|
|
I
have been keen on Archery for a number of years and when asked to give
a talk to my local British Computer Society branch a few years ago, and
knowing I was going to be talking to a crowd who would find QA a dull
dry subject, I was searching for an analogy that would strike a chord
with the audience, many of whom, because of the predominance of one particular
firm in the area, was going to consist of ex-military and some serving
military personnel. I had one of those flashes of inspiration that hit
only rarely, whilst out shooting some arrows at some bosses at my local
Toxophily Club. Quality Assurance is like Archery.
|
| The first thing they
teach you in any target sport is to achieve grouping. You don't readjust
your aim or make any sighting adjustments between rounds or shots. It doesn't
matter, in the early days, where the arrows or bullets hit the target, as
long as they hit it consistently in roughly the same place, but if the grouping
isn't tight, there are variations in your technique which need to be corrected
if you're ever going to consistently hit the target where you want to. When
you've eliminated all of those variations and the shots are grouped tightly
together, then making controlled adjustments to the sights or other variables
whilst keeping all the others the same, that grouping can be moved across
the target to the centre, gold or bull's-eye or whatever you call it in
your sport. Archery has particular difficulties over other shooting sports
in that, unlike a gun, the back sight is not fixed with respect to the front
sight, and there is much more variation possible depending on where you
position the string with respect to your eyes at full draw. During the talk
I illustrated this point by showing the audience all the variables that
affected an archer's aim, such as stance, sights, balancing weights and
stabilizers, marks on the bowstring and devices on the bow itself, all the
clothing and bracers designed to move clothing out of the way. The late
William Edwards Deming talked about general and special causes of variation
which caused a process to fail to achieve consistency. In archery I had
a visible illustration of that point and just the analogy I was searching
for to make my talk memorable.. Hence my adoption of an archery target as
an emblem for my company. |
