Webspam Projects?

Reading an interesting article, I was amazed by the accuracy of Matt Cutts, the guru of online marketing and SEO, one year back.

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/webspam-projects-in-2010/

Short,  but Matt suggests the direction, what Google should look into.

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Regards
Vijayashankar

Project Manager Vs Program Manager

First of all who is a Proect Manager? S/he is one who execute a given project ( software or collection of activities ) in a systematic manner. Tracks and assigns resources. Take care of reporting the progress and ensures the deadlines.

So, project managers are the delivery managers who deliver specific deliverable's. They tend to be a member of the department which is responsible for that specific deliverable and have the necessary technical expertise. Delivery level managers, however, do not report to the PMO but to the respective line managers.

Program managers are assigned from PMO to ensure proper alignment between all project managers, and are responsible for:
(1) single view of the program; being the single point of contact and managing the central depository of information & status on the project
(2) hold the program plan integrating all project level plans, all inter-dependencies, all inter-project commitments and track them to resolution
(3) guide the program through the initiation phase; explain the strategic aim & business case to all stakeholders & project managers; organise kick off meeting
(4) determine the structure to run the project (incl which coordination meetings to be held), which could change during the course of the program; the governance structure; and the communciations plan. Eg, when we launched four major products for the World Cup recently, they can't all have their own separate marketing plan, leading us to have one marketing & communications workstream for all products within that program. And of course, one software project manager may be delveiring for more than one product and each product may require more than one software project manager's delivery.
(5) evaluate all information & development arising externally or from the projects and escalating to all appropriate persons for attention and/or action
(6) identify program level risks and issues (as distinct from project lelve risks); these largely arises from coordination & alignment, or strategy & benefits management
(7) render a single reporting to any stakeholder and senior management, aligning project level documentation & methodology where appropriate
(8) monitoring progress and removing roadblocks to implementation, especially with regards to process (getting procurement to send out a particualrly problematic PO) and project communications
(9) ensure benefits tracking is set up and, most importantly, organise the closeout party

I think that is about it. Based on this, the program manager will require the following skills:
(a) analytical skills to make sense of all information and reducing them into a single coherent picture
(b) strategic awareness as he/she will be the only person ensuring alignment of all efforts towards the strategic aims, while everyone is focussed on delivery
(c) interpersonal skills as you are getting information and delivery through other people
(d) communication skills as the single reporting goes out to so many disparate people (from CEO to technical delivery), there are so many different angles from which people can misunderstand.

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Regards
Vijayashankar

Cloud Computing in Detail

Cloud computing is heralded as the next big thing in enterprise IT. While corporate data centers and on-premise software are not going away anytime soon, "the clouds" will likely have a growing impact on enterprise IT and business activities in many large organizations. CIOs and other business leaders must look beyond the hype to see what opportunities and challenges lie in the cloud—and how this approach can be used to further the organization's strategy to achieve high performance.
Cloud computing is a classic disruptive technology. As such, it has its origin in the fringe of the IT market, i.e., the small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) and consumers, whose need for simpler and lower-cost or even free solutions is underserved by traditional packaged software. As cloud-based services matured, they started to win broader acceptance from mainstream enterprise customers. Now, they compete directly with on-premise and packaged software. The significance of the cloud, however, lies far beyond cheap computing. The Web-enabled, variable cost model represents a huge departure from existing practice, and carries far-reaching implications for IT providers and users alike. A new wave of venture-funded startups are likely to appear, offering an array of innovative solutions ranging from niche applications to cloud middleware and infrastructure services. The emergence of cloud platforms will significantly ease the entry barrier for such small players to develop, deploy, scale and integrate their services. The battle between pure Internet players like Google, Amazon and Salesforce and traditional enterprise vendors has just begun. Incumbents such as SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft have been investing aggressively to extend their on-premise capabilities into the cloud. For example, Microsoft has launched online services to offer its software in the cloud. It is also investing billions in datacenters to help confirm quality and availability. Microsoft has developed a Software + Services hybrid model to offer its customers a choice between on-premise, partner-managed or Microsoft hosted solutions.

