Skip to main content

"Managing the Design Factory" by Donald G. Reinertsen

The dude who wrote this book came to my office for two one-day seminars to turn all of us R&D types into more efficient designers, and the person who hired him bought some copies of the book, which he left around for us to read. Being a bit of a keener and wanting to get ahead, I took one home.

Wow. The presentation we took was eight hours of PowerPoint and anecdotes, and the book seemed like it was written pretty much from those same slides. The anecdotes weren't nearly as great when written down. It seemed like there were less of them, or maybe there was just more content in between them. I finished the book on a vacation day in one giant 90-page slog because I just wanted it over with, and wow, every section seemed like it was a fleshed-out slide heading, and then a list of bullet points underneath, kind of like this:

Reducing Boring Reading
There are four reasons to reduce boring reading, as described in the next paragraphs.
First of all, you should not read boring books, because they will make you fall asleep, which leads to napping, which in turn leads to poor night time sleeping.
Second, boring books make you start to hate reading, and knowledge comes from reading.
Third,

Well, I can't think of a third, but you get the idea. Each chapter had an extensive introduction, that was like a powerpoint overview slide. Each chapter had a summary at the end, which added nothing except a recap. I kept wishing he'd used more commas. The book didn't seem that well copy-edited. And when I notice that sort of thing, you can bet I'm bored.

I would say, if you can afford the course, do that. It will leave you way more inspired to reduce your queue sizes and plan better for your fuzzy front end.

Popular posts from this blog

Best TW feedback ever

Over at the dayjob, SMEs are feverishly trying to get documents back to me all marked up, in preparation for the release that's supposed to happen the week I'm back from VP. Today's best comment: Unfortunately not true. SMEs, they're so cute.

What I read: August 2023

"The Absolute Book" by Elizabeth Knox. I got it for Christmas. It was delightful, even if maybe some stuff wasn't explained completely. Or maybe that's part of why it was delightful.  "Crucial conversations" By Joseph Grenny and three other old white men. Another office book club selection. The word "candor" comes up a lot. I really resented this book.  LHC #220: "The Goldfinch" by Donna Tartt. There was a girl at my previous company who wanted to have an office book club, and she had this book on her desk for months and months. I can totally understand this. I found portions crazy stressful to read. Like, I would be skipping ahead to see how much more in the section, could I get through it, pacing around, etc. I wanted to know how it ended, sure, but I was having weird stress dreams and stuff. If it wasn't a library book I might not have finished it at all. It was such a relief when Boris showed up again and something happened. I di

In Progress -- July 2023

  Wind/Water/Salt  Chapters 39-51:   Still n eed to take up comments and revise.  Persephone  (probably not its real name): Nothing but thoughts.  Short Stories:  As I mentioned last month I had a dish-washing epiphany on a story that wasn't going well. I'd already changed the POV character, but I knew that wasn't enough because I had no ending. It has an ending now.  Critted  4  Got back  0    I really need to post something new. Submissions  0  Out there   0   Rejects   1 Knitting Tay Tartan cardigan  (Martin Storey). Finally finished the danglers and minor seaming and chose buttons, then had to wait to block because the space I normally block in needed to be cleared, and this would be very disruptive to my work, so I waited to block it for the night before I went on vacation. It would appear that the finishing of this sweater took 4 months, which may be a new record. It fits for the most part. Yay!  Cathar  (self). Started the month just about done with the body edging.