By Donna Knapp and Michael Cardinal Even prior to the First Industrial Revolution, someone who made their living as a stagecoach driver couldn't possibly imagine that one day people would use an app to arrange an Uber that could take them to the airport where they could get on a plane and fly across the world in a matter of hours. All that history is understood in hindsight, as is the case with any industrial revolution. Fast forward to today. We are in the throes of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and there is massive speculation about the impact of advancements such as artificial intelligence (AI). It’s tempting to think that the problems and challenges that organizations and individuals are currently facing are unique. In reality, as we explore in ‘What Would Deming Do’ , the past provides valuable lessons that we can use to navigate the present and leverage as guidance for the future. What history teaches us is that industrial revolutions have a lot in commo...

By Donna Knapp   At one point in my career, I was a change manager. I ran my company’s change advisory board (CAB), and I spent endless hours trying to convince project managers to submit requests for change (RFCs). Despite my best efforts, I invariably had to explain, fairly often, that ‘poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency change on mine.’ At that time, the change manager role was one of the many hats that I wore. My ‘real’ job was service desk manager. We called it a ‘hotline’ then and so yes… it was many, many years ago. In that role, I and my team saw the impact of poorly executed and failed changes. We dealt every Monday morning with the chaos that came out of the massive changes made over the weekend. That was then. Since then, much has changed. But it was through that lens that, more than 10 years ago, I first started researching a movement in the IT industry called DevOps. At the time, it was early days for DevOps and individuals and organizations we...