Send in the poka-yokes

While dabbling around with some Six Sigma papers this afternoon, I stumbled upon a funny term: poka-yoke. You can read about it here. A poka-yoke device is any mechanism that either prevents a mistake from being made or makes the mistake obvious at a glance, such as an USB connector which can be plugged one way only. It’s an error control mechanism oriented to avoid human mistakes when operating it.

There are plenty examples of poka-yoke devices and how to implement them on manufacturing chains and industrial processes, but I wonder: could they be useful on IT processes and procedures and how could they be implemented?

It’s important as many incidents raise in an organization due to human error; frequently, some RCA on those incidents conclude that an operator hit the wrong key or inserted the wrong tape on a drive… So, as to me poka-yokes look like a sound error-control mechanism, I’m looking for ideas on how to implement them on our IT Operation.