An example ? Here it is - in fact I had already posted it - "Active portfolio monitoring using the CUSUM approach" (Cusum is typically a quality control tool) where there is a whole discussion on monitoring the performance of fund managers. http://www.northinfo.com/papers/pdf/Philips.pdf As for the low productivity of the software industry there can be several reasons. As I said althouth quality control seems to enter the field since a few years it can have done so with the bad mentality and in fact Shewart and Deming said that they failed to implement their Quality Management Philosophy in United States and Europe - except in Military field as for Shewart - because of that whereas they have succedeed in Japan - although Deming was desperate at the end to see that the western mentality - notably the very short term and quotas mentality - have invaded Japan and the guy I invited had predicted the decline of Japan which I didn't believe at that time since Japan was at the highest of its power - finally he was right. With a bad mentality - that is to say police state mentality - it can conduct to bureaucracy and too much "quantitativeness" like quotas and papers scratching for justifying any apparent lack of performance - and so cheating - whereas the true spirit of Deming Quality Control - in fact he rather use the term Management - is not at all that. So it happens that some people who don't talk about quality does in fact quality whereas others that do have a whole department of communication who make exhortation about quality don't do much quality. I have seen it traditional industries and in software engineering. I don't code myself any more since I am not programer any more but I have been programer and I know perfectly that it is details that counts and that managers forget or ignore some details and that can create mess also in an organisation.