One of the key challenges of cloud computing, which is defining successful business models and architectures for value creation in the enterprise. At this nascent stage both SMEs and large enterprises are just beginning to adopt cloud technologies, as CIOs and IT managers learn about how they can deploy the cloud in their organizations it will create business opportunities for startups and entrenched players to develop business models that are successful in serving their customers as well leading to the success of their own companies. .


So contact us for paid consultation.

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Regards
Vijayashankar

Startup biz and development

Nowadays you cannot run a startup in the garage mode. They say, if you code in a product, and lucky you get the rewards.

If you think about and are talking some bare min stuff - Doesnt work!

You cannot sell out! I remember the same suggestion people in 2000! I cut risks under a year after

starting the angel funded B2B messaging product and bailed out in 2002, when cash dried!

At least my plan is not to run a bareshell minimum garage startup now.

For 1 yr, you need 1 mil$. I had budgeting task as well in my prev job. I handled the center as P&L. Indian cars portal costed 6 crores on paper when the launch was done, in 9 months.

I will buy legal SW. Also there would be some advt. Decent office space cost a bit. A full page India wide advt in TOI or Hindu would cost 10 lakhs and above.

Local server would cost at least few lakhs plus the hosting costs. The biz in on net! Reliance quotes a 2MBPS line at 15 Lakhs a yr with dual loop 24x7

guarantee. VSNL might quote 8 lakhs.... reason, multi GB data transfer, with images, walkin video of properties...

I would hv to sustain for a year, with staff. I have seen some space for Rs 30 to 40 k for bare shell. It costs money for a decent fitting. Employees need a cozy setup.

There is huge overhead on running costs. I need some smooth talking, glib lingua MBA's for marketing.

No investor, is willing to invest risk capital in India now. Last time I got decent sum. Not the second round. This time I have commitment by friends for 25 lakhs. But wont help. Anyway once and angel comes in, much would come in trenches fro a stake.

PSG Tech park, Coimbatore costs about 15 Rs/sqft only. But still you have to spend on furniture and systems alone. They also have a per system plan. But if you are talking of customers visiting you, forget it. That idea works only, if you want to hack code. Not for a office presence. But you need to be in Bangalore / Chennai / Hyderabad...

Once the product is stable, I have plans of having some other development too.

A ordinary ink filling station franchise is costing upto Rs 6 lakhs, plus space cost. You might get some return, if you are lucky!

Recently I spoke to one guy, who is out of job for sometime, probably he could code. When I told him the idea, he wants a stake in the co. to work rightaway - not ESOP!

Well, people dont know how to value an idea or a startup biz.

Here is my usual pitch!

The idea is a portal biz, customised portal for each seller as a SaaS ( Frontend + backed CRM + eDataCenter ). Not something like a pure classifieds framework like indiaproperty.com, magicbricks.com or makaan.com

In USA, in time of adversities, online selling was at its peak, particularly auto.

I have 15 months of online portal related with selling, experience.

Also I rolled out Indian cars portal in India, they have 300+ individuals signed up as partners with a 6 crore t/o, probably doubled in 1 year time.

Investors are ready to buy out the concept, if there is working SW...

Many VC's say show me the working product.

Well even to develop that I need space, people and money. Only a part of the development is complete @50%. I need minimum Rs 5 crores to sustain for 1 year.

That would wipe out my entire net worth, if I were to invest myself.

I have a plan to develop it in 6 months with about 20 people. I can get it done with Open Source, and some Microsoft Silverlight stuff.

Ofcourse, the usual startup time - finding space, hiring - add 45 days, min. I can bring onboard some old hands, who worked with us.

Well it is very tough to find, people would would work for free (startup) but to gain exp. That is the option, many are approaching.....

