Can IT management be improved using lean thinking?

Lean management forces us to look at our IT management from a different perspective and helps us ensure that IT supports organizational needs.

If you had asked me thirty years ago how lean could help IT people, processes, partners and tools, you would have received a puzzled look in response.

Eleven data centers, twenty Service Desks, hundreds of millions spent on infrastructure or tools, more than three hundred people trained, expert certificates in ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) and COBIT (Control Objectives for Information and Related Technologies) earned over these thirty years, and only now can I begin to answer that question!

The first time I was asked to lead a lean project, most of the information I could find was related to manufacturing. I had been a consultant for four years, and this new assignment started me on a journey that introduced me to lean leaders, DevOPS, kanban, agile, TOC, BDD/TDD, many of whom are now my mentors.

Lean likes to ask questions, so my first one is: why do I use ITIL or COBIT? The answer is simple: they are the best-known IT-focused frameworks for giving direction on how to do or lead a technology-based initiative.

These frameworks are not perfect, they are far from being “best practice” and they do not provide much to help us define value, solve problems or continuously improve people. Please don't get me wrong, I believe in ITIL and COBIT and constantly refer to them as the foundations for improvement when coaching in technology and management areas. But I, personally, needed more.

Lean starts with this question (taken from Michael Ballé or from the book “The Phoenix Project”): if you are not doing IT for the customer, to improve your business or to help your people, then why are you doing IT? It is a profound question, because it makes you ask yourself what the need for something new is, why it takes six months to release something nobody wants, or why the IT strategy does not support our organization. This is an example of the difference between lean and ITIL or COBIT in IT: lean forces you to think differently and to look at things from a different perspective.

Lean IT / ITIL / lean / agile

The book “The Phoenix Project”, by Kim, Behr and Spafford, has a wonderful section in which IT management asks each department head what their goals and obstacles are, regardless of IT. Now, instead of planning from the technology or their teams toward the goal or obstacle, they work backwards. They ask questions: what is the benefit of doing what we want to do? This question allowed them to discover a better way to collaborate with business sponsors and supplier partners to create a dynamic strategy that was better, faster, safer and cheaper. On top of all that, the people became energized and more supportive, a feeling that spread through the entire organization.

I regularly ask the following questions, which were introduced to me by Michael Ballé (author of “Lead with Respect”): what would a good day look like for you, for your team and for your customer? How do you know? How can you visualize what is happening? How do your teams or suppliers help you every day to deal with a problem or challenge? How do you help them? No discussions about the solution, just doing what Stephen Covey suggests: listen with the intent to understand, not to reply.

Lean (or its derivatives known as DevOPS and agile) has many tools to help practitioners develop what they are trying to achieve. It visually exposes the goals, or how the work should be performed, problem-solving techniques, the ways we organize our work, methods for creating and aligning performance measures, and good practices for cost management (no, not cutting staff). Lean allows teams to see a situation, try something, learn from it and try again until they reach a satisfactory level, but all within a previously agreed management framework.

Look at Flickr, Google, Amazon, Nike and many banks and healthcare organizations: they have embraced lean IT and used it to help their customers. Are they perfect? Do they have no problems? Of course they are not perfect, and yes, they have many problems – but the journey of experimentation helps them improve, and the involvement of customers, people and partners makes the improvement cycle faster.

To conclude, lean supports ITIL and COBIT. It helps teams with collaborative communication (DevOPS) or with refining development methods (agile). It accepts your ITIL processes, which even Shingo Prize winner Mike Orzen says should not be ignored, but used to create a standard way of working in order to continuously improve. Try it, go and see at the gemba, involve others and see whether you can create a better, faster, safer and more productive environment.

Source: Planet Lean.

Daniel Breston is a long-standing IT management professional with international experience. A recognized ITSM expert and lean and DevOPS Champion; he is a frequent speaker at conferences and webinars.