Why I wrote High Performance Operations…

This entry is a near-duplicate of the entry on my new site, hillelglazer.com.  That site and the blog there are dedicated to a broader perspective within which this  blog is a subset.   The launch of that site and blog coincides with the publication of my new the book, High Performance Operations: Leverage Compliance to Lower Costs, Raise Profits, and Gain Competitive Advantage.

I figured I’d explain how and why I ended up writing the book.

What you see behind me is my office.  This is where I “shoot” most of my blog entries, but I also shoot plenty of video from the field.  At conferences, clients, and even from my car.  Especially when the ideas are fresh in my mind and timely.  My entries are rarely polished, seldom rehearsed, and typically WYSIWYG.  Me. 

I try to keep my content to topics that impact what we’re trying to do, and, with this site, blog and the book, we’re trying to affect change.  We’re trying to help operations avoid having compliance issues drag them down in directions against their desired pursuits.  We do this through several aspects of lean and excellence. 

All things being equal, competing operations with similar market standings will end up fighting over a few percentage points in the noise.  We want to help operations stand apart from the crowd by operating at a level of performance their competition won’t try to reach.  One way to do this is to minimize, if not eliminate the burden of compliance on the operation.  It just so happens that what it takes to do this also has an immediate and long-lasting positive impact on the entire operation, compliance or otherwise.

I hope you join in the discussion over there and find value in your participation.

Greetings!

In the midst of wrapping up a personally taxing week this past Friday, I was greeted by an entirely surprising event: A box with a small shipment of Advance Reader’s copies of my book arrived! High Performance Operations: Leverage Compliance to Lower Costs, Raise Profits, and Gain Competitive Advantage. You can read more about it here: http://amzn.com/0132779889

I’m looking for a few folks to read and honestly review it in preparation of launch in about 6 weeks.

People whose work are related to Operations Management, Lean Enterprises, Performance Management, and similar fields will be right for this work. I only have about half a dozen printed Advance Reader’s copies and I would like to send one to people open to reading it and writing a review on their own personal/professional blogs as well as on Amazon. (Sorry, I don’t have e-book versions and *wish* I did!)

If you are or know someone who would be open to this, please read on and then please contact me via the contact form here.

Since we only have a limited number of copies, we’re going to accept “applications” for readers to qualify them to receive a copy.

When completing the contact form, you can leave the checkboxes blank, but in the open text field, (if you are filling this out for yourselves) please include your blog URL, twitter ID, and any other pointers to writing you’ve done. Also, be sure to tell me about yourselves and why you’re the right person to review and write about a book of this topic. (I’ll assume you’ve read the preview information at the Amazon link, above.)

Remember, I’ve only got about a half-dozen copies to distribute, so we want to put these precious few copies into the right hands. If you’re referring us to someone, please give them all this information, or, give us enough information so we can reach out to them.

So, if you’re still reading, I believe whoever reads the book will find it very relevant to their work (regardless of whether or not they deal with matters of ‘compliance’). One of my earlier reviewers who works for Goldratt’s company called it “a wolf in sheep’s clothing”.

The book is officially set to launch on October 9th. It may come sooner, but I still need to get that sorted out. It would help us out if you wrote an honest review of High Performance Operations sometime during that week (ideally launch day). Should you blog, please include a link to http://www.hillelglazer.com/ which will be revised and re-launched that day as well. (It’s not ready yet.)

If you don’t mind, optionally include the same Amazon link, http://amzn.com/0132779889 in any blog postings.

If you choose to also post a review on Amazon, you won’t be able to do that until launch day. I’ll update those who receive a book with the exact date as more information becomes available.

Please mention @hi11e1 anytime you tweet about the book or your reviews of it.

Oh, if we accept your application to read and write a review, you’re accepting a free book from me. Doing so, you acknowledge your understanding of the FTC Guides regarding endorsements. Specifically, you agree to disclose in your blog (and Amazon review, if you write one) that you received a free advanced copy of the book, and you agree that your statements will be your honest opinions of the book.

Everyone who qualifies, receives an Advance Reader’s copy of the book, and writes a review will receive a signed copy of the fully published hard-copy of the book after it launches!

Still interested?

Please contact me and we’ll get copies out during the week of 29 August.

I’m speaking @ the Lean Software and Systems Conference 2011.

The program is amazing!

I highly encourage attendance.

There’s an entire day in cooperation with the SEI with 3 unique tracks on it including a track on CMMI and Multi-Modal Processes (which I’m chairing).

Take a look at my talk… it’s from my upcoming book: High Performance Operations.

Register quickly and make your hotel reservations! Block rooms are nearly gone!

Bill Fox is compiling interviews with leading process improvement experts into quick, hard-hitting bursts of rich information.

The first issues is now available.

(I’m in it.)

Sign up for free and to receive future editions.

http://www.5minutespisuccess.com/

I often take SWA from BWI

Some people like to keep up with these sorts of things…

• Baltimore chapter of ASQ, 25 Jan 2011,
• CMMI Crash Course, Live webinar, Feb 4 2011,
• DC SPIN, 2 March 2011
• The ISO9000 Conference, Austin, TX, 15 March 2011,
• SEI’s SEPG, Portland, OR, 21-24 March 2011,
• Agile Israel 2011, Tel Aviv, 11 April 2011,
• Lean Systems and Software Conference, Long Beach, CA, 2-9 May 2011, and
• Agile Development Practices-West, Las Vegas, NV, 6-8 June 2011.

I hope to see some of you at one of these events.

I’ll post updates to other events as they are confirmed.

So, by way of my good friend, David Anderson, and the incredibly sharp Israel Gat, I’m now a Senior Consultant at the Cutter Consortium.  I’m quite humbled and honored.  First that David would consider me worthy of such a recommendation, and then that Israel would consider me as befitting among Cutter’s ranks.

Part of being with the consortium includes providing predictions for the coming year.

More Agile Orgs will Attain Higher Levels of Organizational Maturity

2010 saw the rapid growth of quantitatively-driven performance improvement among organizations serious about getting lean and seeing results. Much of this can be attributed to newer techniques in agile practices such as Kanban for software, and related awareness resulting from these practices.

Organizations getting serious about real, measurable improvement … read more

I’m a track chair for this conference.

If you’d like to present at the Lean Software & Systems Conference in Long Beach, California next May 4-6 then you have just one week to file your submission.

http://lssc11.leanssc.org/

We will only extend the deadline if we do not have sufficient submissions. Last year we did not extend the deadline! So please get your submission in this week.

Lean Software & Systems is the Kanban community conference in North America. I hope to see some of you there!

Too many people don’t *get* that working on your processes without connecting your processes to cash flow (or however you prefer to refer to value-generation) is totally missing the point of working on them in the first place.
Even in the public and non-profit sectors, there is something going on involving value-generation and the pursuit of continually maximizing value-add, value to society, value to benefactors, value to beneficiaries is why you work towards performance excellence. That’s why we bother to improve processes.
Otherwise….

From Andrew Brettle’s experience at an agile conference in London.
I would temper his comments only ever so slightly to point out that there are still too many organizations who have not progressed in their sw-dev thinking in 30 years. So, while many mature organizations have moved on from standard, linear, unidirectional development, far too many have not.
On the other hand, I’ve seen equally too many “agile” presentations erecting straw men effigies of “traditional” development to burn, often characterizing them as the embodiment of all-things-not-agile-born. That, too, has to stop.

The sentiment is fairly close, though Kent may have been misquoted or just uncareful with his choice of words. CMMI dictates *goals* and infers that they include engineering and process quality metrics and improvement. CMMI doesn’t actually dictate any metrics or that any specific thing improve.