The Lean It Expert

Digital transformation is a business concern; it is no longer just IT that must get things done. The disruptive force of start-ups focusing on IT-based services that can be consumed through mobile devices cannot be underestimated -- These start-ups eat away at the high-margin services provided by incumbents, leaving lower margin products and services that are rapidly being commoditized. This is happening in all industry sectors and it is the ones who are best able to adjust, innovate, and improve their service offerings that will survive. The question is: What do you need to do to ensure that your organization is one of the survivors? The core of the solution to the problem is to radically improve the way the IT organization works together with the business. To be clear, the digital transformation of your business depends on that relatively small group of people in the basement, or other out-of-the-way location, who make sure that your IT services work. So, building a cooperative model is vital for the success of the business. Which model has proven its worth in many industries? It is the application of Lean principles that gives organizations an advantage in delivering their products and services to their customers. Transforming your organization to high performance is, above all, a people-based movement with the acquisition and, most importantly, application of knowledge and skills necessary for the high performance way of working at its core. In teams, from boardroom to work floor, building a new way of thinking and acting is essential. This book aims to give insight into the reasons why you and your organization must consciously act to apply Lean principles to your IT organization. It explains the phases organizations go through as they start out with their initial attempts to gain advantages from Lean tools to the phase in which they reap the strategic benefits of Lean applied to IT. The real work of the transformation is described from two different perspectives: Leadership and Team. This book describes a complete set of principles, practices and tools In order to make the right decisions along the winding route of your transformation. The people who will guide, support and drive your transformation are the leaders and tem members who understand and apply those principles, practice and tools: your Lean IT Experts.

Digital transformation is a business concern; it is no longer just IT that must get things done. The disruptive force of start-ups focusing on IT-based services that can be consumed through mobile devices cannot be underestimated -- These start-ups eat away at the high-margin services provided by incumbents, leaving lower margin products and services that are rapidly being commoditized. This is happening in all industry sectors and it is the ones who are best able to adjust, innovate, and improve their service offerings that will survive. The question is: What do you need to do to ensure that your organization is one of the survivors? The core of the solution to the problem is to radically improve the way the IT organization works together with the business. To be clear, the digital transformation of your business depends on that relatively small group of people in the basement, or other out-of-the-way location, who make sure that your IT services work. So, building a cooperative model is vital for the success of the business. Which model has proven its worth in many industries? It is the application of Lean principles that gives organizations an advantage in delivering their products and services to their customers. Transforming your organization to high performance is, above all, a people-based movement with the acquisition and, most importantly, application of knowledge and skills necessary for the high performance way of working at its core. In teams, from boardroom to work floor, building a new way of thinking and acting is essential. This book aims to give insight into the reasons why you and your organization must consciously act to apply Lean principles to your IT organization. It explains the phases organizations go through as they start out with their initial attempts to gain advantages from Lean tools to the phase in which they reap the strategic benefits of Lean applied to IT. The real work of the transformation is described from two different perspectives: Leadership and Team. This book describes a complete set of principles, practices and tools In order to make the right decisions along the winding route of your transformation. The people who will guide, support and drive your transformation are the leaders and tem members who understand and apply those principles, practice and tools: your Lean IT Experts.

While there are numerous Lean Certification programs, most companies have their own certification paths whereby they bestow expert status upon employees after they have participated in or led a certain number of kaizen events. Arguing that the number of kaizen events should not determine a person's expert status, The Lean Practitioner's Field Book: Proven, Practical, Profitable and Powerful Techniques for Making Lean Really Work outlines a true learning path for anyone seeking to understand essential Lean principles. The book includes a plethora of examples drawn from the personal experiences of its many well-respected and award-winning contributors. These experts break down Lean concepts to their simplest terms to make everything as clear as possible for Lean practitioners. A refresher for some at times, the text provides thought-provoking questions with examples that will stimulate learning opportunities. Introducing the Lean Practitioner concept, the book details the five distinct Lean Practitioner levels and includes quizzes and criteria for each level. It highlights the differences between the kaizen event approach and the Lean system level approach as well as the difference between station balancing and baton zone. This book takes readers on a journey that begins with an overview of Lean principles and culminates with readers developing professionally through the practice of self-reliance. Providing you with the tools to implement Lean tools in your organization, the book includes discussions and examples that demonstrate how to transition from traditional accounting methods to a Lean accounting system. The book outlines an integrated, structured approach identified by the acronym BASICS (baseline, analyze, suggest solutions, implement, check, and sustain), which is combined with a proven business strategy to help ensure a successful and sustainable transformation of your organization.

