Work practice application to life!

Here is one thing, which I learnt in my profession and subsequently applied to many areas of life. It's the Deming cycle. I learnt it for my Certified Quality Analyst exam in 2001. I was so fascinated then by the Plan - Do - Study - Act of the Deming cycle. It is an iterative approach to go from current state to a desired state. Incremental improvement is the goal in each iteration.

Subsequently, I applied Deming's cycle to everything I came across in my professional work and achieved good successes as well as learnt good lessons from failures. After few years, I found myself approaching many areas of life using Deming cycle. Some well-wishers even gave feedback that I had become too much process-oriented and balance with interpersonal relationship as well. Such open & transparent feedback helped me in a continual learning & growth. 

3 years back when I hit a crisis with my health, I used Deming cycle for my health improvement initiative. Interestingly, there were no results in the 1st 10 months despite my spinning the Deming wheel continuously. But, tremendous learning from those ZERO improvements period. Finally, desired results came & sustaining so far! Thanking God, Deming cycle, & Google spreadsheet for the 22 pounds weight reduction. This spreadsheet is the cover image of this article.

Would you have any such experience of applying what you learnt at work to other areas of life? Looking forward to your sharing of thoughts! 

Also, I have been observing several parallels between Deming's principles & Agile development principles and hoping to compile the similarities & differences some day. Meanwhile, kindly checkout our Agile project management consulting service we offer at GSS ( www.GSSind.in ) and connect with us for any of your needs.