GTD Tips, Tricks and Tools – The Tickler File or Bring Forward File

August 26th, 2009 By The Quality Manager

What it consists of

The TICKLER FILE or BRING FORWARD FILE consists of 43 folders:

31 daily folders labelled “1″ to “31″

12 monthly folders labelled with the months of the year

The daily folders are kept at the front, beginning with tomorrow’s folder (for the example used in Getting Things Done where today is October 5th, this would be the folder labelled “6″).

The remaining daily folders (in the example, “7″ to “31″) are filed behind this followed by the monthly folder for next month (in the example, this would be “November”) and then the daily folders already used (in the example, “1″ to “5″). Finally there would be the remaining monthly folders for the remaining 11 months (in the example, “December” to “October”.

So you would end up with a set of folders (following the example) labelled thus:

[6]
[7]
[8]
[9]
[10]
[11]
[12]
[13]
[14]
[15]
[16]
[17]
[18]
[19]
[20]
[21]
[22]
[23]
[24]
[25]
[26]
[27]
[28]
[29]
[30]
[31]
[November]
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]
[December]
[January]
[February]
[March]
[April]
[May]
[June]
[July]
[August]
[September]
[October]

How it works

  1. Each day, empty the daily folder for that day into your in-basket.
  2. File the empty folder at the back of the daily folders (in the example, “6″ is emptied and placed behind “5″ to now represent November 6th).
  3. When the next monthly folder is reached (in the example, “November” after “31″ has been emptied) the monthly folder is emptied into your in-basket and then filed at the back of the monthly folders to represent that month next year.

Tips and Tricks

Be sure to update your Tickler File every day and if you’re going away for a few days process all the folders ahead for the days you’ll be away.

Use the folders to file:

  • travel documents and tickets for events on the day you’ll need them
  • bills on the days you need to pay them
  • print out reminders for each birthday and anniversary and file them in the appropriate month to be moved into the appropriate day in due course. It’s a good idea to file reminders a few days ahead (especially if the due date is at the beginning of a month) to ensure you get a card and present ahead of time

There is a free factsheet on the Tickler File available on the David Allen website. There is also a set of 43 sturdy plastic letter size file folders, open on three sides. The GTD Tickler files are blue-grey with black trim and appropriately labelled (in five languages!) Please note that this is expensive to ship as the folders weigh over 5 pounds. Although the folders are letter size, they take A4 papers quite happily.

You can, of course, easily make and label your own set of folders but they are unlikely to last as long as these strong, purpose built folders.

Posted in Bring Forward File, Tickler File, Tips, Tools, Tricks | No Comments »

ISO 9004:2009

August 24th, 2009 By The Quality Manager

The latest draft of ISO 9004 has received broad approval and the final draft of this International Standard (FDIS) is due to be released at the end of August 2009 with the publication of the revised standard in October or November 2009.

ISO 9004 has a new title “Managing for the sustained success of an organisation – A quality management approach” and is shorter than its predecessor, ISO 9004:2000 at 44 pages compared to 56. This reduction is in part due to the removal of the ISO 9001 text that appeared at the start of each section. Although ISO 9001 and ISO 9004 are still “a consistent pair” of standards, ISO 9004 no longer has the same clause by clause naming as ISO 9001. This helps to emphasise that it is not a guide to ISO 9001.

The contents of ISO 9004 (at the draft stage) are:

1. Scope
2. Normative references
3. Terms and definitions
4. Managing for the sustained success of an organisation
5. Strategy amd policy formulation, planning and deployment
6. Resource management
7. Process management
8. Monitoring, measurement, analysis and review
9. Improvement, innovation and learning
Annex A – Self-assessment tool
Annex B – Quality management principles
Annex C – Correspondence between ISO 9004-2009 and ISO 9001:2008
Bibliography

The aim of ISO 9004 is to help users of ISO 9001 to obtain long-term benefit from a broader, in-depth, quality management system (QMS) based on their existing QMS. It uses the same quality management principles as ISO 9001. It is not to be used for assessment or certification purposes.

