Yet, lean methodologies have been used for diverse activities such as strategic planning, management, organizational change, and software development. Lean can be seen as a focus on people – what they know or intuit and how to enable the piratical use of this knowledge. The essential principles of a lean process are the following:
- Eliminate waste
- Build quality in
- Create knowledge
- Defer commitment
- Deliver fast
- Respect people
- Optimize the whole
At the recent Gilbane Conference, I gave a presentation, Mind the Gap – Lean Assessment of CMS & Ecommerce Needs, on applying these principles to assessment engagements for clients. Quoin has used a lean process to effectively engage domain experts, understand requirements, and derive practical recommendations. Our use of lean has been to defined a lightweight and flexible process that focuses more on capturing knowledge from individuals and less on deliverables unlikely to add value. As a consulting organization, we can offer our perspective from working for a range of clients in diverse sectors. Yet, we also build software, and can provide well-informed guidance on technology and tools. Our clients respond to this mix of insight and practical experience. The presentation outlined our basic process and some specific tactics for conducting a lean assessment.
The basic steps in our process include the following:
- Prepare – read everything possible
- Kickoff – convene stakeholders and discern goals
- Background – conduct structured interviews
- Initial Analysis – specify domain concepts
- Evaluation Criteria – derive specific criteria
- Generate Recommendations – build a case
- Closeout – advocate for action
Step 4 - 5 represent the activities that are the most specific to our interpretation of a lean methodology. The remaining steps (Step 1 - 3, Step 6 - 7) are general consulting activities that focus on traditional planning, research, and facilitation skills. Thus, the effort focused on analysis and evaluation criteria require specific techniques based on the client and project. Our consultants have used a range of practices – process modeling, gap analysis, concept mapping, and others. One technique that provides the optimal balance of structure and flexibility is the SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Threats, Opportunities) Analysis. This is a familiar analysis and business school technique for creating a shared framework for a problem. Figure 1 shows an example from a recent client assessment.