Statistical Process Control: Practitioner's Guide

I loved this stuff. I used SPC to monitor individual job crashes in terms as mean time between failures. My position did not allow me to directly influence the many stakeholders who seemed unable or lazy to fix their code, but I had nice automated metrics to shine the flashlight on problems that I thought should be fixed and thru that, I was able to get many of the stakeholders to take action.

>The harsh truth for Alice’s manager – and a lot of people – is that you don’t get to pick the process limits. The process limits is the system trying to communicate to you what it is actually capable of. You have to accept these limits because anything else is delusion. You can either listen to the voice of the process and get wiser, or ignore it and look like a fool. Importantly, the system couldn’t care less about what you wish it was capable of. The voice of the process will only ever tell you what it is capable of, no more, no less. This is a deeper point than I have time to expand on here. When in doubt, find out what happens in practise and listen to it. Don’t get blinded by wishful thinking.

The article refuted most of the managers I ever had. They were always looking for a framework or magical tool to turn sht into gold.