- Success factor for implementing Lean: look at the whole supply chain, not only development or test. Think products (end to end) and not only projects.
- Use pull rather than push. Be aware of utilization: an operations manager will react when a servers cpu utilization is getting close to 100% - but what about people utilization …
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When implementing Lean it isn’t enough just to use Just-in-time and stop-the-line. It is the people doing the actual work that have the potential to make it a success. They have the good answers and ideas.
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All queues and stacks of work is WASTE. Remove the cues, improve the cycle time and get better overall performance and quality. Value stream maps are a powerful tool to identify queues and their size.
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Without automatic tests you are asking for trouble. Don’t buy the “we don’t have time to implement automatic tests” excuse, if you wait your problems will grow…
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And NO it is not ok to have a backlog that contains work for more than 3 iterations, including ideas for the future – get rid of the WASTE and focus on the important stuff that adds value to the customer.