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Regards
Vijayashankar

Should Entrepreneurs Lie?

An experienced VC fund manager I have known for years told me recently that if a person does not know how to seriously twist the truth from time to time, he (she) cannot be an entrepreneur.

I have had numerous conversations with entrepreneurs about lying. All are against it in theory, but in reality, most practice it to some degree. Some don't like the term "lying;" they prefer to call it stretching the truth, or even "marketing." But it's clear, many entrepreneurs feel they have to embellish or twist the truth, or outright fabricate some friendly "facts," to help level the playing field for their business.

Do you condone truth-twisting for entrepreneurs? Is scrupulously telling the truth a luxury that startups can't afford? If so, should we teach entrepreneurs when and how to lie or should we hold startups to the same standards as we now hold the most mature public companies?

Some years ago I worked with an entrepreneur who was raising his first $10 million of VC investment ("Series A"), without which the company could not proceed. One key element in the investment pitch was a strategic relationship with a multinational customer. The day before finalizing the investment, the customer announced that they were backing out. I advised my friend to inform his investors, but he chose to let them know at the first board meeting after the money was in the bank. I don't know how he told them, but there was no apparent negative fallout. Was I being naïve? "I might have lost the company if I had made a fuss over the lost customer." Today this venture has strong revenues, top-tier venture backing, and is a strong IPO or acquisition candidate. Was it acceptable for this entrepreneur to lie to save his venture?

I worked with another entrepreneur who had his marketing team print brochures for new products using language indicating that products had been installed and field tested, when they were still under development. American corporate customers treated this with understanding, but Japanese customers were horrified to discover that the product specifications were hypothetical, leading to a crisis in trust. Eventually the company went to NASDAQ. Should whether and how we lie depend on the culture we are working in?

Thousands of entrepreneurs knowingly inflate their forecasts expecting that investors will "haircut" these forecasts by at least half, certain that they will be penalized if they don't "play the game." As one pioneering and successful (another NASDAQ IPO) entrepreneur told me, whose actual sales were off his initial forecast by a factor of about 50, "We had no idea: this was an entirely new market, so we just put down numbers that the investors wanted to see." Is stretching the truth okay if the other side is expecting it?

One entrepreneur I know, whose FOPSE (For-Profit Social Enterprise) is in Africa, has adopted the "don't ask, don't tell" policy. He does not give bribes himself, but argues that, "we can only solve so many problems at once; I don't like it, but that is the way some — not all — countries here work." My friend structured pricing to distributors so that they had enough margin to make "facilitation payments" if needed. "Don't ask, don't tell" has been military policy for years: Is it good for startups?

When my two partners and I started our company, Triangle Technologies, in 1990, we stretched the truth about how many projects we had actually completed, and how successful they were. Over the years, we actually succeeded with enough projects that we could abandon the lying. It was a big relief. It was tempting to keep our marketing hype ahead of the reality, but gradually we felt that we could afford to be very strict about the truth. Is lying acceptable if you are committed to stopping when you can?

I don't have the right answers, but I do know that entrepreneurial lying (whether we call it marketing or raising capital or negotiating or selling the vision) is more prevalent than we care to admit. I have yet to see serious discussion of it in either academia or the real world.

So let's start it here: What do you think?

(c) Daniel J. Isenberg is a professor of management practice at Babson College

How does a PM differ from a TM?

There are enough questions posted about the need of TM being a PM and PM also being a TM.

The confusion arises because of the misunderstanding of the roles and responsibilities of a PM. A PM is supposed to plan, manage and control the different aspects of a Project namely, Scope, Time, Cost, Quality, Risk, Human Resource and Communications (as per the PMBOK). So if we go by this standard also technology is not involved.

Taking it to the next level, a PM has to do all these project related responsibilities with the help of a "Team", and a Project Team according to me should be complementary to the PM and vice-versa. This team infact should have people expert and experienced in the technical aspects of the project (a Tech Lead, technical people like developers or testers or QA engineers etc).

