The PDCA cycle

The art of getting better 1% at the time

The PDCA also known as the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle (or Deming's cycle) was first introduced to Japan after WWII during the occupation and reconstruction lead by the Americans, and it is used to improve the quality of some process of your choosing.

This cycle is divided in 4 steps:

  1. Plan: here you define a goal, and the steps needed to obtain such goal, including some success criteria.

  2. Do: I'd say this is quite self-explainatory, in this phase you do the steps that were planned in the previous step.

  3. Check: you verify if the goal was obtained, if the criteria of success are achived. In this phase you measure your results.

  4. Act: you make the changes needed to improve the process. You analize the causes of the problems and take the actions needed to correct the process.

Once you reach the last step, you repeat from the start and do it until you are satisfied (or until the end of your days).

For engagement for this article i ask you:

  • Have you ever heard of the PDCA cycle before?

  • Have you ever applied this before?

  • Will you try applying it?