About this Edition
~ 7 min reading
A short introduction
The 12 Days to Deming Active Learning Course was created by Dr Henry Neave and first launched in 2020. The course has been adapted for the web by me, Lee Durbin, and first launched in 2026.
Dr Henry Neave created 12 Days to Deming to take you on a journey to deeply understand what Dr W. Edwards Deming (1900–1993) taught.
Dr Deming is famous for his work in Japan in the 1950s and in the West from the early 1980s; I first heard about him during an Agile training course when he was mentioned alongside the Toyota Production System. It wasn’t until five years later that I encountered him again, when I read Cedric Chen’s “Becoming Data Driven, From First Principles” which completely changed my perspective on my work as a data analyst.
Wishing to learn more about Dr Deming and his teaching, I participated in a study group hosted by the Geelong Quality Council in early 2024. This was my introduction to 12 Days to Deming, and gave me an opportunity to review, discuss, and share my insights about the material. Dr Jackie Graham, who worked closely with Dr Deming, mentored the study group - and, as of the time of writing, continues to do so.
Why this edition exists
After completing the 12 Days to Deming course via the study group, I reflected on my learning experiences and thought about how it might be improved for future students.
The full course material is available as free PDF downloads from several sources, including the New Zealand Organisation for Quality (NZOQ) and SPC Press. These materials were designed to be printed, which may place accessibility limitations on learners with specific needs. My primary motivation for creating this website is to improve the accessibility of the learning material, and accessibility is a first-class concern in this interactive version.
The accessibility page catalogues the features currently in place — skip-to-content links, an OpenDyslexic font toggle, visible focus indicators, ARIA labelling, non-colour status cues, reduced-motion support, and print-safe styling — and lists the improvements still to come. If you encounter an accessibility issue, please email me directly at hello@leedurbin.co.nz and I’ll be happy to explore how to improve the site.
Dr Neave’s blessing
When I began this project I shared early drafts privately, and I did not want to publish the site widely without Dr Neave’s approval. Through Richard Hamilton, Dr Neave reviewed the live site in May 2026 and gave his blessing for it to be made publicly available. His words: “do make it as publicly available as possible and hopefully many thousands of people will also soon be clicking that link!”
That endorsement matters to me for two reasons. First, it confirms that the adaptation is faithful to what he wrote — Dr Neave told Richard the experience was “thrilling” and that re-reading the material felt “almost like reading something I’d never seen before”, which I take as a quiet vote of confidence in the transcription. Second, it means the accessibility-focused framing — a digital edition shaped around the needs of neuro-divergent and dyslexic learners — has the explicit support of the author of the original course.
What has changed, and what hasn’t
In adapting 12 Days to Deming for the web, several adaptations were made.
This interactive online version preserves Dr Neave’s original content exactly as he wrote it, and no major changes have been made to his teachings, examples, or explanations. The changes are to how the course is delivered, not what it teaches — Dr Neave’s words, examples, and sequencing are intact.
The most visible change is that the printable Workbook — Dr Neave’s original response-capture document — has been replaced with in-page text boxes and a per-page notes download. A full summary of deliberate departures from the source text is on the changes from the source page.
Reading-time indicator
Under most chapter titles you’ll see a small note like “~ 6 min reading” or “~ 6 min reading · ~ 20 min at Neave’s pace.” These measure two different things:
- Reading time is a plain word count divided by an average reading speed. It only tells you how long the prose takes to read.
- At Neave’s pace, when it’s shown, is Dr Neave’s own timing for that section, read from the clock faces printed in the margins of his original course material. It’s how long he allowed a room of course participants to spend there — so it covers reflection, activities, and time on the figures, not just reading the words.
The two numbers can differ a lot in either direction, and that’s the point: a short passage Dr Neave wanted you to sit with for half an hour tells you something a word count can’t.
On Day 2 you may also see a third figure, like “(~ 30 min on Stats-level 0)”. Dr Neave printed two columns of clocks on those pages — one pace for readers who chose Stats-level 0 back in the Welcome, another for those on Stats-levels 1 to 3. The two paces are the same for most chapters; where they differ, both are shown.
Most chapters currently show reading time only, with no second figure. That isn’t a signal that the two are roughly equal — it’s simply that Dr Neave’s timings for that part of the course haven’t been transcribed into the site yet. Days 1 and 2 are covered today; the rest of the course will follow as that work continues. Treat a bare reading-time figure as a floor on how long the chapter will take, not a full estimate.
Thanks
There are a number of individuals I’d like to thank for contributing directly or indirectly to the existence of this edition.
First and foremost I must thank Henry Neave for creating the course in the first place. As you’ll read in his background to the course, Dr Neave worked on these materials for some 20 years before releasing them to the world. There are few who have worked so tirelessly to promote and explain Dr Deming’s teaching, and for that I’m indebted to him.
I’d also like to thank Richard Hamilton, Jenny Perks, Dr Jackie Graham, and all those (past and present) who support the 12 Days to Deming Study Group. Richard in particular has been very supportive of my efforts here, and provided vital early-stage feedback.
Cedric Chen’s essay, “Becoming Data Driven, From First Principles”, was the catalyst that prompted me to immerse myself in Deming’s philosophy. It also transformed the way I think about the work I do as a data analyst, and so I’m grateful to Cedric for his writing and his continued leadership in this space.
Feedback, contributions, and reporting issues
There are three ways to tell me something, and the right one depends on what you want to say. None of them require an account.
If a chapter worked for you, or didn’t, use the thumbs up or down at the foot of it. A thumbs-down opens an optional box for the detail — what was confusing, what was broken, what you expected instead. It takes one click, and because it knows which chapter you were on, it tells me where something went wrong in a way a general message about the site can’t. What that sends, and what it deliberately doesn’t, is set out on the Privacy page.
If you’d be happy to be quoted, there’s a short form on the Share Your Experience page. This edition exists partly because people took the trouble to say the course was worth their time, and a few sentences from you would help the next person decide the same. Nothing gets published unless you explicitly choose that option, and you can say yes anonymously.
If you’re comfortable on GitHub, the site lives at github.com/lddurbin/twelve_days_to_deming and I welcome contributions of all sizes. If you spot a typo, a broken link, a cross-reference that doesn’t resolve, or anything else that looks wrong, please open an issue or a pull request. Suggestions for new activities, improvements to existing ones, or additional accessibility features are just as valuable as bug reports — if you’re not sure whether something is worth raising, raise it anyway. I’d rather hear about small issues than miss them.
With that, over to Henry.