Failure to innovate and evolve has been the death knell of many former industry leaders – think of Polaroid or Digital Equipment.  Both are no longer relevant,, and both failed to respond effectively as the world around them changed.  Lack of innovation is in itself a major risk and, for many companies, IT is a a key enabler (or dis-abler) of innovation.

In their very readable book Lean IT Steve Bell and Michael Orzen propose a framework ( ‘Run-Grow-Transform’ ) for thinking about how organizations spend their money.

Their essential thesis is that application of Lean principles, most especially within the IT organization, can improve ‘Run’ efficiency, thereby enabling ‘Growth’ with minimal increases in operating costs, and in turn liberating resources to Transform’.

So what are some of these key Lean principles the can improve Run efficiency?  One I especially like is ‘Proactive Behavior’ – i.e., don’t wait for someone to tell you what to do or how to do it – take the bull by the horns and wrestle the beast to the ground.  So how might you do that?  One very interesting approach is to apply Stephen Covey’s time management ideas (illustrated below) to your every day business life.

Think for a moment about emails and IMs – how much of your day is consumed by these constant interruptions?  How many of these messages actually, really, require your attention right now?  Is it not within the realm of possibility to negotiate a mutually beneficial protocol with those with whom you most frequently interact?  Could we not agree to restrict our use of ‘reply all’?  Could we not agree to some standard for Subject line that classifies items by topic and urgency?  I venture to guess this is well within the realm of the possible, and has the potential to noticeably improve team productivity. Perhaps we could free up ten or fifteen minutes every day for reflection and innovation.

Another principle we may consider is the concept of visual controls.  How much time do managers at every level spend answering the question “what’s the status of  xyz?”  Lean has shown us how we can, for many processes, make the status of work visual so that status is readily apparent to all concerned, and has the additional benefit of being always current.  How much time would you save every week if the volume of “what’s the status” questions were substantially reduced?  Especially in IT, most managers spend a substantial portion of their time discovering status (interrupting those who do the work) and reporting that through successive layers.

Related ideas associated with Flow, Pull, Just in Time, and Kanban can be applied to many IT processes.  When correctly implemented these ideas lead to balancing supply and demand, which in turn leads to much more predictable lead times to satisfy requests for IT services.

Perhaps these few illustrations will give a sense of the potential of Lean IT as an enabler of more efficient operations that can lead to freeing up resources that may be applied to transformation.

Bio:

Gary Gack, is the founder and President of Process-Fusion.net, a provider of Assessments, Strategy advice, Training, and Coaching relating to integration and deployment of software and IT best practices. Mr. Gack holds an MBA from the Wharton School, is a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt and an ASQ Certified Software Quality Engineer. He has more than 40 years of diverse experience, including more than 20 years focused on process improvement. He is the author of many articles and a book entitled Managing the Black Hole: The Executive’s Guide to Software Project Risk. LinkedIn profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/garygack

He can be contacted at: 904.579.1894 or ggack@Process-Fusion.net