ISO 9001 focusses on customers. ISO 9004 extends the focus to include all interested parties including society, suppliers, employees and shareholders.

One of the main areas of comment on the ISO 9004 draft has been the relationship between the main body of the standard and the guidance on self-assessment in the annex. This self-assessment is based around 5 maturity levels (now, where have we come across that before?)

  1. Beginner – focus is on products, processes are ad-hoc, results not predictable, improvement actions forced by customers
  2. Proactive – QMS implemented, corrective and preventive actions well-organised
  3. Flexible – process management implemented, predictable results, strategy focussed on customers and some other stakeholders
  4. Progressive – balanced focus on all stakeholders, consistent positive results, continual improvement based on learning and sharing of knowledge
  5. Successful - capable of maintaining good performance over time and developing further in the long term

From this it would seem that an organisation that has just been certified to ISO 9001 would not be higher than Level 2.

In addition to the ISO 9004 standard, a guide to this self-assessment tool is being produced along with an implementation guide for ISO 9004:2009.

When the final draft International Standard (FDIS) is available further detail will be provided.

Posted in ISO 9001:2008, ISO 9004:2009 | No Comments »

GTD Tips, Tricks and Tools – The Two-Minute Rule

August 19th, 2009 By The Quality Manager

Would you like to extend your life by 6 months? Then follow this simple rule: “If you can get an action done in less than two minutes then do it now!”

This works because it will take you longer than two minutes to write it down on one of your lists of NEXT ACTIONs, recall it when it’s appropriate, figure what it’s about and get in done – so just do it, or as someone I knew used to say JUST F****** DO IT or JFDI.

This can be as simple an action as “I need to refill my fountain pen”. By the time you’ve written that on your list you could have done it so just do it!

Once you’ve got to the DO phase you’ve only three options:

  1. DO it now if the action takes less than two minutes.
  2. DELEGATE it to someone else if you’re not the most appropriate person to do it.
  3. DEFER it by putting it into your system on one of your CONTEXT lists as something to be done later.

Some people seem to get hung up on what they can do in exactly two-minutes. It’s not the time that’s important, it’s the principle. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a minute or ten – it’s just a rule of thumb. If you think you can get it done “in the moment” then get it done and out of the way.

It’s a useful technique to use when you’re doing your WEEKLY REVIEW. You may want to restrict the cutoff to one minute if you haven’t got much time or extend it to ten if you’ve got plenty of time.

The two minutes isn’t a hard and fast(!) 120 seconds. Use your common sense. Perhaps another way to phrase the rule is “if you can do the action in less time than it would take to put it on your list, retrieve it at a later date, and do it then. Do it now”

If you use the GTD Outlook Add-In then the latest version has a built-in Two Minute Timer and the David Allen Company has one in their store.

Posted in Contexts, Defer, Delegate, Do, Two Minute Rule, Weekly Review | No Comments »

Preventive Action, Corrective Action and Correction

August 17th, 2009 By The Quality Manager

What’s the difference between corrective action and preventive action? Are separate procedures required by ISO 9001?

The corrective action process is a problem-solving process and the preventive action process is a risk-analysis process.

Corrective action

Corrective action is defined in ISO 9000 as “action taken to eliminate the cause of a detected nonconformity or other undesirable potential situation” and notes that corrective action is taken to prevent recurrence. ISO 9000 also points out that corrective action differs from correction which is defined in ISO 9000 as “action to eliminate a detected nonconformity”. Put simply, if something has gone wrong then the action you take to fix that instance is correction. For example, if a part comes off the production line with a screw missing, then putting the missing screw back is correction. The action you take to stop it happening again is corrective action. Using the same example, making sure the correct number of screws are supplied for each part would be corrective action. It gets confusing when that is referred to as preventing a recurrence. In ISO 9000 terminology that action is not preventive.

