Quality Function Deployment
Author: Lou Cohen
List Price: $54.99
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ISBN: 0201633302
Publisher: Prentice Hall PTR (31 May, 1995)
Sales Rank: 72,494
Average Customer Rating: 4.33 out of 5
Customer Reviews
Rating: 4 out of 5
Comprehensive overview, but incomplete in how to try it out
This was an excellent introduction to QFD, which I'd previously heard many good things about. I now feel that I understand how it works, how to marry it with the software development process in general, and even managed to pick up some hints on how I might integrate some more advanced customer representation ideas (like use of personas instead of instances of customers, for when your customer base is too large).However, it was stated many times that:
1) You should have someone who has lead a QFD before facilitating it
2) It's highly customizable, by cutting things out
It would've been nice understand how to go about a first QFD with no experienced facilitators, along with some warning signs about whether you're going right or wrong. Also, examples of the customizations folks have made for smaller or larger teams and less or more rigorous organizations would've made it more concrete how to roll it out on a team such as my own.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Best Practitioners Reference to QFD I've found
I found the Cohen book to be the reference to Quality Function Deployment that I have been looking for. Unlike many of the Japanese books on the subject that have been translated to english, Cohen's book provides a comprehensive look at the subject of QFD, from the history of QFD through the final chapters that guide one through the mechanics of conducting a QFD study. I particularly like the no-nonsense writing style and the step-by-step approach taken to explain the method without going into tediously technical details about all the potential mathematics involved. This is the first book that I have found on the subject of QFD that I could actually USE to complete a QFD study. I also found that the method described is not dependent on any specific QFD software, but works with any of the 3 QFD software packages that I use. If you have to have just one reference for Quality Function Deployment, this is the book I would choose.
Rating: 2 out of 5
More examples please
I, an engineer turned marketer, love to learn by example. Stop telling me about how it works...show me.THE COMPLETE LACK OF SAMPLES was very disappointing. I feel my understanding would have been much deeper if the author had walked through hypothetical/real examples.
The book does a reasonably good job describing the various steps of performing the QFD process. Samples would have made it much richer.
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