This other day, I stumbled upon an article by John Seddon – "Rethinking Lean Service" which had been laying around in my disk space for a while.
|
"Training workers against demand and ensuring they are responsible for what they do is preventative (the better alternative to inspection). All arbitrary measures (standard times, cost, targets and standards) are removed from the system and instead real measures are used to help managers and workers alike understand and improve the work. It is better, for example, to know the actual time it takes to complete transactions as ‘one-stop’; this improves resource planning. Similarly it is better to know the true experience of the customer for any work that goes through a flow (endto-end time or on-time-as-required) in order to improve the flow and, consequently, reduce costs. There are many examples of these principles in use, published examples include Pyke (2008), McQuade (2008), ODPM (2005), and Jackson, Johnstone and Seddon (2007), Seddon and Brand (2008).
At its heart, the systems archetype is concerned with designing against customer demand, managing value rather than cost. And this is the heart of the paradox: when managers manage costs, costs go up; when they learn to manage value, costs fall. It is a counter-intuitive truth."
|
It struck me how these principles can be deployed using a Kanban system:
- design against customer demand : create the kanban board starting with the demand
- focus on value creation over cost elimination: set highest priority in completing work before accepting new. Use WIP limits to ensure that is happening.
- know the actual time it takes to complete the transaction as "one stop" : learn the cycle time of flow and use this to plan resources rather than spent time
Maybe Kanban is well suited for services?
Read more…
Some of you probably already get this… some of you might even disagree… but unless you are building software as a hobby… chances are, you building software for money. In other words, someone is paying you to write software for them. Why would someone pay you money to show up and write software? They are [...]
Kevin Ryan at IT Kanban just released a podcast with me. Check it out
Cheers
Mattias
I’ve published another book! This one’s called “Lean from the Trenches“. It is about how we scaled a 60-person project by combing techniques from Kanban, Scrum, and XP. I chose this title because it really it illustrates how to put Lean principles into practice in a software project, especially the notion of an end-to-end Kanban read more »
Hi Brazil! I’m happy to say that I’ll be visiting you in a few weeks. I’ll be involved in two public events together with Samuel Crescêncio: Feb 10: Public seminar about Lean & Agile (in Florianopolis). More info coming soon. Feb 13-14: Certified ScrumMaster course in São Paulo. The course will be in English, but Samuel read more »
Well it turns out the “controversy” about AgileExams turned out to be the biggest of misunderstandings. The Testimonials Were Authentic: Several of AgileExams customers contacted me and revealed the root cause of this confusion is the fussiness of PMI.org’s online … Continue reading →
Loading ...
Recent Comments