I’ve seen this pattern repeatedly: Instrument data is saved as an Excel or CSV. Data is then copied to a bare-bones spreadsheet with several columns of calculations or transformations. Results from the spreadsheet’s calculations are copied for use further down the data analysis pipeline. And I, the auditor, get handed a signed and dated pdf of the worksheet. Was this email forwarded to you? Subscribe Here! Why yes, M. Inspector, this spreadsheet was validated! Ok, they are rarely this bad - I...
12 days ago • 1 min read
I'm thrilled to announce that I'll be presenting at the CCSQA/NERCSQA Joint Annual Meeting in October! The conference is 2 days, Thursday & Friday, 16-17 October 2025, in Laval, Quebec, Canada. On-site and virtual attendance available. Here's the announcement link: https://sqa.org/CCSQA/CCSQA/Events/Upcoming_Events.aspx My session is on Friday morning, and titled "The power of a specification: Freeing your creative self to go beyond compliance." Here's the abstract: As busy quality...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
It’s the first step of the problem solving framework that I was taught back in Engineering school. Not ‘Plan’. Not “Define”. “I want to and I can”. That particular framework - the McMaster Six Step - never gained the popularity of the ones now used today, but in the end they all contain the same basic elements - research, planning & design, implementation, evaluation and iteration - just stated in different ways. However I’ve never really seen this particular element called out explicitly...
2 months ago • 3 min read
My eight year old son figured out a hack to make the music service work better for him. The kids have a Google smart speaker that is attached to a Spotify account so they can just ask for any of their favourite music. Anyone who has pre-teens in the house probably knows how much such a setup is used - all day every day. Coming from someone who had to run to the double-cassette boom box to press the record button any time a new favourite song came on the radio just so I could listen to it...
2 months ago • 3 min read
I’ve seen several quality leaders complain this week about their disappointment with generative AI - they’re not getting the results they expected. And I understand why - context is king! If you just ask AI to write a procedure or generate a quality document, you’ll get generic, mediocre output. Without enough context, AI can only produce something generic based on its training data. But how do you give it that context? By the time you’ve gone back and forth trying to “engineer the prompt” to...
6 months ago • 3 min read
I'm excited to be presenting at the 2025 SQA Annual Meeting next week - "Is it the Right Tool for the Job? How QA and Regulatory Professionals can Guide Software Decisions in Regulated Environments" As our familiar software tools become more feature-laden and generalized, it's critical to ensure that software meets clear use cases and basic user requirements. And with generative AI being shoehorned into every platform, defining if and how software is appropriate for the intended use has never...
7 months ago • 1 min read
Last time we left off with a cliff-hanger of a question: How do you prove you're you when signing a document? There are several ways I've seen that the 3rd party providers prove that it's you who's signed the document: You clicked a link from an email. You paid for the service with a credit card. You provided some government issued photo ID. Someone, such as a notorized public or your HR department, has verified it's you in person. Obviously these are very different levels of assurance. Then...
over 1 year ago • 1 min read
There are several levels of 'signatures' that you can apply to an electronic document. The first and most basic is just an image of your written signature. One common option for this is to print the document, sign and scan it back in again. A more convenient version is to have an image of your signature saved that you can paste into documents. This is what many free versions of pdf software and word processors offer as a basic document signing option - a 'stamp' of your saved signature image....
over 1 year ago • 2 min read
Ever since COVID, document and signing workflows have been incorporated into everything. Dropbox has it. Microsoft Teams has it. Google Workspaces has it. If you need e-signatures, you probably have access to Docusign, Adobe, Hellosign, and so on. But what exactly are we talking about when we say "document and signing workflow"? Let's step back. Most document workflows are about moving some work through review, commentary, revision and approval. The old way to do this was to send a document...
over 1 year ago • 1 min read