A couple of years ago, I developed a version of a well-known reasoning exercise. It's a simple exercise, and I implemented it as a really simple computer program. I described it to James Bach, and suggested that we put it in our Rapid Software Testing class.

James was skeptical. He didn't figure from my description that the exercise would be interesting enough. I put in a couple of little traps, and tried it a few times with colleagues and other unsuspecting victims, sometimes in person, sometimes over the Web. Then I tried the actual exercise on James, using the program. He helpfully stepped into one of the traps. Thus emboldened, I started using the exercise in classes. Eventually James found an occasion to start using it too. He watched students dealing with it, had some epiphanies, tried some experiments. At one point, he sat down with his brother Jon and they tested the program aggressively, and revealed a ton of new information about it—many of which I hadn't known myself. And I wrote the thing.

Richard drove up to the hangar just as I was checking the oil on the Husky, his prized baby float plane. Nuts. He was right on time. I was late. I’m supposed to have the plane ready to go when he arrives.“Hey Dad, looks like a good day for flying. I’m just in the middle [...]

By James A. Whittaker

W. Edwards Deming helped to revolutionize the process of manufacturing automobiles in the 1970s and a decade later the software industry ran with the manufacturing analogy and the result was nearly every waterfall, spiral or agile method we have. Some like TQM, Cleanroom and Six Sigma are obvious descendants of Deming while others were just heavily influenced by his thinking. Deming was the man.