According to Dr. Russell Ackoff, pioneer of systems design theory. “Discontinuous improvements are more important than continuous improvements” because creativity is a disruptive process. True quality focuses on value not efficiency. And to achieve quality it is essential to engineer a system as a whole, and not only improve its parts. This viewpoint is different than the views of Dr. Edward Deming who professed a view of using continuous system feedback and continuous improvement to improve system quality incrementally. Both views have merit in complementary circumstances.
Examples of complementary circumstances where Ackoff’s and Deming’s views both hold value include:
1. Innovation vs. Optimization Phases in Product Development
Ackoff’s Discontinuous Improvement: At the beginning of a product development cycle, companies often need bold, disruptive ideas to create novel products or solutions that redefine value for the customer.
Deming’s Continuous Improvement: Once a product is established, continuous feedback and incremental improvements ensure its quality, consistency and alignment with customer needs.
2. Strategic Transformation vs. Operational Stability
Ackoff’s Approach: In times of major business transformation, such as adopting new business models or entering new markets, disruptive changes across systems and structures are often necessary to align with new strategic goals.
Deming’s Approach: During stable periods, continuous improvement practices maintain high operational standards, enhance efficiency and prevent degradation of quality.
3. Response to Market Shifts vs. Steady Market Conditions
Ackoff’s Discontinuous Improvement: When a company faces significant market disruptions, such as new competitors or shifts in customer expectations, radical redesigns and systemic changes can be the key to competitiveness.
Deming’s Continuous Improvement: In steady market environments, iterative improvements can fine-tune operations, reducing costs and improving margins without the need for disruptive change.
4. New Technology Integration vs. Existing Technology Optimization
Ackoff’s Perspective: Implementing groundbreaking technologies or adopting entirely new platforms requires re-engineering systems as a whole, creating discontinuous shifts to capture full value.
Deming’s Perspective: With established technologies, gradual enhancements and quality control through continuous feedback improve efficiency and output without large-scale changes.
5. Building vs. Maintaining Company Culture
Ackoff’s View: When building or transforming a company culture to embrace innovation or customer-centric values, discontinuous improvements like structural changes and new leadership philosophies can set a new direction.
Deming’s View: In maintaining an existing culture, continuous feedback and improvement encourage a steady commitment to quality, reinforcing the established cultural values.
In each of these circumstances, Ackoff’s call for discontinuous change serves well when major shifts or creative solutions are needed, while Deming’s approach supports a stable and reliable improvement path, ensuring ongoing quality in well-defined systems. Together, they address the balance between innovation and efficiency, providing a broader approach to sustainable quality.
DevOps is mostly associated with Deming’s continuous improvement ideas, But can DevOps play a key role to achieve Ackoff’s discontinuous ideas?
Yes, DevOps can indeed play a key role in achieving Ackoff’s concept of discontinuous improvement, although it is more often aligned with Deming’s continuous improvement philosophy. Here’s how DevOps can facilitate discontinuous improvement in line with Ackoff’s principles:
1. Systemic Overhaul and Architectural Redesign
DevOps encourages viewing the entire system holistically, making it well-suited for radical, systemic transformations. By integrating development, operations and security into a unified process, DevOps allows organizations to redesign workflows, re-architect applications and adopt entirely new platforms or paradigms (e.g., moving from monolithic to microservices architecture or from on-premise to cloud-native environments). This mirrors Ackoff’s view of treating the system as a whole rather than optimizing parts in isolation.
2. Innovation Through Rapid Experimentation
The DevOps model supports rapid prototyping and experimentation through practices like continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD). This capability is crucial for testing and implementing breakthrough innovations quickly and effectively. DevOps teams can develop, test and deploy significant changes on short cycles, allowing for swift, high-impact shifts—aligning with Ackoff’s concept of making bold, discontinuous improvements.
3. Adopting New Technologies at Scale
DevOps enables the integration of emerging technologies such as AI, machine learning and edge computing, which often require disruptive changes to existing systems. DevOps practices help manage the inherent complexity and risk in adopting such technologies, making it possible to implement groundbreaking advancements with resilience and scalability.
4. Culture of Transformation and Continuous Learning
DevOps fosters a collaborative, open culture that welcomes transformation, making it easier for organizations to embrace and execute discontinuous improvements. This cultural aspect aligns with Ackoff’s emphasis on creativity as a disruptive process, where innovation requires a shift in mindset as much as in practice.
5. Breaking Down Silos and Rethinking Team Structures
By breaking down silos between development, operations and security, DevOps enables new ways of organizing teams and workflows, which can lead to substantial organizational shifts. Ackoff’s approach values a rethinking of processes and roles, which DevOps supports through its emphasis on cross-functional collaboration and shared responsibility.
In essence, while DevOps inherently supports continuous improvement, its practices, tools and cultural framework also provide a foundation for transformative, discontinuous improvements that align with Ackoff’s vision of radical change for systemic quality. By embracing both approaches, organizations can achieve a balance between incremental and breakthrough advancements, using DevOps as a flexible framework for diverse improvement strategies.
Want to learn more? Read my book Continuous Testing, Quality, Security and Feedback.
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