Lean for IT/Software projects,,, structure communication/3
Following my previous post here, I will continue with the 3rd step for Lean implementation in IT/Software setup. Let me explain what the symptoms of poor communication are:
- Disconnect among management, people, project stakeholders and the customer.
- Not asking the right questions. Read more…
Lean for IT/Software.. Make knowledge explicit/2
This is the second post for implementing Lean in Knowledge Work based on Harvard Business Review article here, you can read my previous post about visualising waste here. Making knowledge explicit does not mean that:
- People are fungible. People differentiate themselves based on their character and ethics.
- Skills are levelled: We will continue to have people of varied degree of competency in certain skill.
- Having knowledge explicit will never replace people and their interactions. Read more…
Lean for Knowledge Work
Agile methods promote experimentation to discover the unknown and desired product. Please see my post here. Not all software or IT projects require experimentation as noted in the post. Harvard Business Review article here suggested that Lean philosophies are well applied to non experimental IT/Software projects. Such projects will benefit from Lean approach in a way that can not be obtained from applying Agile methods.
Read more…
Factors for choosing a project approach
Software and IT projects are not all the same. The purpose of this post is to explore factors which impact our selection of a project approach.
Managing Large Lean Software Projects
This post based on my reading of Henrik Kniberg’s book Lean from the Trenches. I am not going to write a detailed review on the book but rather I provide my own interpretations.
Maturity in using the tool
Either Scrum, Kanban or XP we should avoid getting obsessed by any one. Instead use them according to the situation. They can be helpful in providing guidelines but they can be tweaked wisely to the environment. Our approach for managing development or project should be composite rather biased to specific method or technique. Read more…
Resisting Visualization
Once you visualize the work, you can improve it! I have heard this in many occasions and from prominent experts. When you visualize the work, you actually arrive at shared visible understanding which allow actions to be logical consequence. Actions are stemmed from understanding the principles of flow, bottlenecks and the five focusing principles.
Resistance means the effect of change has started. It resembles our body resistance to the medicines which indicates our bodies are actual responding. Read more…
A Concordia waterfall project
For large projects, the size can be 50+ people working for 1.5 to 3 years, which is more than 100,000 man-hours/year. If the project is about to sink, new skills will be required which are not available in the project team.
It can be surprising how such entity which can have wealth of skills and resources are not capable to save the project. In fact the ship captain and crews will step aside (either voluntarily or forced) and leave the helm for rescue consultants till the ship becomes ready for normal operation. Read more…
Process Cycle Efficiency (PCE)
Five years ago I prepared report for a Lean transformation for a certain client department. The PCE was less than 1%! PCE is defined as the ratio between the time we actually spent working on a feature to the Lead Time. PCE is an average metric.
The purpose of this blog is to explore if there were only one metric to choose, should it be the PCE and why. Read more…
Inadequacy of project Percentage of Completion (PoC)
PoC is a widely used metric in traditional organizations to monitor their projects. Normally such projects can have 40+ people with multiple vendors involved. The project is structured into teams some implement Agile others are not. Sometimes the program management wants to become Agile but they are not sure how to structure their team for meeting compliance and regulation expectations, as well as inherited organization’s practices. Read more…
Addressing the needs of people and business
Process improvement has been doomed to be a waste function by many organizations. From my background, many who work in process improvement are treated as compliance workers instead of being contributors to the bottom-line. For me process improvement is the business. Every day we take decisions to get certain benefits. Read more…
