Craft vs Factory – a simple graphic

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Craft vs Factory – a simple graphic

When I told my boss one day that our waterfall development method didn’t work well, he countered that it was working fine in some parts of the organization. We talked about which ones and I noticed that those were areas where repeated, configuration-style work was performed.  I asked around and found that big projects, things that were being done uniquely and/or for the first time, didn’t seem to fit the development method. I realized that we had a mix of factory and craft work being performed, and I knew that there were important differences in the two.

I ended up drawing the graphic below (with more specific names of things at my company which I’ve omitted):

 

Key qualities of craft vs factory work
Key qualities of craft vs factory work

This chart has changed some of the conversations we’re having at the office which has helped me out quite a bit, so I thought I’d share the general graphic. I’d love suggestions and further ideas – for example, we expect personnel and therefore cost to reduce per-item on the factory side.

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4 Comments

  1. purplehayz (purplehayz)
    3:16 pm on April 16th, 2011

    [New] Craft vs Factory – A simple graphic http://is.gd/rS9XbL

  2. shellykramer (Shelly Kramer)
    3:37 pm on April 16th, 2011

    RT @purplehayz [New] Craft vs Factory – A simple graphic http://is.gd/rS9XbL

  3. mmangen (Michelle Mangen)
    6:59 pm on April 18th, 2011

    RT @purplehayz [New] Craft vs Factory – A simple graphic http://is.gd/rS9XbL

  4. Alberto Brunelli
    7:02 am on January 12th, 2012

    Excellent blog! Plenty of helpful information here. I was looking for this.Thanks for sharing!

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