Leveraging Lean for IT and research transformation: The art and science of eating an elephant

Leveraging Lean for IT and research tran...

In 2012, the IT division of a U.S. national research and development laboratory with over 4,500 staff began their Lean IT journey. After working with Mike Orzen, a pioneer in Lean IT, the organization is learning to embrace small incremental change, trial and discovery, and value the answer to the question “what did we learn?” There is an metaphor that says, “the best way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time,” but our tendency is to bite off more than we can chew often leading to failed deployments, partially or improperly built solutions or...
How we used Lean Software Development principles in scaling Agile Methodologies

How we used Lean Software Development pr...

On the way to develop their Lectra PLM solution, the teams at Lectra encountered the same problems and obstacles that other software houses do: delays, quality and costs issues, problems in integrating customer feedback. The Lean Software Development project was introduced to tackle these issues. Deploying the new approach was a real challenge due to the scale (70+ people involved) and the number of various technologies involved. Yet we achieved results we never had before: we delivered a complete and comprehensive version of our software solution on time with a quality...
Gemba walks in IT project management: digging for improvement opportunities

Gemba walks in IT project management:

A domain manager in the IT department of a large Italian bank, is learning to see waste in her IT operations, and realizing that the gemba reality is often different from what she ever imagined. Learning to see in IT is not easy. Knowing which questions to ask, where to look and what to explore deeper is a technique one acquires by practicing over and over. But you can only make better decisions after you’ve been there. ...
Learning from the fast developing practice of Lean IT: Lessons, opportunities and future questions

Learning from the fast developing practi...

As Lean practice within IT grows and blends with complementary disciplines, including Agile, Scrum, ITIL, COBIT, Six Sigma, BPM, and others, we are learning new ways to solve big problems, and to create and leverage strategic opportunities. Steve Bell reflects on the current state of Lean IT, sharing examples from his practice as a Lean coach, researcher and author to show how enterprises—from global conglomerates to startups—are applying Lean IT principles and practices to drive innovation and operational excellence, and how you can apply these lessons learned and...
Breaking through the legacy of mass production: is IT part of the problem or how could it really help to unlock the future?

Breaking through the legacy of mass prod...

In the summit opening keynote session, Pr Daniel Jones presented: “Breaking through the legacy of mass production: is IT part of the problem or how could it really help to unlock the future?” Escaping the Legacy of Mass Production by Prof Daniel T Jones from Institut Lean France...
Lean or Agile: using kanban to build in quality

Lean or Agile: using kanban to build in ...

In lean, kanban is a kaizen tool to reach single-piece flow, and so build in quality through Jidoka. In other words, kanban is a learning tool. In agile, kanbans and burn-down charts are often used as execution tools to make the process more agile, but without any direct impact on quality. By rethinking the underlying principles of kaban and built-in quality we can shift the focus back on product quality in development projects. How to build-in quality into design, and why using kaban properly really matters. Built in Quality by Michael Ballé – Lean IT Summit...