Black Box Production

In High Output Management, Andy Grove introduces the concept of the Breakfast Factory. He argues that management is not a creative "art" but a series of production processes that can be modeled using industrial engineering principles.

"The logic of a production process is identical whether you are making silicon chips, cooking breakfast, or writing software."

The Limiting Step

Every production process has a Limiting Step—the bottleneck that dictates the overall output of the factory. In a breakfast factory, it might be the time it takes to toast the bread. No matter how fast you cook the eggs, breakfast isn't ready until the toast is done. Finding and optimizing the Limiting Step is the highest-leverage activity in production.

The Black Box Concept

Knowledge work is often opaque. You can't see "work" happening in a developer's brain. Grove suggests treating these processes as a Black Box. You define the inputs and the desired outputs, and use indicators (metrics) to sense what is happening inside without having to open the box (micro-manage).

Leading vs. Lagging Indicators

• Leading Indicators: Metrics that allow you to see a problem before it happens (e.g., the number of bugs found in code review).
• Lagging Indicators: Metrics that show you a problem after it has already occurred (e.g., the number of customer support tickets).

Quality Assurance: In-Process Inspection

Quality should be inspected at the lowest-value stage possible. Finding a bug during coding is cheap. Finding a bug after it's deployed to millions of users is incredibly expensive. In-process inspection—like code reviews or automated tests—is the "Quiet Leverage" of production.