Lean IT and Eliminate waste.

1. Don’t Improve Work, Remove Waste By Paul Brink, February 2010

3. The project costs twice as much

4. The project delivers half of the functionalityhttp://geekandpoke.typepad.com/

5. Desperately looking for solutions Organizations are desperately looking for solutions to speed up their IT projects and increasing the quality of their output Many solutions have been tried like: Improving project and quality management systems(e.g. Prince2, MSP and CMMi) Introducing new development methods(e.g. RAD and Extreme Programming) Implementing new development tooling(e.g. advanced IDE’s and BPM/BRE-tooling) Introducing new technologies(e.g. an ESB to enable a Service Oriented Architecture)

6. But look no further… There is a much better way

7. Lean your IT process

8. Definitions of time Lead Time = Cycle Time + Waiting Time Lead time = the time it takes to complete a process - from start to finish Cycle time = the time a product is being worked on Waiting time = the time spent waiting around to be worked on

9. Improve waiting time, not cycle time 80 to 90% of the lead time of administrative processes consists of waiting time. Focusing on improving waiting time is much more beneficial, than focusing on speeding up the actual work (cycle time). A way to reduce the lead time is to eliminate “waste”. Waste is any activity that consumes time, resources, or space but does not add any value to the product or service. Therefore…Don’t improve Work, Remove Waste

10. Muda, Muri and Mura無駄 無理 ムラ While the elimination of waste may seem like a simple and clear subject it is noticeable that waste is often very conservatively identified. There are three broad types of waste: Muda, 無駄is a traditional general Japanese term for an activity that is wasteful and doesn't add value, is unproductive or un-useful in practice Muri, 無理is a Japanese term for overburden, unreasonable or absurdity Mura, 斑 or ムラis a traditional general Japanese term for unevenness, inconsistency in physical matter or human spiritual condition

12. All components, work in process and finished product not being processed

13. People or equipment moving or walking more than is required to perform the processing

14. Waiting for the next production step

15. Production ahead of demand

16. Resulting from poor tool or product design creating activity

18. ムラ Mura – Merge sub-processes into one Mura can be eliminated by production leveling. It is possible to smooth the workflow by having one person work across several process steps rather than have different persons working on one process step; in a sense merging several sub-processes under one person. The fact that there is one person, will force a smoothness across the operations because the work piece “flows” with the person. This is called “multi-process handling”.

19. The way to go… To increase the quality and lead time of IT projects one should focus on waiting time, not on cycle time. New methods, new tooling and new technology will improve cycle time, but much more is to be gained when focused on waiting time. The elimination of waste is essential to improve the quality and lead time of IT projects: Muda – Remove all types of waste Muri – Improve work, but don’t push it Mura – Merge sub-processes into one

20. Geek & PokeLean IT http://geekandpoke.typepad.com/

21. Paul Brink Website http://www.xs4all.nl/~pjbrink/fotografie/ LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/in/pauljohanbrink Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/paul_brink/ My goal is to challenge my personal opinion to the opinion of others. “The many are smarter than the few.” So feel free to respond. DisclaimerThis is my personal private opinion, not the opinion of the website managers, director or editors or the organization I work for.