As a combination these two (PM & Team) should work towards delivering the project successfully. You take any one out and the project is a disaster. Similarly you reverse the roles (a PM doing the Technical things; and the Team planning and managing the Project Scope, Risk, HR, Time, Cost Communication etc), and the project again will be a disaster.

The Deming System of Profound Knowledge

The Deming System of Profound Knowledge

"The prevailing style of management must undergo transformation. A system cannot understand itself. The transformation requires a view from outside. The aim of this chapter is to provide an outside view—a lens—that I call a system of profound knowledge. It provides a map of theory by which to understand the organizations that we work in.
"The first step is transformation of the individual. This transformation is discontinuous. It comes from understanding of the system of profound knowledge. The individual, transformed, will perceive new meaning to his life, to events, to numbers, to interactions between people.
"Once the individual understands the system of profound knowledge, he will apply its principles in every kind of relationship with other people. He will have a basis for judgment of his own decisions and for transformation of the organizations that he belongs to. The individual, once transformed, will:

• Set an example;
• Be a good listener, but will not compromise;
• Continually teach other people; and
• Help people to pull away from their current practices and beliefs and move into the new philosophy without a feeling of guilt about the past."

Deming advocated that all managers need to have what he called a System of Profound Knowledge, consisting of four parts:

1. Appreciation of a system: understanding the overall processes involving suppliers, producers, and customers (or recipients) of goods and services (explained below);
2. Knowledge of variation: the range and causes of variation in quality, and use of statistical sampling in measurements;
3. Theory of knowledge: the concepts explaining knowledge and the limits of what can be known (see also: epistemology);
4. Knowledge of psychology: concepts of human nature.

Deming explained, "One need not be eminent in any part nor in all four parts in order to understand it and to apply it. The 14 points for management in industry, education, and government follow naturally as application of this outside knowledge, for transformation from the present style of Western management to one of optimization."
"The various segments of the system of profound knowledge proposed here cannot be separated. They interact with each other. Thus, knowledge of psychology is incomplete without knowledge of variation.
"A manager of people needs to understand that all people are different. This is not ranking people. He needs to understand that the performance of anyone is governed largely by the system that he works in, the responsibility of management. A psychologist that possesses even a crude understanding of variation as will be learned in the experiment with the Red Beads (Ch. 7) could no longer participate in refinement of a plan for ranking people."^[21]
The Appreciation of a system involves understanding how interactions (i.e., feedback) between the elements of a system can result in internal restrictions that force the system to behave as a single organism that automatically seeks a steady state. It is this steady state that determines the output of the system rather than the individual elements. Thus it is the structure of the organization rather than the employees, alone, which holds the key to improving the quality of output.
The Knowledge of variation involves understanding that everything measured consists of both "normal" variation due to the flexibility of the system and of "special causes" that create defects. Quality involves recognizing the difference to eliminate "special causes" while controlling normal variation. Deming taught that making changes in response to "normal" variation would only make the system perform worse. Understanding variation includes the mathematical certainty that variation will normally occur within six standard deviations of the mean.
The System of Profound Knowledge is the basis for application of Deming's famous 14 Points for Management, described below.

Key principles

Deming offered fourteen key principles for management for transforming business effectiveness. The points were first presented in his book Out of the Crisis. (p. 23-24)^[22]

1. Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and service, with the aim to become competitive and stay in business, and to provide jobs.
2. Adopt the new philosophy. We are in a new economic age. Western management must awaken to the challenge, must learn their responsibilities, and take on leadership for change.
3. Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. Eliminate the need for massive inspection by building quality into the product in the first place.
4. End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price tag. Instead, minimize total cost. Move towards a single supplier for any one item, on a long-term relationship of loyalty and trust.
5. Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service, to improve quality and productivity, and thus constantly decrease costs.
6. Institute training on the job.
7. Institute leadership (see Point 12 and Ch. 8 of "Out of the Crisis"). The aim of supervision should be to help people and machines and gadgets to do a better job. Supervision of management is in need of overhaul, as well as supervision of production workers.
8. Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company. (See Ch. 3 of "Out of the Crisis")
9. Break down barriers between departments. People in research, design, sales, and production must work as a team, to foresee problems of production and in use that may be encountered with the product or service.
10. Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the work force asking for zero defects and new levels of productivity. Such exhortations only create adversarial relationships, as the bulk of the causes of low quality and low productivity belong to the system and thus lie beyond the power of the work force.
11. a. Eliminate work standards (quotas) on the factory floor. Substitute leadership.
    b. Eliminate management by objective. Eliminate management by numbers, numerical goals. Substitute leadership.
12. a. Remove barriers that rob the hourly worker of his right to pride of workmanship. The responsibility of supervisors must be changed from sheer numbers to quality.
    b. Remove barriers that rob people in management and in engineering of their right to pride of workmanship. This means, inter alia," abolishment of the annual or merit rating and of management by objective (See Ch. 3 of "Out of the Crisis").
13. Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement.
14. Put everybody in the company to work to accomplish the transformation. The transformation is everybody's job.

"Massive training is required to instill the courage to break with tradition. Every activity and every job is a part of the process." ^[23]

Seven Deadly Diseases

The "Seven Deadly Diseases" include

1. Lack of constancy of purpose
2. Emphasis on short-term profits
3. Evaluation by performance, merit rating, or annual review of performance
4. Mobility of management
5. Running a company on visible figures alone
6. Excessive medical costs
7. Excessive costs of warranty, fueled by lawyers who work for contingency fees

"A Lesser Category of Obstacles" includes

1. Neglecting long-range planning
2. Relying on technology to solve problems
3. Seeking examples to follow rather than developing solutions
4. Excuses, such as "Our problems are different"
5. Obsolescence in school that management skill can be taught in classes^[24]
6. Reliance on quality control department rather than management, supervisors, managers of purchasing, and production workers
7. Placing blames on workforces who only responsible for 15% of mistake where the system desired by management is responsible for 85% of the unintended consequences
8. Relying on quality inspection rather than improve product quality

Deming's advocacy of the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle, his 14 Points, and Seven Deadly Diseases have had tremendous influence outside of manufacturing and have been applied in other arenas, such as in the relatively new field of sales process engineering.^[25]

Quotations and concepts

In his later years, Dr. Deming taught many concepts, which he emphasized by key sayings or quotations that he repeated. A number of these quotes have been recorded.^[26] Some of the concepts might seem to be oxymorons or contradictory to each other; however, the student is given each concept to ponder its meaning in the whole system, over time.

• "There is no substitute for knowledge." This statement emphasizes the need to know more, about everything in the system. It is considered as a contrast to the old statement, "There is no substitute for hard work" by Thomas Alva Edison (1847–1931). Instead, a small amount of knowledge could save many hours of hard work.

• "The most important things cannot be measured." The issues that are most important, long term, cannot be measured in advance. However, they might be among the factors that an organization is measuring, just not understood as most important at the time.

• "The most important things are unknown or unknowable." The factors that have the greatest impact, long term, can be quite surprising. Analogous to an earthquake that disrupts service, other "earth-shattering" events that most affect an organization will be unknown or unknowable, in advance. Other examples of important things would be: a drastic change in technology, or new investment capital.

• "Experience by itself teaches nothing."^[26] This statement emphasizes the need to interpret and apply information against a theory or framework of concepts that is the basis for knowledge about a system. It is considered as a contrast to the old statement, "Experience is the best teacher" (Dr. Deming disagreed with that). To Dr. Deming, knowledge is best taught by a master who explains the overall system through which experience is judged; experience, without understanding the underlying system, is just raw data that can be misinterpreted against a flawed theory of reality. Deming's view of experience is related to Shewhart's concept, "Data has no meaning apart from its context" (see Walter A. Shewhart, "Later Work").

