The etymology of words has always been fascinating to me.  I’m a student of Leadership and have though often about team dynamics and how to best lead a team.  Then, it dawned on me what others have called their teams — I’ve heard them call the group of people that they work with as "Team" and I’ve also heard "Staff."  I wonder what etymology has to teach us regarding these two words.

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Peak Season at Amazon was so fun and memorable. 

There are two peak season — the inbound peak and the outbound peak.  Inbound is when inventory is brought into the Fulfillment Centers (FC), which is around August to September.  Thanksgiving and beyond is the outbound peak season.  It’s a busy time of year and was super fun. 

Below is a picture of a Fulfillment Center that only deals with what is knows as "Full-Case, Non-Conveyable", which means that the items are too large to place on a conveyor belt.  

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There is wisdom in the definition of Six Sigma, which is 3.4 defects per one million opportunities (DPMO), allowing for a 1.5 Sigma shift.  But, some companies subscribe to sloganeering such as "Zero Defects".  The "Zero Defects" sloganeering is counterproductive, unhelpful, statistically impossible, and completely cost prohibitive.

Statistically, zero defects means a defect level of infinity sigma, which is not possible.  What most people mean, is an attitude toward process improvement — relentlessly improving the way we do things, the product or service we produce, in order to continually delight the customer.  That is really what people mean.  But, but the "zero defects" sloganeering gets in the way. 

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Today, Mary Poppendieck responds to Corey Ladas‘ question on the relationship between Agile and Lean and what to make of all the methodologies in software engineering.

Corey Ladas said,
November 28, 2007 @ 4:23 pm

Lean would seem to allow for a broader set of ideas and practices than some Agile adherents would find acceptable. For example, SEI Team Software Process seems closer to Lean both in spirit and in pedigree than much of the Agile body of practice, yet many Agilists regard Watts Humphrey as a villain. 

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Last week, I invited the readers of shmula to pose questions to Mary and Tom Poppendieck, the authors of Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit for Software Development Managers (Paperback), which won the Software Development Productivity Award in 2004 and, the sequel Implementing Lean Software Development: From Concept to Cash (Paperback).  Several questions were submitted and, over the next several weeks, I’ll be posting Mary (MBP) and Tom’s (TDP) responses.

Earlier, Mary and Tom responded to the question of Waste and the Handoff in software development.  Today, they respond to two questions from Ursula Rutherford:

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Last week, I invited the readers of shmula to pose questions to Mary and Tom Poppendieck, the authors of Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit for Software Development Managers (Paperback), which won the Software Development Productivity Award in 2004 and, the sequel Implementing Lean Software Development: From Concept to Cash (Paperback).  Several questions were submitted and, over the next several weeks, I’ll be posting Mary and Tom’s responses.

A quick note on convention:

MBP: This is Mary Poppendiek’s response.
TDP: This is Tom Poppendiek’s response.

Below is the first question-and-answer in the series:

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