Continuous improvement is a seasoned concept
that has taken on new resonance in recent years –
helping to define a movement that is changing the
course of modern technology.
The term continuous improvement dates back to the 1950s, when management pioneer
W. Edwards Deming first described it as a “system” that incorporates and recirculates
feedback for the benefit of the system itself. The Process Excellence Network went on
to define the term as “the ongoing effort to improve products, services and processes
by making small, incremental improvements within a business.”
Fast forward to 2019, and the concept of continuous improvement is central to the
DevOps revolution that’s shaping technology workflows across industries. Gene Kim,
one of the movement’s early protagonists, embedded the term in his “Three Ways of
DevOps” framework for managing process, procedures and policies with a DevOps phi-
losophy. Kim’s first two ways set the stage for continuous improvement: 1) emphasizing
the performance of an entire system rather than a silo of work, and 2) amplifying the
feedback loop. The third way drives the concept forward: developing a culture of contin-
uous experimentation, learning and improvement – essentially a culture of incremental
innovation.
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