Use PDSA for crying out loud

Whether at work or home, quality improvement involves problem solving and learning. The plan-do-study-act (PDSA) cycle is a good generic model of how these activities take place: in the plan phase, a plan is developed to determine what changes and resources are needed to solve the problem; in the do phase, the plan or experiment is carried out; in the study phase, the results are studied; and in the act phase, action is taken based on what was learned. With these, a new cycle of learning is started. Any problem-solving effort involves multiple cycles of PDSA and each cycle leads to new knowledge.