Westfall Weekly Webinars

Correction & Corrective Action presented by Linda Westfall

May 20, 2026, at 12:01 pm Central

Quality control is all about taking action when tracking our projects, processes, or products reveals one or more issues. Quality control starts with correction, where remedial action is taken to fix the immediate problem.  We've got a problem today, and we fix it today. Unfortunately,  this correction doesn't prevent recurrence, and that's where we get into trouble. We fix the symptom and call it solved, only for the same issue to happen again later.  Long-term corrective action is what actually prevents that. It's the root cause work, the systemic change, the stuff that keeps it from happening again anywhere in the organization. This webinar will discuss both correction and corrective action, which are essential to quality control.

It’s Their Fault Not Mine!: Navigating Conflict and Difficult Conversations presented by Zac Jarrard

May 27, 2026, at 12:01 pm Central

Projects and process improvement often introduce change in organizations. This can cause conflict and frustration with some stakeholders. Quality managers often need to help teams make decisions and facilitate difficult conversations to move a project forward. This presentation will:

1. Examine the causes of conflict
2. Provide a framework for navigating conflict and difficult conversations
3. Share lessons learned from experience

The Power of Mentorship: Growing Your Circle of Influence presented by Leslie Weaver

June 3, 2026, at 12:01 pm Central

Leadership growth does not happen alone. The leaders who make the greatest impact are often those who intentionally build strong circles of mentorship, connection, and influence. In this webinar, we will explore three levels of mentorship that help leaders grow personally, professionally, and relationally. Together, we will reflect on how the people around us shape our leadership journey—and how we, in turn, influence others.

This session will challenge participants to think beyond their current role and begin building a leadership legacy through intentional relationships and community.

Management Is Necessary. Managers May Not Be presented by Al Shalloway 

June 10, 2026, at 12:01 pm Central

Organizations do not become effective simply because talented people work hard. They become effective when someone attends to how the system itself operates.

How do we ensure people are aligned around common objectives?
How do we create alignment across teams?
How do we notice delays, conflicting priorities, and local optimization?
How do we help people learn, improve, and adapt?
How do we create the conditions within which effective work can emerge?
These are all management functions.

In this talk, Al Shalloway explores the role of management from a systems perspective — not as oversight of individuals, but as the ongoing design and improvement of the environment within which people work.

Drawing from Deming, systems thinking, Lean, the Physics of Flow, and Amplio, this session examines:

• Why unmanaged systems naturally drift toward inefficiency
• Why local optimization creates organizational dysfunction
• How visibility, feedback, and coordination shape outcomes
• Why capability development is a core management responsibility
• How organizations can distribute management functions without losing effectiveness

True Shift-Left Does Pay Off  

Presented by: Robin Goldsmith

“Shift-Left” is a proven way to deliver higher-quality yet lower-cost software.  Except, too much of what’s claimed to be shift-left isn’t really shifting left and delivers far-lower merely-marginal benefits, at best.  This interactive session explains what shift-left is meant to mean, why it can provide such big benefits, what’s often claimed to be shift-left instead, why it can only deliver more modest benefits, and how to shift truly left.
    - Shift-left lifecycle perspective
    - Illusory marginal activity “shift-left”
    - Achieving meaningful true shift-left and its bigger benefits

Available Free Until: 07/25/26
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Bringing Quality Control into the Digital Age: Integrating Data, Systems, and Human Insight 

Presented by: Sainyam Arora

Quality control has traditionally relied on inspections, audits, and manual data collection. As organizations adopt digital tools and analytics, quality professionals face the challenge of integrating these technologies into established quality control practices without losing the process discipline that ensures reliability. This webinar explores how modern manufacturing and engineering teams can connect traditional quality control methods with data-driven tools to improve decision-making, visibility, and operational performance. Attendees will gain practical insights into how quality control can evolve alongside digital transformation while maintaining strong process foundations.

Available free until 07/18/2026
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6 Steps to Designing a Metric

Presented by:  Linda Westfall

After we have defined what we want to measure and why, we need to design a consistent, clear way to collect and report the measurement. This allows everyone to collect data, turn it into information, and interpret it correctly to make better fact-based decisions. In this webinar, attendees will learn the six steps needed to design reliable and  valid metrics, including:
    - Standardizing definitions for the entities and attributes being measured
    - Choosing a measurement function
    - Establishing a measurement method
    - Defining decision criteria
    - Designing reporting mechanisms
    - Determining additional qualifiers

Available Free Until: 07/11/2026
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Team Estimation

Presented by: Al Shalloway

Learn a better approach to estimation than estimating story size using Planning Poker.

This webinar will discuss why the common method of how and what to estimate is poor advice.

Estimates should be based more on the value increments to be created and use a method that does not fall prey to the “planning fallacy” - a cognitive bias where people underestimate the time, costs, and risks of future actions, despite knowing that similar past projects exceeded similar estimates.

It will introduce Steve Bockman’s Team Estimation with a callout to James Grenning’s Planning Poker Party (no relation to planning poker).  This is a faster, more efficient, and more effective planning method that can be used even in places where Planning Poker is ineffective.

You’ll learn both how to use Team Estimation and be given access to a Lucid Board that enables you to do this remotely. 

Available Free Until: 06/27/2026
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78.34% of Metrics Are Made Up 

Presented by: Robin Goldsmith

Hopefully, the percentage of metrics that are made up is far lower, but surely is greater than zero.  Sometimes it can be intentional, whereas other times it can be inadvertent. Regardless, made-up metrics can have consequences, which can be especially hard to detect due to the lack of reliable measures.  This interactive session explores circumstances and impacts where metrics may be made up and suggests better approaches.
    - Do only politicians make up metrics?
    - Bigger dangers of inadvertently made-up metrics
    - Need for and ways to detect and deal with made-up metrics

Available Free Until: 06/20/2026

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So You Want to Measure Stuff? 

Presented by: Scott Duncan

This webinar, while certainly discussing some typical metrics, encourages thinking beyond the traditional sense of metrics to consider other ways to “measure” things leading to positive change. As the webinar states, you measure to learn; learn to decide; decide to act; and act to cause some change to occur. The question is then, what change are you looking to make?

Available Free Until: 06/14/2026
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How Lean, Evo, Flow, and Theory of Constraints Enables You to Shift Left

Presented by: Al Shalloway 

All of these methods are consistent with Deming. All add something to his work. And all leave a little out.

Together they give you a focus on continuous learning, who to create value for, how to maximize value creation, and how to diagnose and solve your problems. This webinar will introduce the concepts that each of these provide and how they work together. 

Available Free Until: 06/07/2026
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QA vs. QC vs. QM vs. QE

Presented by: Robin Goldsmith

What’s in a name?  Many similar-sounding terms are applied to various aspects of software quality, often inconsistently and incorrectly,  which can impact quality outcomes and effectiveness.  For instance, many who are called “Quality Assurance (QA)” actually do Quality Control (QC), which can mean the organization fails to receive real QA’s benefits.  Similar issues pertain to “Quality Management (QM)” and “Quality Engineering (QE).”  This interactive session explains and differentiates these important terms.
    - How terminology issues impact Quality outcomes and effectiveness
    - Distinguishing QA, QC, QM, and QE
    - Gaining respective benefits of each without undue overhead

Available Free Until: 05/24/26
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