We are all cursed with “surprises” at work. We come in, sit down, get ready for the day. We select a task to start on, and about halfway through, it explodes on us. The seemingly simple task now has 30 subtasks all lined up, ready to destroy our day.

I’ve mentioned that design of experiments (DOE) is one of the few things worth salvaging from typical statistical training, and I thought I’d talk a bit more about DOE in the next couple of columns.