Correction

There has to be a problem for you to take corrective action. If no problem exists but there is a possibility that a problem might occur, preventing that potential problem is preventive action.

Preventive action

Preventive action is defined in ISO 9000 as “action taken to eliminate the potential causes of a nonconformity or other undesirable potential situation”. ISO 9000 distinguishes preventive action from corrective action by noting that “preventive action is taken to prevent occurrence” as opposed to recurrence which characterises corrective action. In the example used above, planning the production of the part to ensure that all the screws are fitted would be preventive action.

A risk management process is a good example of preventive action. Assessing the impact and likelihood of a risk occurring and taking action to prevent occurrence is preventive action.

Other examples of methods for identifying potential nonconformities are:

  • trend analysis for process and product characteristic (where a worsening trend indicates a potential problem)
  • monitoring of customer feedback
  • evaluation of problems in similar processes or products
  • planning of new processes and products

Procedure RequirementsNote that in the above discussion, reference is made to ISO 9000 and not ISO 9001. ISO 9000 contains the concepts and terminology on which ISO 9001 is based and is essential reading to gain a full understanding of ISO 9001.

On the question of procedures, ISO 9001:2008 makes it clear that a procedure is required for corrective action and also a procedure is required for preventive action. But there is no stipulation that these should be separate documents (see the NOTE 1 under 4.2.1 in the standard). However, the combination of a corrective action procedure and a preventive action procedure into a single document is not recommended as it then becomes more difficult to clearly separate the two distinctly different approaches. You may also find it difficult to demonstrate to an external assessor that the processes are separate and that you actually perform both types of action.

Posted in Corrective Action, ISO 9001, ISO 9001:2008, Preventive Action | No Comments »

Do

August 12th, 2009 By The Quality Manager

DO is the final phase of the Five Phases of Mastering Workflow.

Now that you’ve COLLECTed and PROCESSed everything that has your attention, ORGANISEd all the open loops to make sure that OUTCOMEs and NEXT ACTIONs have been decided on and REVIEWed everything to ensure that it’s current, you now have to decide what to DO.

To make the right choices, you need to think about where you are (CONTEXT), how much time you have (CALENDAR), how much energy you have, and what your priorities are.

If you’ve listed your NEXT ACTIONs according to CONTEXT as we discussed in ORGANISE, it should be easy to identify what actions you could accomplish by looking at the appropriate list. Pick something off the appropriate list that you have the time and energy to DO.

We will return to priority at some future date when we look at the HORIZONS OF FOCUS but for now we’ll just identify what these horizons are:-

  • RUNWAY – Your current NEXT ACTIONs (look at these daily)
  • 10,000 FEET – Your PROJECTS (look at these weekly)
  • 20,000 FEET – Your responsibilities (look at these monthly)
  • 30,000 FEET – one to two-year goals (look at these quarterly)
  • 40,000 FEET – three to five-year goals (look at these annually)
  • 50,000 FEET – career, purpose, lifestyle (look at these annually)

This has been a very quick run through the Five Phases, so feel free to post any questions as comments. In the meantime take a look at the Five Phases of Mastering Workflow from David Allen’s site for free and don’t forget the basic manual on how GTD works in David Allen’s Getting Things Done.

Posted in Calendar, Collect, Contexts, Do, Horizons of Focus, Next Actions, Organise, Outcome, Process, Weekly Review | No Comments »

BS 10012:2009 Data Protection – Specification for a Personal Information Management System

August 10th, 2009 By The Quality Manager


The Data Protection Act applies to any organisation in the UK that holds personal information about living individuals. Compliance with the Data Protection Act is required by law and this standard will help you demonstrate compliance.

