European Lean IT Summit 2013: The presentation slides and videos of the sessions
The Lean Agile roundtable with the lean founders and agile gurus.
Escaping the legacy of mass production by Daniel T.Jones
The value proposition of Lean in IT by Marie-Pia Ignace
Marie-Pia Ignace is a pioneer of Lean IT in Europe, she created the Lean IT Summit in 2011 and as an introduction to the 3rd annual summit, she summarized the findings and results of the various projects she contributed to, explaining the 4 values Lean brings to IT.
Lean & Agile by Régis Medina
IT managers who want to improve their software development activities are quickly faced with the “Lean or Agile?” question. Are lean and agile the same thing? Should we deploy agile before implementing lean? Having been on both sides of the table, Régis shares what he has learned so far about both approaches, and how best to use them to create high performance software development organizations.
From push to pull in IT: learning to create value for users is not a long, quiet river by Bertrand Eteneau and Catherine Chabiron, Faurecia
Pushing tools to users and complaining that they didn’t use them was easy enough. But when we started asking ourselves whether we were solving the right problems, and how to create value and measure this value creation, it turned out to be a rough path. Learn from Faurecia IT’s experience on this matter, and how IT can progressively move away from being a commodity provider to become a business partner. Faurecia is the 6th automotive equipment supplier worldwide and IT has to support Just in Time plants, Product launches, Month end closes, Purchasing processes and many more in 320 sites and 34 countries.
Lean IT Leadership – the essential element of a Lean IT transformation by Mike Orzen
Leaders and Managers have specific roles to play in support of a Lean IT transformation. Unfortunately, many Lean IT initiatives are hindered by Leaders who delegate their role and/or Managers who unintentionally disable the effort. This scenario always ends with disappointing results at best, and an alienated, bitter IT staff (and their customers) at worst. The problem lies not in what Leaders and Managers wish to achieve in their organization, it lies in what they focus on and how they go about positioning their people for success. Hundreds of books have been written on Leadership, and many describe the actions of effective leaders (establishing a vision, leading by example, holding people accountable, etc.). What is lacking in most of the Lean IT initiatives I witness are the daily activities that proactively prevent Lean Thinking in IT from taking a back seat to the daily firefighting that consumes people’s focus and drains them of energy. This presentation will cover the role of Managers and Leaders in a Lean IT environment, addressing common challenges and ways to overcome them. The most common barrier to any Lean transformation is lack of support and direction by Leaders and Managers. This talk will explore the ten common mis-steps of Leadership as it applies to the IT workplace and include specific countermeasures to avoid these pitfalls in the first place, or to get your team back on track if you find yourself in a “Leadership vacuum”.
Reach your project target costs with Lean Cost Planning, the Toyota Way by Takashi Tanaka, Dassault Systemes
Cost Planning is one of technique of cost management to accomplish target cost from earlier phase of project. Mr Tanaka explores the difference between Finance (Financial Accounting) and Cost planning (Management Accounting) and their distinct uses. While many companies implement Financial Accounting, few successfully implement Cost planning. Cost Planning is a proactive activity in which a company strives to achieve a target cost, starting this effort early in the concept and planning phase. Cost Planning allows engineers to estimate the costs quite accurately at early phases of the project. Even for new (non-existing) products, the cost planning teams can make accurate estimates based on historical data and other related data. These estimates are needed for quick decision making. For global product development, the digital formatted cost planning is necessary to accomplish product target.
Learning from the fast developing practice of Lean IT by Steve Bell
As Lean practice within IT grows and blends with complementary disciplines, including Agile, Scrum, ITIL, COBIT, Six Sigma, BPM, and others, we are learning new ways to solve big problems, and to create and leverage strategic opportunities. Steve Bell reflects on the current state of Lean IT, sharing examples from his practice as a Lean coach, researcher and author to show how enterprises—from global conglomerates to startups—are applying Lean IT principles and practices to drive innovation and operational excellence, and how you can apply these lessons learned and achieve the same success.
Built in quality: why using kanban properly does matter by Michael Ballé
Do you use kanban to visualize workflow, measure and manage flow, limit work in progress…? This is not why Taichi Ohno invented kanban! Kanban is a tool of Kaizen: The point of kanban is the discipline of learning everytime we reduce the batch…
Lean Software Factory – Applying The Toyota Way to the continuous crafting of embedded evolving software by Yves Caseau, Bouygues Telecoms
In 2011, Bouygues Telecom built a “software factory” to deliver software for its “boxes” (IPTV set-top boxes and internet routers). A Software Factory is a combination of tools and methods to promote automated building and testing, with a focus on configuration management. Since then, they have started a transformation journey, combining the ambition of agile software development and lean product/management culture. This talk focuses on the “factory” metaphor, since they found that the way the software is built is as important as the software product itself when the competitive context requires a constant stream of changes. The key characteristics that are required from business come more from the production process than from the manufactured object itself. This talk describes the attempt to combine lean long-term vision and principles with the adaptability of agile development. Borrowing from SCRUM, Extreme Programming, Devops, The Toyota Way, as well as their own experience and culture for building complex large-scale systems. Yves reflects on both the similarities and differences from these various influences and explain how they are trying to build a multi-scale software product development methodology and factory.
