measure efficiency of budgeted resources." (Cate McCoy & James L Haner, "CAPM Certified Associate in Project Management Practice Exams", 2018)

"A measure of the cost efficiency of budgeted resources expressed as the ratio of earned value to actual cost. See also schedule performance index (SPI)." (Project Management Institute, "Practice Standard for Scheduling" 3rd Ed., 2019)

🌁Software Engineering: Maintainability (Definitions)

"The ease of maintenance that a program’s author puts into the program by writing clear code." (Greg Perry, "Sams Teach Yourself Beginning Programming in 24 Hours" 2nd Ed., 2001)

"The characteristic of an information environment to be manageable at reasonable costs in terms of content volume, frequency, quality, and infrastructure. If a system is maintainable, information can be added, deleted, or changed efficiently." (Martin J Eppler, "Managing Information Quality" 2nd Ed., 2006)

"a measure of how quickly and effectively a CI/service can be restored to normal after a failure." (ITIL)

 Maintainability is defined as the probability that a system or system element can be repaired in a defined environment with defined resources within a specified period of time. Increased maintainability implies shorter repair times. (Created for SEBoK)

"The capability of the software product to adhere to standards or conventions relating to maintainability." (Software Quality Assurance)

"The ease with which a software product can be modified to correct defects, modified to meet new requirements, modified to make future maintenance easier, or adapted to a changed environment." (ISO 9126)

"The probability that a given maintenance action for an item under given usage conditions can be performed within a stated time interval when the maintenance is performed under stated conditions using stated procedures and resources." (ASQ)

"The process of testing to determine the maintainability of a software product." (ISTQB)

🖌️Tom DeMarco - Collected Quotes

"Anything you need to quantify can be measured in some way that is superior to not measuring it at all." (Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister, "Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams", 1987)

"As a general rule of them, when benefits are not quantified at all, assume there aren’t any." (Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister, "Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams", 1987)

"Human interactions are complicated and never very crisp and clean in their effects, but they matter more than any other aspect of the work." (Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister, "Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams", 1987)

"Managers jeopardize product quality by setting unreachable deadlines. They don’​​​​​​t think about their action in such terms; they think rather that what they’​​​​​​re doing is throwing down an interesting challenge to their workers, something to help them strive for excellence." (Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister, "Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams", 1987)

"Most of us managers are prone to one failing: A tendency to manage people as though they were modular components." (Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister, "Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams", 1987)

"On the best teams, different individuals provide occasional leadership, taking charge in areas where they have particular strengths. No one is the permanent leader, because that person would then cease to be a peer and the team interaction would begin to break down." (Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister, "Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams", 1987)

"People who feel untrusted have little inclination to bond together into a cooperative team." (Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister, "Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams", 1987)

"People under time pressure don’​​​​​​t work better - ​​​​​​they just work faster. In order to work faster, they may have to sacrifice the quality of the product and of their own work experience." (Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister, "Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams", 1987)

"Programmers seem to be a bit more productive after they’​​​​​​ve done the estimate themselves, compared to cases in which the manager did it without even consulting them." (Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister, "Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams", 1987)

"[The common definition of estimate is] 'the most optimistic prediction that has a non-zero probability of coming true' [...] Accepting this definition leads irrevocably toward a method called what's-the-earliest-date-by-which-you-can't-prove-you-won't-be-finished estimating" (Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister, "Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams", 1987)

"The major problems of our work are not so much technological as sociological in nature. Most managers are willing to concede the idea that they’​​​​​​ve got more people worries than technical worries. But they seldom manage that way. They manage as though technology were their principal concern. They spend their time puzzling over the most convoluted and most interesting puzzles that their people will have to solve, almost as though they themselves were going to do the work rather than manage it. […] The main reason we tend to focus on the technical rather than the human side of the work is not because it’​​​​​​s more crucial, but because it’​​​​​​s easier to do." (Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister, "Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams", 1987)

"The most obvious defensive management ploys are prescriptive Methodologies ('My people are too dumb to build systems without them') and technical interference by the manager. Both are doomed to fail in the long run." (Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister, "Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams", 1987)

"The need for uniformity is a sign of insecurity on the part of management. Strong managers don’t care when team members cut their hair or whether they wear ties. Their pride is tied only to their staff’s accomplishments." (Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister, "Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams", 1987)

"The obsession with methodologies in the workplace is another instance of the high-tech illusion. It stems from the belief that what really matters is the technology. [...] Whatever the technological advantage may be, it may come only at the price of a significant worsening of the team's sociology." (Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister, "Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams", 1987)

"The purpose of a team is not goal attainment but goal alignment." (Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister, "Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams", 1987)

"The [software] builders’​​​​​​ view of quality, on the other hand, is very different. Since their self-esteem is strongly tied to the quality of the product, they tend to impose quality standards of their own. The minimum that will satisfy them is more or less the best quality they have achieved in the past. This is invariably a higher standard than what the market requires and is willing to pay for." (Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister, "Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams", 1987)