• "By what method?... Only the method counts."^[26] When information is obtained, or data is measured, the method, or process used to gather information, greatly affects the results. For example, the "Hawthorne effect" showed that people just asking frequently for opinions seemed to affect the resulting outcome, since some people felt better just being asked for their opinion. Dr. Deming warned that basing judgments on customer complaints alone ignored the general population of other opinions, which should be judged together, such as in a statistical sample of the whole, not just isolated complaints: survey the entire group about their likes and dislikes. The extreme complaints might not represent the attitudes of the whole group. Similarly, measuring or counting data depends on the instrument or method used.

• "You can expect what you inspect." Dr. Deming emphasized the importance of measuring and testing to predict typical results. If a phase consists of inputs + process + outputs, all 3 are inspected to some extent. Problems with inputs are a major source of trouble, but the process using those inputs can also have problems. By inspecting the inputs and the process more, the outputs can be better predicted, and inspected less. Rather than use mass inspection of every output product, the output can be statistically sampled in a cause-effect relationship through the process.

• "Special Causes and Common Causes": Dr. Deming considered anomalies in quality to be variations outside the control limits of a process. Such variations could be attributed to one-time events called "special causes" or to repeated events called "common causes" that hinder quality.

• Acceptable Defects: Rather than waste efforts on zero-defect goals, Dr. Deming stressed the importance of establishing a level of variation, or anomalies, acceptable to the recipient (or customer) in the next phase of a process. Often, some defects are quite acceptable, and efforts to remove all defects would be an excessive waste of time and money.

• The Deming Cycle (or Shewhart Cycle): As a repetitive process to determine the next action, the Deming Cycle describes a simple method to test information before making a major decision. The 4 steps in the Deming Cycle are: Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA), also known as Plan-Do-Study-Act or PDSA. Dr. Deming called the cycle the Shewhart Cycle, after Walter A. Shewhart. The cycle can be used in various ways, such as running an experiment: PLAN (design) the experiment; DO the experiment by performing the steps; CHECK the results by testing information; and ACT on the decisions based on those results.

• Semi-Automated, not Fully Automated: Dr. Deming lamented the problem of automation gone awry ("robots painting robots"): instead, he advocated human-assisted semi-automation, which allows people to change the semi-automated or computer-assisted processes, based on new knowledge. Compare to Japanese term 'jidoka' (which can be loosely translated as "automation with a human touch").

• "The problem is at the top; management is the problem." ^[21] Dr. Deming emphasized that the top-level management had to change to produce significant differences, in a long-term, continuous manner. As a consultant, Deming would offer advice to top-level managers, if asked repeatedly, in a continuous manner.

• "What is a system? A system is a network of interdependent components that work together to try to accomplish the aim of the system. A system must have an aim. Without an aim, there is no system. The aim of the system must be clear to everyone in the system. The aim must include plans for the future. The aim is a value judgment. (We are of course talking here about a man-made system.)" ^[21]

• "A system must be managed. It will not manage itself. Left to themselves in the Western world, components become selfish, competitive. We can not afford the destructive effect of competition." ^[21]

• "To successfully respond to the myriad of changes that shake the world, transformation into a new style of management is required. The route to take is what I call profound knowledge—knowledge for leadership of transformation." ^[21]

• "The worker is not the problem. The problem is at the top! Management!" ^[27] Management's job. It is management's job to direct the efforts of all components toward the aim of the system. The first step is clarification: everyone in the organization must understand the aim of the system, and how to direct his efforts toward it. Everyone must understand the damage and loss to the whole organization from a team that seeks to become a selfish, independent, profit centre." ^[21]

