Leveraging Lean for IT and research transformation:
The art and science of eating an elephant

In 2012, the IT division of a U.S. national research and development laboratory with over 4,500 staff began their Lean IT journey. After working with Mike Orzen, a pioneer in Lean IT, the organization is learning to embrace small incremental change, trial and discovery, and value the answer to the question "what did we learn?" There is an metaphor that says, "the best way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time," but our tendency is to bite off more than we can chew often leading to failed deployments, partially or improperly built solutions or unfunded grandiose multi-year projects. This presentation will detail what Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has learned so far on our Lean journey and how we are learning to convey the value of Lean to the organization.