The BS 10012 standard:

  • provides a framework for developing an infrastructure to maintain and improve compliance
  • allows you to assess your current level of compliance, recognise weaknesses and provide opportunties for improvement
  • enables effective assessment of compliance by internal auditors and external assessors

This is provides in a straightforward format following the management system style of “plan-do-check-act”, also known as the Deming cycle, used in ISO 9001, ISO 14001, ISO 27001, etc.

The standard is available in hardcopy and PDF download for £100 (or £50 for BSI members) from BSI.

BSI also publish a simple guide to the Data Protection Act – Data Protection Pocket Guide – Essential Facts at Your Fingertips.

Posted in BS 10012, BSI, Data Protection, Deming, Deming Cycle, ISO 14001, ISO 9001, ISO/IEC 27001, Plan-Do-Check-Act | No Comments »

Review

August 5th, 2009 By The Quality Manager

The REVIEW is the most important of the 5 phases of mastering workflow but it’s the one most people struggle to do.

However, it’s essential, once you’ve got all your open loops under control, that you keep them that way otherwise you’ll lapse back into your old ways and get completely out of shape!

How often you do a REVIEW is up to you but the oprimal frequency is weekly – it’s usually referred to as the WEEKLY REVIEW.

There are three parts to the REVIEW:

  1. Get CLEAR
  2. Get CURRENT
  3. Get CREATIVE

Get CLEAR means:

  • get all the loose papers, receipts, etc. that have accumulated since your last REVIEW into you in-basket ready to PROCESS (this is a mini-COLLECT!)
  • get anything that’s in your head out and written down an in your in-basket
  • PROCESS all outstanding items in your in-basket

Get CURRENT means:

  • review all your NEXT ACTION lists and cross off anything that’s done and add any new NEXT ACTIONs that this triggers
  • look back over your calendar since your last Weekly REVIEW for any remaining NEXT ACTIONs and add to your NEXT ACTIONs lists
  • look forward over your calendar for the next few weeks and capture any NEXT ACTIONs triggered by this
  • review your WAITING FOR list checking off completed items and look for any needed follow-up on these and other items and capture any NEXT ACTIONs on your lists
  • evaluate the status of all your PROJECTs making sure that you’ve at least one NEXT ACTION on each

Get CREATIVE means:

  • review your SOMEDAY/MAYBE list and transfer any PROJECTs that have now become active to your PROJECTS list and delete any SOMEDAY/MAYBE items that are no longer of interest
  • think of any new things you want to be doing that you can add to your GTD system

One of the key tricks with the REVIEW is finding the time and space to do it justice. Book a meeting with yourself or take all your lists to your favourite coffee shop and shut out the rest of the world whilst you put your world into order.

Next week we’ll look at DO, the final phase of mastering workflow. Then we’ll go back to the beginning and look at some of the tips, tricks and tools for each phase and I’ll show you how I’ve implemented GTD. Don’t forget – you can get an overview of the Five Phases of Mastering Workflow from David Allen’s site for free!

Posted in Clear, Collect, Creative, Current, Do, Next Actions, Process, Projects, Someday/Maybe, Tips, Tools, Tricks, Weekly Review | No Comments »

ISO 9001:2008

August 3rd, 2009 By The Quality Manager

The fourth edition of the ISO 9001 standard “ISO 9001:2008 Quality Management Systems – Requirements” was published in November 2008.

This was a minor amendment rather than a revision and was meant to clarify the standard to address feedback on the use of the standard over the eight years since the major revision in ISO 9001:2000.