The Toyota Way – Information systems delivering value to the business by Hakan Borglund, Toyota Material Handling Europe
Håkan describes Toyota Industries Business Practices (TIBP) applied to the IS function of Toyota Material Handling Europe. Showing how the Toyota values are applied in the IS operating model. Giving concrete example of how the Toyota I_Site software and blackbox solution were launched in the global market place using TIBP during the various phases of the development and deployment.
The power of lean thinking in a developing world by Khuloud Odeh, The Grameen Foundation
Dr. Odeh shared stories, insights, photos and videos from a coaching trip to Grameen field offices in Uganda. See how Lean IT, Agile, and Lean Startup thinking have helped Grameen in four core areas: access to finance: micro credit, savings and other products to help establish economic self sufficiency ; Access to information: through tools and mobile applications built to be in the hands of the poor and benefit them directly: like the mobile applications for health, agriculture and livelihood improvement ; Poverty insights: help capture the voice of the poor through data collection tools and data analysis, understanding the real needs of the poor and informing the development organizations’ agenda and the development of solutions for the sector ; Converting Grameen to a fully cloud-based Lean/Agile enterprise in order to support a dynamic, field-driven global organization.
Gemba walks in IT project management: digging for improvement opportunities by Pina Allegretti, BNL
Pina Allegretti is learning to see waste in her IT operations, and realizing that the gemba reality is often different from what she ever imagined. Learning to see in IT is not easy. But you can only make better decisions after you’ve been there. Watch the interview of Giuseppina here.
Unleash your team’s creativity with lean by Karim Aouadi, BG2AA
How the Lean approach can enhance the creativity of your software development team? What is at stake for your company and your customers? How Lean Management can speed up this creativity process? The co-founder of BG2AA startup presents how the lean approach was implemented to design a multi-tenant Software as a Service (SaaS) business management platform built on cloud technologies. Through concrete examples, he explains how visual management, five whys, kaizen, A3 report, PDCA … are powerful quality catalysts.
Service desk-VOC: the heart of lean in IT, using obeya to lead the change Daniel Breston, Qriosity Limited
How did a Service Desk help lead the change of culture and improvement within a financial services organisation? The problem: IT management had changed from a service to project culture so CREATE side did not talk to the run side until too late. So the Service Desk was repeatedly solving things, performing unneeded tasks, had poor KPIs and tools, and higher costs. One year later and we were the Face-of-IT with measurable days saved in tasks, 80% satisfaction improvement, accelerated request fulfilment, happier staff and gave more budget to enable cloud development and infrastructure projects. We created a place of work and communication: an Oobeya and used Lean to guide improved service based on our ITIL tools and processes. Watch Daniel’s interview here.
Improve software development speed beyond your customer’s dreams Benoit Charles-Lavauzelle, Theodo
Or how combining agility and lean increases velocity? The transformation of a traditional software development company into a highly successful lean and agile IT service provider, by its CEO and co-founder.
Lean @support functions by Martin Chmelar and Tomas Turecek, Tieto – RainFellows
We hear a lot about optimizing (horizontal) value stream. However, the horizontal flow is quite determined by the efficiency of (vertical) support functions like HR, Finance, Quality, Purchasing, Staffing, etc. We decided to not accept it as given constraint and dig into it by triggering Lean@SupportFunctions initiative. We aim to improve the integration of the internal flow into the value stream and make the internal support functions value driven and business aware. In this presentation we share the results and experiences of applying the same Lean approach to the internal support functions.
What IS for the lean company? a report produced by French association CIGREF by Pierre Delort, ANDSI
The CIGREF brings together 130 French companies and organisations from all sectors with two aims: support CIOs in their jobs and develop a long-term vision of the impact of information systems and technologies on the enterprise, the economy and the society at large. Through this report, the association looks into the benefits of lean management applied to the information systems, it presents how IS can drive the lean deployment throughout the operations and questions the role of lean management and IT service with regards to the business transformation driven by digitalization.
Toyota Kata: habits for continuous improvement by Hakan Forss, Avega Group
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” – Aristotle What are the habits, or routines, you need to put in place to continuously strive for excellence? How do we create a culture of continuous improvement? In this session you will learn about continuous improvement routines that help you close the gap between your current condition and you desired future state. You will learn how you can probe through the unknown in small deliberate steps. You will also be introduced to the leadership routines to build a continuous improvement culture. These routines are what we call Toyota Kata. Watch the video interview of Hakan Forss here.