"When you automate a previously all-human system, it becomes entirely deterministic."(Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister, "Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams", 1987)

"Whether you call it a 'team' or an 'ensemble' or a 'harmonious work group' is not what matters; what matters is helping all parties understand that the success of the individual is tied irrevocably to the success of the whole." (Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister, "Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams", 1987)

"Ability to change has to be an organic part of the organization. Change has to be going on all the time, everywhere. It needs to be everybody’s business."  (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"And the management team is not really a team. A team is a group of people who have joint responsibility for - and joint ownership of - one or more work products. People who own nothing in common may be called a team, but they aren’t. This is not to say that companies never form real management teams, only that they do so rarely. Most of what are called management teams are a mockery of the team concept." (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"Authoritarian management is obsessed with time. It is destructive of slack and inclined to goad people into outperforming their peers. And it makes learning impossible." (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"Change always implies abandonment. What you're abandoning is an old way of doing things. You're abandoning it because it's old, because time has made it no longer the best way. But it is also (again because it's old) a familiar way. And more important, it is an approach that people have mastered. So the change you are urging upon your people requires them to abandon their mastery of the familiar, and to become novices once again, to become rank beginners at something with self-definitional importance." (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"Each time you add automation, you choose some particularly mechanical component of the work (that’s what makes it a good candidate for automation). When the new automation is in place, there is less total work to be done by the human worker, but what work is left is harder. That is the paradox of automation: It makes the work harder, not easier. After all, it was the easy stuff that got absorbed into the machine, so what’s left is, almost by definition, fuzzier, less mechanical, and more complex. Whatever standard is now introduced to govern the work will dictate (often in elaborate detail) how the few remaining mechanical aspects are to be performed."  (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"Growth is the rising tide that floats all boats. The period of growth is one in which people are naturally less change-resistant. It is therefore the optimal time to introduce any change. Specifically, changes that are not growth-related should be timed to occur during growth periods. This is not because they are strictly necessary then, but because they are more likely to be possible then. You need that advantage going up against Goliath." (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"How people feel can be more a factor in the success of a change than what they think. Anxiety of any kind can only complicate the task of change introduction. That’s why the period of sudden decline of corporate fortunes is exactly the worst moment to introduce a change. People are uneasy about their jobs, worried about lasting corporate health, perhaps shocked by the vitality of the competition. In retrospect, a far better time to introduce the change would have been back in the period of healthy growth. Growth always carries with it a certain necessity for change. You may have to hire more people, expand to larger quarters, diversify or centralize, all to accommodate your own burgeoning success. But growth feels good; it feels like winning. It even feels good enough to reduce the amount of change resistance." (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"In order to enable change, companies have to learn that keeping managers busy is a blunder. If you have busy managers working under you, they are an indictment of your vision and your capacity to transform that vision into reality. Cut them some slack." (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"In the most highly stressed projects, people at all levels talk about the schedule being 'aggressive', or even 'highly aggressive'. In my experience, projects in which the schedule is commonly termed aggressive or highly aggressive invariably turn out to be fiascoes. 'Aggressive schedule', I’ve come to suspect, is a kind of code phrase - understood implicitly by all involved - for a schedule that is absurd, that has no chance at all of being met." (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"Lack of power is a great excuse for failure, but sufficient power is never a necessary condition of leadership. There is never sufficient power. In fact, it is success in the absence of sufficient power that defines leadership." (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"Leadership is the ability to enroll other people in your agenda. Meaningful acts of leadership usually cause people to accept some short-term pain (extra cost or effort, delayed gratification) in order to increase the long-term benefit. We need leadership for this, because we all tend to be short-term thinkers." (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"Management is hard, and not because there is so much work to do (an overworked manager is almost certainly doing work he/she shouldn’t be doing). Management is hard because the skills are inherently difficult to master. Your mastery of them will affect your organization more than anything going on under you." (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"Meaningful acts of leadership usually cause people to accept some short-term pain (extra cost or effort, delayed gratification) in order to increase the long-term benefit. We need leadership for this, because we all tend to be short-term thinkers." (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"Ownership of the standard should be in the hands of those who do the work." (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"Process standardization from on high is disempowerment. It is a direct result of fearful management, allergic to failure. It tries to avoid all chance of failure by having key decisions made by a guru class (those who set the standards) and carried out mechanically by the regular folk. As defense against failure, standard process is a kind of armor. The more worried you are about failure, the heavier the armor you put on. But armor always has a side effect of reduced mobility. The overarmored organization has lost the ability to move and move quickly. When this happens, standard process is the cause of lost mobility. It is, however, not the root cause. The root cause is fear." (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"Quality takes time and reduces quantity, so it makes you, in a sense, less efficient. The efficiency-optimized organization recognizes quality as its enemy. That's why many corporate Quality Programs are really Quality Reduction Programs in disguise." (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"Risk management is the explicit quantitative declaration of uncertainty. But in some corporate