by Daniel S. Vacanti

The only reason to collect data is to take action. We take action because of our relentless pursuit of improvement. That is what professionalism is all about. Taking action, however, requires a considered and deliberate analysis of the data at hand. We don’t take action for action’s sake, but rather, we take action based on how our data speaks to us. Unfortunately, our data speaks to us through the garbled language of variation. Few even recognize the language of variation. Far fewer even understand it. This book will act as a translator.

Once variation is controlled, the next step is to turn our process data into meaningful forecasts about what can or cannot be done. But how do we forecast when we have complicated work-breakdown hierarchies, spiraling WIP, and excessive dependencies? This book will help with that, too.