In the past, W. Edwards Deming, a leading force providing a methodology to introduce quality driven processes into organizations, used to do an exercise called the Red Bead Exercise to demonstrate the stability of predictive systems in organizations and how they can sometimes limit innovation. Recently, Jay Rollins, authored an article in TechRepublic’s IT Leadership newsletter, that pointed out that too much emphasis on standards can become a non-suportive environment within innovation driven companies. While maintaining a stable process driven company can assist a company’s efforts to comply with business continuity standards, information security standards and IT service delivery standards, Mr. Rollins does a nice job in this article to bring our attention to stay focused on that important balance between delivering a stable computing environment and the levels of innovations that so many companies need today to compete in global markets.
The lesson that Mr. Rollins claims that he gets from the “Red Bead Exercise” is not to be too strict with “foreign” software tools or hardware. Do you agree with his position?