cultures, people aren’t allowed to be uncertain. They’re allowed to be wrong, but they can’t be uncertain. They are obliged to look their bosses and clients in the face and lie rather than show uncertainty about outcomes. Uncertainty is for wimps." (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"Risk mitigation is the set of actions you will take to reduce the impact of a risk should it materialize. There are two not-immediately-obvious aspects to risk mitigation: The plan has to precede materialization. Some of the mitigation activities must also precede materialization." (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"Significant organizational learning can’t happen in isolation. It always involves the joint participation of a set of middle managers. This requires that they actually talk to each other and listen to each other, rather than just taking turns talking to and listening to a common boss." (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"Slackless organizations tend to be authoritarian. When efficiency is the principal goal, decision making can't be distributed. It has to be in the hands of one person (or a few), with everyone else taking direction without question and acting quickly to carry out orders. This is a fine formula for getting a lot done, but a dismal way to encourage reinvention and learning." (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"The premise here is that the hierarchy lines on the chart are also the only communication conduit. Information can flow only along the lines. [...] The hierarchy lines are paths of authority. When communication happens only over the hierarchy lines, that's a priori evidence that the managers are trying to hold on to all control. This is not only inefficient but an insult to the people underneath." (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"The right way to think about domain knowledge is as a corporate capital asset, as dollars of investment in the head of each knowledge worker, put there by organizational investment in that employee. When that person leaves, the asset is gone. If you did a rigorous accounting of this human capital, you would be obliged to declare an extraordinary loss each time one of your people quit." (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"The rule is (as with children) that trust be given slightly in advance of demonstrated trustworthiness. But not too much in advance. You have to have an unerring sense of how much the person is ready for. Setting people up for failure doesn’t make them loyal to you; you have to set them up for success. Each time you give trust in advance of demonstrated performance, you flirt with danger. If you’re risk-averse, you won’t do it. And that’s a shame, because the most effective way to gain the trust and loyalty of those beneath you is to give the same in equal measure." (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"There is no such thing as 'healthy' competition within a knowledge organization; all internal competition is destructive. The nature of our work is that it cannot be done by any single person in isolation. Knowledge work is by definition collaborative. The necessary collaboration is not limited to the insides of lowest-level teams; there has to be collaboration as well between teams and between and among the organizations the teams belong to." (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"When a schedule is not met, those inclined to pass out blame are quick to point at the lowest-level workers; they reason that performance is the domain entirely of those who perform the work. They ask plaintively, 'Why can’t these guys ever meet their schedules?' The answer that the schedule might have been wrong in the first place only befuddles them. It’s as though they believe there is no such thing as a bad schedule, only bad performances that resulted in missing the scheduled date. There is such a thing as a bad schedule. A bad schedule is one that sets a date that is subsequently missed. That’s it. That’s the beginning and the end of how a schedule should be judged. If the date is missed, the schedule was wrong. It doesn’t matter why the date was missed. The purpose of the schedule was planning, not goal-setting. Work that is not performed according to a plan invalidates the plan. The missed schedule indicts the planners, not the workers." (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"When communication happens only over the hierarchy lines, that’s a priori evidence that the managers are trying to hold on to all control. This is not only inefficient but an insult to the people underneath." (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"When managers are overworked, they’re doing something other than management; the more they allow themselves to be overworked, the less real management gets done." (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"Whether this person is a designer, product manager, programmer, writer, consultant, or whatever, he/she comes with (1) a set of skills and (2) some explicit knowledge of the area in which skills are to be deployed. The skills alone aren’t enough. Domain knowledge is also required. The more important that domain knowledge is, the less fungible the people are. That means you can’t divide them up into pieces, but it also means that you can’t easily replace them with other people when they leave." (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"If you've been in the software business for any time at all, you know that there are certain common problems that plague one project after another. Missed schedules and creeping requirements are not things that just happen to you once and then go away, never to appear again. Rather, they are part of the territory. We all know that. What's odd is that we don't plan our projects as if we knew it. Instead, we plan as if our past problems are locked in the past and will never rear their ugly heads again. Of course, you know that isn't a reasonable expectation." (Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister, "Waltzing with Bears: Managing Risk on Software Projects", 2003)

"Risks and benefits always go hand in hand. The reason that a project is full of risk is that it leads you into uncharted waters. It stretches your capability, which means that if you pull it off successfully, it's going to drive your competition batty. The ultimate coup is to stretch your own capability to a point beyond the competition's ability to respond. This is what gives you competitive advantage and helps you build a distinct brand in the market." (Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister, "Waltzing with Bears: Managing Risk on Software Projects", 2003)

"The business of believing only what you have a right to believe is called risk management." (Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister, "Waltzing with Bears: Managing Risk on Software Projects", 2003)

"The pathology of setting a deadline to the earliest articulable date essentially guarantees that the schedule will be missed." (Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister, "Waltzing with Bears: Managing Risk on Software Projects", 2003)

"There is probably no job on earth for which an ability to believe six impossible things before breakfast is more of a requirement than software project management."  (Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister, "Waltzing with Bears: Managing Risk on Software Projects", 2003)