One of the key benefits of Lean is that teams are largely autonomous and self-organizing. The assumption is that every team member knows what is expected of them and when, and are able to work independently on tasks and deliver quality work with little oversight. However, this basic assumption of autonomy and self-sufficiency does not […]
How does it happen that all living beings, from a single cell organism to a human body, know how to grow, adapt to an environment, simply keep living? Even if each cell is a complex and relatively independent piece of machinery, a synchronization at a higher level (tissues, organs) is achieved by receiving and processing […]
When I was a senior manager, fresh ways to look at old situations were always welcome. Now that I’m a consultant and coach, approaching new situations in a Lean way is a key part of the job! Let me introduce three organisational perspectives that I have found helpful: Right to left Outside in Upside down […]
The term continuous improvement is fairly self-explanatory. It almost seems too simple, but this industry buzzword is about continually improving your business, processes, and way of working. How you go about studying, planning, implementing and evolving that improvement is where it gets more complicated. You need to encourage a philosophy of constant, logical, and sustainable improvement […]
Lean is focused on delivering value to the customer, but never at the expense of the employee. Lean systems believe that empowered employees, treated with respect, are essential for delivering value. This means that the Lean principles not only can be employed by whole companies or whole teams, but can even be adopted at the […]
Organizations generally adopt Lean to move the needle on specific indicators. They want to be more productive, improve the health of the organization, or increase revenue. But the Lean concept isn’t simply about improving metrics; it is about changing the culture. And changing the culture begins with leadership. Everyone from the top down needs to […]
“Starting work doesn’t generate value, starting work only costs money. Finishing work generates value.” – Klaus Leopold First, there was personal productivity. Then, everyone started talking about Agile teams. Today, it’s time to take it even higher. In this episode of the Lamp, we are talking about business alignment with Klaus Leopold. Klaus is an experienced computer scientist […]
Lean methods emerged from manufacturing, where conventional wisdom was that the goal is to produce as many goods as possible, as quickly as possible. When Taiichi Ohno introduced the Andon cord at Toyota, authorizing every employee on the assembly line to immediately halt production when they noticed a problem or defect, even people in his […]
In all too many organizations, “manager” is nothing more than a different job description and pay scale. Managers go to more and different meetings, and complete more and different paperwork, but aren’t fundamentally different from other employees. They don’t require more of a person as a mentor or as a leader, and they don’t require […]
One of the main properties of Kanban is limiting work in progress (WIP). This allows you to match any team’s development (or your personal) capacity. The most widely-adopted practice is to set WIP limits per column (workflow stage). However, it is also acceptable to establish limits per person or team. In my experience, WIP limits […]