Lean & Agile digital content by Michael B.Jones, eBay
Early in 2013, we realised that we needed to change the way we manage operations and projects. Whilst the team was delivering, we knew that we’d be challenged to do more with less. Also, as the team had grown, colleagues no longer knew what each other was working on, leading to difficulty in coordination, morale and managing customer expectations. Starting with the team in Berlin, we are using a mixture of classic lean philosophy, lean startup and agile methodology to plan, deliver, evaluate and communicate our work. We are just a few months in and, although there is a lot more to do, we are already seeing the benefits and look forward to sharing some insights in this case study. Watch the interview of Michael here.
A company’s hoshin kanri journey: radical business transformation from traditional application services to disruptive innovation by Leonardo Mattiazzi, CI&T
Leonardo focused on the innovation perspective of the lean journey: the difficulty of creating something truly innovative (disruptive) in a “business as usual” environment, the shortcomings they noticed in their planning process (hoshin kanri) relative to innovation using the concepts of “Lean Startup” – and its shortcomings as well as other frameworks utilized, results and lessons learned…Watch Leonardo’s interview here
Leveraging Lean for IT and research transformation: The art and science of eating an elephant by Jeromy Markwort, Pacific Northern National Laboratory
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 details 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.
From concept to social impact (and cash): a lean startup in the financial world by PIerre Pezziardi, HelloMerci.com
Pierre explained how he and his team developped and launched an innovative crowdfunding platform based on 0% loans within 6 months time. hellomerci.com, borrow from those who care, helps people with personal or entrepreneurial projects get loans and energy from their community and the people. How a 4-people team has built and is now running such a complex system? How they managed (and sometimes failed) to connect a highly productive team with a much slower external environment? What are the cultural conflicts that arise when people with a “minimum marketable feature” vision meet people with an “all-must-be-perfect” approach? To which extent can you be lean with such tensions? Beyond this product, Pierre Pezziardi shared the profound motives of this initiative. You may watch his interview here.
Lean data center: a telco experience by Andrea Pinnola, Telecom Italia
In this presentation, Andrea Pinnola presented the approach he used and how he notably tailored Lean tools to a data center environment, the impact on people and the results the data center teams hence obtained.
Lean and ITIL: reaching to the (hidden) face of the moon by Nicolas Stampf, BP2i
ITILv2 certifies people, not organizations. Yet it’s a library of good practices that organizations are supposed to follow (or even be certified on under ISO 20,000). So, with predefined processes as a North Star to reach for, it’s very attractive to wanting to use Lean to improve them. Yet, when you first grasp the situation, you soon discover that the shiny, fixed, paper Moon map is nowhere to be found in reality. The further you look, the more you understand that there’s something else to that, and that you need to go on the other side of it to discover what’s really happening. There you’ll find a far more devastated territory than you might have anticipated, riddled with half-baked tools, bloated software and broken pseudo-processes that provide fragile scaffoldings for those beautiful ITIL processes on the light side. This presentation reports a story of such an adventurous exploration of that hidden side of the moon, and the encounters with all the great critters that work hard to make the moon a secure bright silver night light and not a small heap of crushed dark matter.
How we used Lean Software Development principles in scaling Agile Methodologies by Cecil Dijoux and Laurent Alt, Lectra
Lectra is the world leader in integrated technology solutions—software, CAD/CAM equipment, and associated services—specifically designed for industries using fabrics, leather, technical textiles, and composite materials to manufacture their products. It serves major world markets: fashion, automotive, and furniture, as well as a broad array of other industries (aeronautics, marine, wind power, etc.).
The presentation is not available
Lean implementation and management commitment: how enthusiasm has to be nurtured by Rasmus Strand, Fujitsu
Throughout the implementation of Lean in a corporate structure the enthusiasm and drive of the individual co-workers are key. This is a resource that can be either harnessed and channeled, or squandered and lost. One of the key factors that determine how this enthusiasm is made effective, or if it is lost entirely, is management commitment to the implementation and to the Lean mindset. Here we will explore management commitment, not from a cost-benefit perspective, but from the individual success-perspective. Rasmus’ presentation is available here
Transforming ICT Service Delivery through Lean by Indranil Das and Sudip Pal, Ericsson India Global Services
The success of any ICT Service Delivery project hinges on how fast we can identify the problems, drill down to the root causes and continuously work towards improving upon them. The transformation story of a large ICT project at Ericsson is a classic example of one such successful engagement. It is a case study on how Lean Thinking can trigger a completely different mindset thereby bringing in a change in attitude and culture. This Application Development & Maintenance project was technically challenging and required 32 different skills across 9 functional areas from Enterprise Systems to Telecom Products. Even more challenging was to manage highly dynamic customer requirements which created initial expectation mismatch. The leadership team took a strategic decision to adopt the Lean methodology. Through continuous focus, more customer involvements and “fast and flawless” delivery Ericsson staged a complete turnaround of the project in less than 6 months. The productivity improved by 45% and defects reduced by 60%. Achieving Customer Satisfaction of 92% was testimony of this amazing improvement.