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Kaizen
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Kaizen (改善, Japanese for "continuous
improvement") is a very interesting concept. I attempt to apply Kaizen
to product development at Maysoft. For me, this means going over each product
feature and looking for areas for improvement.
For example, the most obvious feature that
needs attention in the world of SpamSentinel and spam blocking in general
is the need to continuously improve the block rate. When we released SpamSentinel
in 2003, it blocked 70% of spam, and we were ecstatic. 2004 brought us
to 90%. 2005 saw 95%. In 2006, we passed 98% block rate. In 2007, we hit
99%. Now, with SpamSentinel v7.6 we added some more blocking logic.
We are at 99.44% block rate, and we
are working towards 100%. An external proof of success in the new version
block rates comes from one customer comment
that we recently received:
We are seeing significantly
less mail & spam volume now that we are running 7.6. I have received
many comments on how small spam reports are now. Very effective update.
Lee Keener, Knoxville Utilities Board |
It may not be possible to achieve 100%
spam blocking, but Kaizen does not say "do not try until you are sure
you will succeed". In fact, just the opposite. Try little things,
every day to build up to a success. Some other sayings come to mind, which
I believe support our approach: "If at first you don't succeed, try,
try again". And Edison's famous "Genius is 10 percent inspiration
and 90 percent perspiration" If you substitute "Kaizen"
for "Genius" you get
| Kaizen is 10 percent
inspiration and 90 percent perspiration |
which to me means that we need to think
of good ideas for improvement 10% of the time and actually work on implementing
these good ideas 90% of the time.
Which brings me to urgency, another
concept that I believe is intimately linked with Kaizen. Improvements that
are conceived need to be implemented right away, now. There needs
to be a sense of urgency. If not, Kaizen loses its focus on results and
moves into the category of discussion, which produces nothing except words.
Tom Peters, in his Search
for Excellence book talks
about "A bias for action, active decision making - 'getting on with
it'. I believe you cannot have improvement without action. The risk and
costs of "not thinking it through" are smaller, in my experience,
than the risk of "doing nothing" or "delaying until the
perfect solution is conceived".
Kaizen is a great way to guide one's
thinking. You can apply it to every aspect of a product design, not just
product features. For example, this blog is part of my personal Kaizen
to improve how we communicate with resellers and customers about SpamSentinel
and Maysoft. It was right after Lotusphere 2008 was finished that I decided
to download a blog template (thanks Declan
Lynch) and start writing about
all the things that we were doing to help stop Lotus Notes email spam.
I did not really discuss blogging, I just did it, writing the first posting,
titled A
Successful Lotusphere. Now this
blog is an important part of the product, announcing features and explaining
new options, and telling a little about how we work here at Maysoft.
For me, Kaizen is fun, as every time
I attempt to improve something, I learn something new. Blogging was a whole
new world for me, but I learned a lot and now I really enjoy writing these
blogs.
So, my overall thought on how to apply
Kaizen to work is to never stop asking the question:
How can I start making this better
right now?