Lean IT

Using Kanban to Succeed at Offshore Outsourced Development

Posted by Kurt Schmidt Kurt Schmidt on April 9, 2017 | Featured

As mentioned previously, the Product Owner (PO) is critical to the success of agile development, but even more so when working with offshore outsourced development teams, where communication is key in working up user stories. Challenge of Distance. The reliance … Read More … Read More

Tags: kanban

Scrum’s Achilles Heel: The Engaged Product Owner

Posted by Kurt Schmidt Kurt Schmidt on March 20, 2017 | Featured

Many IT organizations, trying to emulate the pace and quality of software development by vendors, have tried to transition to Agile Development, typically going with Scrum, with varying degrees of success. In my experience when a traditional IT shop struggles … Read More … Read More

The Fallacy of Water-Scrum-Fall

Posted by Kurt Schmidt Kurt Schmidt on February 8, 2017 | Featured

Most organizations start their Agile-Lean journey with Software Development, typically using scrum. This makes sense for a lot of reasons: The lean software movement started in programming with the seminal work of the Poppendiecks (2003 Lean Software Development). Developers are … Read More … Read More

Lean IT: The Key to Successfully Challenging the Status Quo…

Posted by Kurt Schmidt Kurt Schmidt on January 19, 2017 | Featured

The foundation of Lean IT is to focus on Value-Add Activities. The tool to get there? Value Stream Mapping. The key to execution and challenging the status quo? Senior leaders in the trenches. Going to Gemba. Our 3-day … Read More … Read More

Lean IT – Start with the Value Stream Map

Posted by Kurt Schmidt Kurt Schmidt on January 12, 2017 | Featured

LEAN IT – Where to start? Speaking with Silver Tree clients about Lean IT, many quickly realize Lean IT will benefit their organization; which invariably leads them to ask the question where does an organization start? Glad you asked! … Read More … Read More

What comes first, the chicken or the egg? Lean IT vs Smart Process Automation…

Posted by Kurt Schmidt Kurt Schmidt on December 27, 2016 | Featured

Conversation between Silver Tree IT Services Practice Leads: John Petronzi, Smart Process Automation (SPA) and Kurt P Schmidt, PhD, Lean IT John Petronzi on The Egg (SPA) SPA enables enterprises to use “Digital Labor” to automate error prone, manually … Read More … Read More

The Continuous Improvement of ITIL Change Management

Posted by Kurt Schmidt Kurt Schmidt on December 19, 2016 | Featured

In my previous post I wrote how organizations can follow ITIL Framework guidance to drive continuous improvement of ITIL Service Management Processes, through the application of Lean IT thinking. In this post I will explore this further by discussing how … Read More … Read More

Leveraging the Value of ITIL through Lean IT

Posted by Kurt Schmidt Kurt Schmidt on December 13, 2016 | Featured

Many organizations rolling out an ITIL program have approached it in a prescriptive manner trying to drop “best practices” into their IT shops. The added discipline is invariably an improvement over most home grown ad hoc practices, however, as the … Read More … Read More

Lean IT: Principles over Practice

Posted by Kurt Schmidt Kurt Schmidt on December 5, 2016 | Featured

In my previous two blogs I spoke of the importance of culture in achieving Lean IT. I wrote about why and how cultural change impacts the success of a program devoted to eliminating lead time in our IT Services. Starting … Read More … Read More

Tags: lean, practice, principle

The Culture of Getting to Lean IT

Posted by Kurt Schmidt Kurt Schmidt on November 18, 2016 | Featured

In my previous post, I cautioned that organizations looking to Lean IT as an approach to cost reduction must embrace certain cultural changes to be successful. This post will propose some of the critical cultural behaviors required for successful Lean … Read More … Read More

Tags: Blameless Reporting, Generative Culture, Mission of Culture, Self Directed Teams