About ISOCake

ISOCake is the final (unofficial) procedure in any ISO9000 compliant organisation.

When you mess up ISOCake will make it better.

ISO cake simply means that if you mess up in (what is in hindsight) a preventable manner, you apologise to your co-workers.

In my workplace, most people like cake, so if I mess up and I think I could have done better or prevented the mistake (especially by better adherence to procedures) I bring a cake. No one can tell you to bring an ISOCake. Only you can make that decision because you want to do better next time

Maybe in your workplace beer works better than cake, or a sorry card, or flowers. Its up to you.

The idea is that by admitting responsibility for a mistake we will be more responsible next time. Its also meant to make the workplace more fun.

The ISO Cake is a personal pledge to be more responsible and mess up less. Next time you mess up, bring a cake. Leave it in the kitchenette (if you workplace has one) with a note (or not). Perhaps put the isocake.readthedocs.io URL on the note. Perhaps sign your name (you don’t have to, its enough that you want to do better).

Hopefully we will all do better over time before anyone gets fat from eating too much ISOCake.

Sincerely, – Chris Hines