This post is dedicated with thanks to the late W. Edwards Deming, also his living namesakes Burr & Raymond, who may be related in some way, or might see in themselves some family resemblance to him. It’s intended as a quick stocking-stuffer or stopgap—the post I planned refuses to come. Even when I have nothing ready to say, the urge won’t go away. I’ve been taking comfort from that wily curmudgeon, Jonathan Meades, with his “just do it” approach:
Régis Jauffret got it right when he said that he was disgusted by writers who think of their readers.
That’s going too far of course but I know what Meades and Jauffret mean. What’s disgusting is to think we have anything to offer that anyone else needs. The only 
pure form of art is to act from inner compulsion, and thus to discover for yourself what till now has lain hidden within you. Yet I cannot actually write without thinking of readers, perhaps reaching out to one person as yet unkown. Scribbling in a notebook just doesn’t work for me.
I first heard of W. Edwards Deming just before he died in 1993. I’d already been thinking about Quality for a decade, both professionally and as a reader of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, whose narrator broods endlessly on the “metaphysics of quality”. I was employed at the time in the Direction Qualité at Eurotunnel. They gave me an office with glass walls and name-plate on the door. I was mostly free to do anything I wanted. So I read books about quality; set up a multimedia gallery about the airship R101, how it crashed on its first flight, and the lessons to be learned from that; designed posters; wrote brochures; put on an allegorical play about the benefits of a complaints system, which I’d partly designed. Our mission was twofold—to implement TQM and get the Investors in People badge.
At some point I got qualified as a TickIT auditor, trained to check out IT projects for conformity to ISO9001. This is how I met Richard, with whom I still work. He runs a consultancy mainly dedicated to information security: a red-hot topic these days. Over the years I’ve produced for him two software programs, one for risk analysis and 
another called IDB, where “I” stands for improvement. It was inspired by The Deming Wheel, which the man himself modestly called the Shewhart Cycle. You make a plan, put it into action, study how well (and how badly) it works, then you put improvements in place; after which you can
“make a new plan, Stan”, as in 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover, and so on ad infinitum. In various quarters Deming is revered as a hero. In 1947 The US Department of the Army sent him to Japan, to help with the census. The defeated Japanese were too shattered, they needed not just statisticians but inspirational leaders from somewhere else that they could trust.
He ended up helping that country rebuild its economy by introducing methods to improve quality in industry.
We know how well they succeeded. In 1981 he was invited by Ford of America to do the same for them. In Eurotunnel, posthumously, he became my hero too, as our small department grappled with the task of introducing Total Quality in a company which hadn’t yet opened for business.
As for Burr and Raymond Deming—my spies in Missouri tell me you are brothers, I await more direct confirmation—you’re still around today, blogging in cyberspace, frequently doing me the honour of syndicating these Wayfaring posts. It’s much appreciated because I don’t know how to promote them myself, it’s not my thing at all.
And the odd kind words from Burr help boost a flagging self-confidence. Several of my readers are themselves software developers and know a great deal more than I, this dog being too old to learn new tricks. So here I am sending out feelers for help. I mentioned a while back working with a “lad” to convert one of my apps to work in “The Cloud”. It’s getting there, slowly, as when you hire a builder to work on your house, but he’s hard to get hold of, constantly being lured to more lucrative jobs.
And as for the more elaborate program, it currently languishes with only one user. It has long been ripe for conversion to The Cloud, so that it can be sold worldwide. As I own the copyright, I’m free to deal with anyone I trust. So I’ve put up a few screenshots here, in which you can see traces of the Deming Cycle being recycled for various purposes.
A sower went forth to sow. As ever, some will fall on stony ground, but who knows? Extraordinary things can happen in cyberspace. May everyone who passes this way enjoy the season’s magic, even those summering in Oz (have a good one Davoh!) & overcome the inner Scrooge to open their heart to the wondrous stories & images of Christmas, and the vows & hopes invested in a fresh year.
3 thoughts on “Merry Christmas, Messrs Deming”
a wayfarer’s notes 