Insightful but meandering and uncritical

While the author puts in a heroic effort amassing insightful details about Deming’s life that help the reader to understand how he developed his profound system of knowledge (which I appreciated), I find the constant self contradictions mildly annoying though these may be the author’s tongue in cheek style. But I find two things unsettling about this book: 1) some sections read like a who’s who list of inventors with no obvious goal eg ch 8, which lists more than 30 prominent scientists each with differing contributions loosely connected to systems science; 2) some ideas are present with little critical judgement and treated as self evidently true - for example, the chapter on agile is assumed to follow from Deming’s ideas which is relatively easy to disprove otherwise. In Ch 6 of the New Economics, Deming writes: “ The secret for reduction in time of development is to put more effort into the early stages, and to study the interaction between stages. Each stage should have the benefit of more effort than the next stage.” which contradicts the opening principle of the Agile Manifesto which states: “Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.” Therefore, while I value the deep historic content exposed by the author, I would invite inquiry into his conclusions. This books should be treated more like a historical narrative rather than an apology for Deming’s system of profound knowledge, which I personally ascribe to.

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