Rediscovering an old friend

When I look back at the things I did at University and in my first job it is interesting how the things I am doing now are not so different. If someone asks I would say things are much different but what occurred to me is how the things that interested me in the past are still important to me now.

For example, at University I studied Accounting and Finance and for my final year thesis I wrote about Japanese Lean Management techniques and how they had been applied at Nissan in the UK and productivity and quality was higher than in their Japanese factories. Today I am championing Lean development within a software company. Kaizen, change for the better, is a term that caught my attention when I wrote the thesis and has stuck with me and even though it is not something I expicitly refer to at work it is the essence of what I am trying to encourage each day.

One of the most enjoyable topics covered during my post graduate study on Business Systems Analysis was Human Computer Interaction. I remember reading a lot about the topic and in particular the writings of Don Norman. Just today I was reading a post from the Agile Usability newsgroup where they referenced an article by Don Norman on Usability in Agile projects. Funny how things come together.