Is Quality really "everyone's job"? (or, In praise of clerical staff)

[This post is a bit of a digression from the main theme of discussing management systems, but it makes a point that is very unpopular these days -- even though I'm convinced it is all true. And it does connect to the topic of documented artifacts.]

You often hear people say, "Quality is everyone's job." Is it? Well, in the sense that everyone should do a good job, … sure. Of course. But in the last few posts I've been talking a lot about documented Quality artifacts: design reviews, meeting minutes, training documentation, and the rest. Who is supposed to write all these things and file them?

Years ago, I worked at a place where there was a lot of resistance to implementing formal Quality procedures. And one day I heard a rumor in the hallway that the hardware engineering manager had instructed his whole team to stay focused on their jobs and not to cooperate with the effort in any way. To this day I don't know if the rumor was true, but for all the voluntary support I got from that department it might as well have been. At the time, it made my job measurably more frustrating.

But you know what? He was right. And even if he never gave such an order, he would have been right to have given it.

Peter Drucker points out that "Concentration is the key to economic results."* If you try to do a little bit of everything, the best you can ever achieve is mediocrity; but if you focus your effort where you are strongest, you have a chance to achieve excellence. And indeed our hardware team at that company did achieve excellence. People who knew the products more deeply than I regularly assured me that we had the best hardware in the industry. When we were acquired by a global organization, and our product line was ranged against their much more extensive line so that they could "rationalize the portfolio" … our hardware was always kept, and it was the other, lookalike products that were discontinued. Every time.

Does that mean that our products would have been weaker if I had gotten more support during audits? Obviously there's no way I can know that. But the principle of concentration and focus is a valid one.

But in that case, who is supposed to fill out the forms if not the affected personnel? Who but the design engineers can possibly write Design Review Minutes, or fill out Engineering Change Orders?

Let me draw a distinction:

• On the one hand, the detailed technical information has to come from the technical experts -- for example, the design engineers. No-one else can possibly provide it.
• On the other hand the typing can be done by someone else. The metadata can be filled in by someone else. The routine information that is nonetheless required can all be added by someone else.

And that way the design engineers can focus on the work that no-one else in the company can possibly do.

Back in the 1960's, every company over a certain size had secretaries and other administrative roles. Today those roles are out of fashion. We think we are being lean by eliminating those roles.

But we're wrong. That's not lean. To force an engineer to type his own minutes or make his own travel arrangements is bloat, just like asking him to empty his own trash. It is to require that a very highly-paid resource squander his time on activities that add a very low value, activities that will never pay back the time he wasted on them. How can this be efficient?

Far more efficient is for the engineer to do engineering -- a high value-add activity that justifies his rate of pay -- and let someone who is paid a lot less do the tasks that anyone can do. This arrangement is actually preferable in two ways. First, as noted, the engineer's time is saved for engineering; second, the administrative worker (who is paid less than the engineer, remember) will do the administrative tasks far better -- more accurately and more efficiently -- than the engineer ever could! This is because the administrator does these tasks all day long, every day. He knows the subtleties that the engineer forgets, and so he fills out the forms right the first time. There is less churn in the system, and therefore less waste.

Naturally all this depends on the size of the company. If your whole company consists of three guys in a garage, then you probably don't have enough work to keep one administrator busy. At that point, yes, you probably all have to write your own minutes and make your own travel arrangements.

But as soon as the company is large enough to keep an administrative staff busy, it is to everyone's advantage to hire such staff and let them become experts at the administrative work that has to be done.

__________

* Drucker made this point repeatedly, but see for example his Managing For Results (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), pp. 11-13.     

Design reviews and product liability

In my last couple of posts I talked about documented artifacts: that you should keep them only when you need them, but also that sometimes you need ones you didn't expect. Today I'd like to talk about one special case: design review minutes.

Whenever I've audited engineers (or almost), they've expressed resistance to having to keep written design review minutes – except in those few cases where the project made them use an automated design tool that required design review comments from somebody else before they could check in their work. In general the sentiment seems to be, "Look, I'm an experienced engineer. I know what I'm doing. Besides, I did ask Fred to look it over and we discussed some of the more interesting parts over lunch. Do I really have to write it down too?"

Of course I understand. At the time, it seems like an extra step, and a needless one. Who is ever going to care why you decided to use a 5 ohm resistor in that spot instead of a 10 ohm resistor? 

But let me tell you what a product liability attorney once told me, years ago. And then think about it.

Before I go on, it is important that I make a number of critical disclaimers. I am not a lawyer. It is not the purpose of this blog to offer legal advice, and no statement that I make here may be construed as legal advice. I might have misunderstood what this man told me, or the rules might have changed since then because it really was quite a few years ago. Before you rely on any of the concepts explained here, consult with professional legal counsel on your own. 

Also: Do not try this at home. Take only as directed. Do not bend, fold, spindle, or mutilate. And do not back up: severe tire damage.

Now, all of those things having been said ….

He started off by explaining that product safety law in the United States is a moving target. The general requirement for product safety is that you have to make a product as safe as the technology reasonably allows you to. So when there are improvements in safety technology, new products are held to a higher standard. But there is no requirement to retrofit older products that are already in the field. When anti-lock brakes were finally perfected, that did not trigger a recall of every car in the United States in order to replace the brakes.

Therefore, if somebody gets hurt while using your product and decides to sue the company, the plaintiff has to prove that you neglected to take some safety precaution that everyone else in the same industry was taking, during the time when that product was released. Maybe in the rare case this is obvious, but often it's not.

What happens next? 

Someone from the Engineering department has to testify in court. Now, the design engineer responsible for the product retired to the Bahamas twenty years ago, and died of old age fifteen years after that. So whoever shows up in court really doesn't know the history behind the product design. In particular, he can't answer the question, "Did the design engineer take into consideration all the currently-available knowledge about safe product design when working on this product?" 

What happens next?

Well, if the company can produce one sheet of paper with the words "Design Review Minutes" across the top, a date, a list of attendees, and some notes about the product design, then according to this attorney the Court is likely to rule that the responsible engineers "probably" discussed safety topics as well, since it is clear they were reviewing the design and the safety requirements in force at the time would have been common knowledge to all affected engineers. Therefore the Court is likely to rule that the plaintiff is forbidden to pursue a line of inquiry that vaguely accuses the engineers of some generalized carelessness or negligence. If the plaintiff has something concrete to go after, or some other line of inquiry to pursue, the case can proceed. If not, the case is dismissed and the company is off the hook.

Naturally we all hope that nobody ever gets hurt using your product. And, as noted in the disclaimers above, I can't actually promise it will be so easy in case someone does. But think about saving some basic design review minutes, just in case.