“You started out with an interesting column, but now it’s just spam. Click.”

Usually I don’t even pick up calls with no caller id. At least it wasn’t a RoboDialer (now called, as I recently learned, “agent-less proactive contact”).

The call was, most likely, in response to my recent InfoWorld article, “10 sure-fire ways to kill telecommuting.” Everyone’s a critic. Not everyone is so succinct.

When InfoWorld asked me to write about telecommuting, my knowledge was superficial at best, so I asked KJR‘s subscribers to share their experience and insights. 350 replies later I’m officially an expert.

Starting with a realization many discussions don’t make clear, which is that telecommuters come in five distinct flavors (I doubt this is original, although I couldn’t find anything like this breakdown when researching the subject). They are:

Valid inference?

  1. Process design … serious, industrial strength process design … is an engineering problem, calling for engineering expertise.
  2. Lean, Six-Sigma, Lean-Six-Sigma, and Theory of Constraints are all attempts to turn process improvement into serious engineering.
  3. Software development methodologies are business processes, so it Just Makes Sense to try to apply these process design methodologies to it, doesn’t it?

Viewed from 50,000 feet, the logic chain looks good. Here on the ground, though, it’s far from certain.