I just read this excellent article by Lean thinker Michael Balle called “Waste-Free Capitalism.” Most Americans accept that capitalism is the best economic model for allocating scarce resources and maximizing wealth. Most Americans also know that it isn’t perfect. Waste — until recently — has been seen as a “cost of doing business” or usingRead… Read more »
Last weekend, I was thinking about my undergraduate days when I took a lot of philosophy courses at a small Catholic liberal arts college. I remember the classical Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle approaching reality from two different yet complementary angles. At the risk of overgeneralizing, Plato believed that reality existed in ideas from whichRead… Read more »
As a federal employee who has both managed people and is currently certified by the Air Force as a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, I found this article very interesting: A Total Shift in Mindset How often do we instinctively blame people instead of find out what broke down in the process leading to theRead… Read more »
On Monday Dec 3rd I attended the Lean Startup Conference. And get this – the first two speakers at the conference – were from the Government! Todd Park on Lean/Agile Government Todd is the CTO of the Federal Government. A lot of what he covered in his talk can be found at http://www.whitehouse.gov/innovationfellows Key points:Read… Read more »
I recently answered a question that goes like this: In an IT organization that is structured to align with business modes and functions by silos; each silo with its own set of IT roles (PM’s, BA’s, Dev’s, and QA’s) how would Agile work on projects that span these siloed teams? When it comes to sprintsRead… Read more »
“I don’t know how much more emphasized step 1 of refactoring could be: don’t touch anything that doesn’t have coverage. Otherwise, you’re not refactoring; you’re just changing shit.” – Hamlet D’Arcy It’s no secret that Agile and Lean methodologies have a lot in common. At Code for America we try to apply them both: inRead… Read more »
As a certified yellow belt in Six Sigma, I believe that Six Sigma methods can have a positive impact on improving government. However, Six Sigma with its heavy emphasis on statistical analysis is not the best fit for measuring and improving government performance. A better fit for government is to utilize the concept of Lean.Read… Read more »
Our Government entities are doing a great job adopting and implementing 5S lean into the workplace saving great amounts of money for departments and taxpayers. But every now and then a refresher and/or something to revitalize the initiative is needed. So I offer up the video below to that end… Eliminate Waste !
Just after I posted “Business Process Management As If People Mattered: Adaptive Case Management” the latest issue of the Harvard Business Review downloaded to my Color Nook. This was a special issue devoted to talent management and so I flipped through it pretty quickly until I came across “Lean Knowledge Work” (Staats and Upton, OctoberRead… Read more »
Workplaces in the private sector and the public sector have many similarities. After all, objectives need to be met and daily work needs to get accomplished. Through our experience with business process management we have identified five major differences between sectors: The Election Cycle Term Limits Legislative Controls Human Resources Structures Revenue is usually notRead… Read more »