• "They realized that the gains that you get by statistical methods are gains that you get without new machinery, without new people. Anybody can produce quality if he lowers his production rate. That is not what I am talking about. Statistical thinking and statistical methods are to Japanese production workers, foremen, and all the way through the company, a second language. In statistical control, you have a reproducible product hour after hour, day after day. And see how comforting that is to management, they now know what they can produce, they know what their costs are going to be." ^[28]

• "I think that people here expect miracles. American management thinks that they can just copy from Japan—but they don't know what to copy!" ^[28]

• "What is the variation trying to tell us about a process, about the people in the process?" ^[21] Dr. Shewhart created the basis for the control chart and the concept of a state of statistical control by carefully designed experiments. While Dr. Shewhart drew from pure mathematical statistical theories, he understood that data from physical processes never produce a "normal distribution curve" (a Gaussian distribution, also commonly referred to as a "bell curve"). He discovered that observed variation in manufacturing data did not always behave the same way as data in nature (Brownian motion of particles). Dr. Shewhart concluded that while every process displays variation, some processes display controlled variation that is natural to the process, while others display uncontrolled variation that is not present in the process causal system at all times.^[29] Dr. Deming renamed these distinctions "common cause" for chance causes and "special cause" for assignable causes. He did this so the focus would be placed on those responsible for doing something about the variation, rather than the source of the variation. It is top management's responsibility to address "common cause" variation, and therefore it is management's responsibility to make improvements to the whole system. Because "special cause" variation is assignable, workers, supervisors or middle managers that have direct knowledge of the assignable cause best address this type of specific intervention.^[8]

• (Deming on Quality Circles) "That's all window dressing. That's not fundamental. That's not getting at change and the transformation that must take place. Sure we have to solve problems. Certainly stamp out the fire. Stamp out the fire and get nowhere. Stamp out the fires puts us back to where we were in the first place. Taking action on the basis of results without theory of knowledge, without theory of variation, without knowledge about a system. Anything goes wrong, do something about it, overreacting; acting without knowledge, the effect is to make things worse. With the best of intentions and best efforts, managing by results is, in effect, exactly the same, as Dr. Myron Tribus put it, while driving your automobile, keeping your eye on the rear view mirror, what would happen? And that's what management by results is, keeping your eye on results." ^[2]

• "Knowledge is theory. We should be thankful if action of management is based on theory. Knowledge has temporal spread. Information is not knowledge. The world is drowning in information but is slow in acquisition of knowledge. There is no substitute for knowledge." ^[21] This statement emphasizes the need for theory of knowledge (see: epistemology, Shewhart cycle, C. I. Lewis).

• "The most important figures that one needs for management are unknown or unknowable (Lloyd S. Nelson, director of statistical methods for the Nashua corporation), but successful management must nevertheless take account of them." ^[22] Deming realized that many important things that must be managed couldn't be measured. Both points are important. One, not everything of importance to management can be measured. And two, you must still manage those important things. Spend $20,000 training 10 people in a special skill. What's the benefit? "You'll never know," answered Deming. "You'll never be able to measure it. Why did you do it? Because you believed it would pay off. Theory." Dr. Deming is often incorrectly quoted as saying, "You can't manage what you can't measure." In fact, he stated that one of the seven deadly diseases of management is running a company on visible figures alone.

• "By what method?" ^[26] When information is obtained, or data is measured, the method, or process used to gather information, affects the results. Dr. Deming warned that basing judgments on customer complaints alone ignored the general population of other opinions, which should be judged together, such as in a statistical sample of the whole (Sampling (statistics)). Changing the method changes the results. Aim and method are essential. An aim without a method is useless. A method without an aim is dangerous. It leads to action without direction and without constancy of purpose. Deming used an illustration of washing a table to teach a lesson about the relationship between purpose and method. If you tell someone to wash a table, but not the reason for washing it, they cannot do the job properly (will the table be used for chopping food or potting plants?). That does not mean just giving the explanation without an operational definition. The information about why the table needs to be washed, and what is to be done with it, makes it possible to do the job intelligently.