The amendments include:

  • 0.1, 1.1, 1.2 The term “regulatory” in relation to requirements has been changed to “statutory and regulatory”.
  • 0.2 The term “identify” has been changed to “determine” implying that rather than just recognising and establishing something, a degree of reason needs to be applied and a decision reached.
  • 4.1 The requirement to “measure” in subclause e) has been changed to “measure (where applicable)”. Some organisations believed they needed to measure every process.
  • 4.1 The reference to outsourced processes also now requires them to be “defined” and not just “identified”. In the Notes it is now made clear that processes need to include those for analysis and improvement. Also in the Notes it is made clear that an outsourced process is one that is needed for the organisation’s quality management system but the organisation has decided to have it performed by an external party. A new note identifies the factors that influence the control of an outsourced process. All these changes require much more careful thought about outsourcing. 7.4.1 is equally applicable to outsourcing.
  • 4.2 A note has been added to say that more than one procedure requirement may be covered in a single document. For example, the separate requirements for a procedure for corrective action and a procedure for preventive action may be met in a single document. The ISO 9001 requirement for six procedures does not mean six documents.
  • 4.2.3 Subclause f) has been amended to make it clear that only those external documents needed for the planning and operation of the quality management system need to be identidied and controlled – not all external documents.
  • 5.5.2 The management representative must be a member of the organisation’s own management. Some organisation outsourced this role to a different organisation or to a quality consultant. This is now not allowed.
  • 6.2.1 A clarification has been made to the effect that anyone performing work that impinges on product requirements needs to be competent. The implication before was that only quality control and quality assurance staff needed to be competent.
  • 7.1 Measurement has been added as a required activity in the planning of product realisation. A new note aims to ensure that organisations take full account of post-delivery activities in product realisation.
  • 7.3.3 A new note reminds organisations that in considering design and development output, the product packaging needs to be considered.
  • 7.6 A new note explains that confirmation of software used in monitoring and measuring would include verification and configuration management.
  • 8.2.1 A new note has been added to illustrate some of the ways of monitoring customer satisfaction other than carrying out customer satisfaction surveys which were often seen as the only way of meeting this requirement.
  • 8.2.2 The requirement is to keep records throughout the audit and not just the report produced at the end of the audit. The need to apply immediate correction of any nonconformity is made clear in addition to any corrective action to be taken later.
  • 8.2.3 The monitoring and measurement of processes needs to be appropriate to the process, the impact on requirements, and the effectiveness of the quality management system. Again, not just measurement for measurement’s sake.
  • 8.2.4 Evidence of release of product is rquired only when it is released to the customer – not at each stage of the process leading up to delivery.
  • 8.3 It is now made clear that one or more of the four ways of dealing with a nonconformity can be used as applicable. This section is worth re-reading as the text has been reorganised to make its intent clearer. In particular the requirement for dealing with rework is clarified.
  • 8.5.2 and 8.5.3 It is now clear that the effectiveness of corrective and preventive action needs to be verified and not just that actions have been taken.

Annex A has been brought up to date to reference ISO 14001:2004. Annex B now shows the correspondence of ISO 9001:2008 with ISO 9001:2000 rather than with ISO 9001:1994 as this is no longer relevant.

The list of standards in the Bibliography has been brought up to date.

Many sections of the 2000 version remain unchanged in the 2008 amendment including:

  • 4.2.2 Quality manual
  • 5.1 Management commitment
  • 5.2 Customer focus
  • 5.3 Quality policy
  • 5.4 Planning
  • 5.5.1 Responsibility and authority
  • 5.5.3 Internal communication
  • 5.6 Management review
  • 6.1 Provision of resources
  • 7.2.3 Customer communication
  • 7.3.4 Design and development review
  • 7.3.5 Design and development verification
  • 7.3.6 Design and development validation
  • 7.3.7 Control of design and development changes
  • 7.4 Purchasing
  • 8.5.1 Continual improvement

Organisations with ISO 9001:2000 certificates need to be compliant with ISO 9001:2008 by December 31st, 2009. You should contact your certification body to help with this. In most cases they will audit you against the new version of the standard at your next surveillance visit.

If you would like your quality management system assessed against ISO 9001:2008 please leave your a comment below and we will get in touch. Please also get in touch via a comment below if you require further information on any of the changes in ISO 9001:2008.

Posted in ISO 9001, ISO 9001:2000, ISO 9001:2008 | No Comments »