There was an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal recently about Lean Process Improvement at Starbucks stores:
Latest Starbucks Buzzword: 'Lean' Japanese Techniques is an interesting article that outlines how Starbucks implemented Lean Process Improvements in many of their stores.
Like keeping the Cream Dispenser nearer where it is needed in daily operation for Baristas or cutting down on time spent by Baristas walking back and forth behind their counters by rearranging things behind the counter in new ways!
Very interesting, especially since they were able to see productivity improvements and more importantly, improving their customer satisfaction scores!
What is important here is that here are some solid examples of process improvements, cuts in waste of human effort, time and resources that the mainstream public can probably relate to and understand easily!
What does this have to do with IT and software applications used within companies? A lot! Some of these observations, measurements and improvements were possible easily since they were easier to make.
If you were to ask the same kinds of penetrating questions about IT in general, the results can be shocking!
Every delayed, cancelled IT project just wasted lots and lots of money, human effort and most importantly, Time! Every feature implemented with a lot of Requirements Analysis, Design, Development and Testing but not being used at all is a colossal waste of money and the scale can be staggering at times!
Like the FBI Upgrade That wasn't!. $170M wasted on a large project which may have been replaced now with an equally expensive project. It will be interesting to track how the project or projects that replaced this failed project are doing currently!
Making coffee is such a small activity with a much more limited economic impact when compared to something like an IT project above!
IT projects, especially Software Development Projects, especially large ones have such a lot of risk and potential for wasted effort, resources and money!
Unless the right and appropriate methodologies are matched to the kind of software development needed for each situation (Believe me, experienced project managers will concur that every software development project is unique in some way and needs tweaking if you want success!).
Would be interesting to explore Software Development projects with a Lean Approach like Starbucks has done. I bet you can find savings in many unexplored corners of Software Development that you thought you never had!
Continual improvement is an unending journey. - Lloyd Debens
The U.S. Air Force is actually using Lean Six Sigma techniques for both process assessment and software development projects. There are two full case studies on this at http://bit.ly/BxhgI. Click the PDF buttons to download the files - no personal info required.