The Lean Expert: Educating and Elevating Lean Practitioners Throughout Your Organization outlines a method that can help organizations engage associates and empower them to achieve "expert status" in the nine core principles of Lean. By implementing the Lean Discipline Expert process detailed in the book, companies will demonstrate to their associates that they believe they are the organization’s greatest assets, while empowering them to make lasting improvements to the organization. The book provides a robust and proven process for creating a Lean culture. It outlines a method, with defined steps, for the development of Lean Discipline Resource People that will help associates achieve "expert status" in the core Lean principles of 5S–Visual Management, Value Stream Mapping, Standard Work, Total Productive Maintenance, Quick Changeover, Error Proofing, Process Problem Solving, Material Management, and Continuous Improvement. You will be able develop Lean strategies, create a Master Schedule, initiate activities for supporting goals and objectives, and complete a Train-the-Trainer class as well as achieve facilitation skills to teach, communicate, guide, and lead Lean overview training as well as comprehensive subject-matter training. In addition, you will understand how the Lean Discipline Expert process can help to support associate involvement at all levels and learn where and how the nine principles overlap and interact. By engaging and empowering various levels of associates throughout the organization, you will provide strength and ownership for your business and, most importantly, your associates. The book includes access to additional resources on the book’s page at www.crcpress.com. It includes a tracking mechanism for monitoring candidate progress, facilitation feedback forms, LDE checklists, and certificates of accomplishment you can use to acknowledge associates that achieve Lean Discipline Expert status.

The missing manual on how to apply Lean Startup to build products that customers love The Lean Product Playbook is a practical guide to building products that customers love. Whether you work at a startup or a large, established company, we all know that building great products is hard. Most new products fail. This book helps improve your chances of building successful products through clear, step-by-step guidance and advice. The Lean Startup movement has contributed new and valuable ideas about product development and has generated lots of excitement. However, many companies have yet to successfully adopt Lean thinking. Despite their enthusiasm and familiarity with the high-level concepts, many teams run into challenges trying to adopt Lean because they feel like they lack specific guidance on what exactly they should be doing. If you are interested in Lean Startup principles and want to apply them to develop winning products, this book is for you. This book describes the Lean Product Process: a repeatable, easy-to-follow methodology for iterating your way to product-market fit. It walks you through how to: Determine your target customers Identify underserved customer needs Create a winning product strategy Decide on your Minimum Viable Product (MVP) Design your MVP prototype Test your MVP with customers Iterate rapidly to achieve product-market fit This book was written by entrepreneur and Lean product expert Dan Olsen whose experience spans product management, UX design, coding, analytics, and marketing across a variety of products. As a hands-on consultant, he refined and applied the advice in this book as he helped many companies improve their product process and build great products. His clients include Facebook, Box, Hightail, Epocrates, and Medallia. Entrepreneurs, executives, product managers, designers, developers, marketers, analysts and anyone who is passionate about building great products will find The Lean Product Playbook an indispensable, hands-on resource.

Are you a working professional, tired of your monotone schedule, want to improve your work environment and make a distinguished mark in front of your boss and senior management? Are you a Quality Professional who is looking to advance your process improvement skills by adding Lean Certification to your arsenal of technical qualifications? The core idea is to maximize customer value while minimizing waste. Simply, lean means creating more value for customers with fewer resources. A lean organization understands customer value and focuses its key processes to continuously increase it. The ultimate goal is to provide perfect value to the customer through a perfect value creation process that has zero waste. The Lean Startup method teaches you how to drive a startup - how to steer, when to turn, and when to persevere - and grow a business with maximum acceleration.

This book provides an assorted set of reflections/lessons from the "trenches" of Lean service and brings to fore leadership challenges, new tools, and the known-unknowns (insights that very few know but many in journey of Lean transformation need to know). Lean has the ability to address a wide range of problems faced by service companies, such as: complexity reduction, sales force productivity enhancement, operations risk control, cost leadership, combining scale with flexibility, service excellence and improving employee morale and involvement. Many of the principles discussed in the book are based on the author's first-hand experience in Lean implementation.

The Electronic Health Record (EHR) is a reflection of the way your organization conducts business. If you’re looking to make lasting improvements in the delivery of care, you must start with looking at the system from your patient’s perspective to understand what is of value and what is simply waste. When you begin seeing in this way, you’ll begin building in this way. When you begin building in this way, you’ll begin driving improvements in your care delivery. Only then will your EHR be able to support lasting improvements, driving better patient care and outcomes at lower costs. Healthcare organizations are under increasing pressure to improve on all fronts. This can be achieved, but only by changing the very way we look at care. No longer can we look at care just from the organization or provider’s perspective; we must start with the end in mind – the patient. Compelling case studies, discussed throughout this book, demonstrate that modifying processes and workflows using Lean methodologies lead to substantial improvements. These changes must be undertaken in a clear, consistent, and methodical manner. When implementing an EHR based on existing workflows and sometimes antiquated processes, organizations struggle to sustain improvements. Many organizations have deployed an EHR and now face optimization challenges, including the decision to move to a new EHR vendor. The financial implications of upgrading, optimizing or replacing an EHR system are significant and laden with risk. Choose the wrong vendor, the wrong system, or the wrong approach and you may struggle under the weight of that decision for decades. Organizations that successfully leverage the convergence of needs – patients demanding better care, providers needing more efficient workflows and organizations desiring better financials – will survive and thrive. This book ties together current healthcare challenges with proven Lean methodologies to provide a clear, concise roadmap to help organizations drive real improvements in the selection, implementation, and on-going management of their EHR systems. Improving patient care, improving the provider experience and reducing organizational costs are the next frontier in the use of EHRs and this book provides a roadmap to that desired future state.