What is lean release management? “Lean release management” is an oxymoron. It refers to a set of activities that either should not be performed when managing work in a lean way, or are part of other processes. In a lean context, release management as an independent process should not exist.1 I would be begging the […]
lean
Lean Incident Management
A vicious cycle in incident management Lean incident management is the resolution of incidents in a manner respecting lean principles. Being lean allows us to significantly reduce the extent of the control activities in the process and the number of organizational roles created to exercise those control activities. For, I have often seen a vicious […]
Service processes versus manufacturing processes
Manufacturing and service processes—similar but not the same As more and more organizations use quantitative approaches to managing their services and service processes, so do management frameworks such as Six Sigma or Lean-Six Sigma become more and more used. However, the quality methods in such approaches were first developed to support manufacturing. They concern how […]
Minimum viable process
Start simple I told my customer to start managing changes by using the simplest possible activity for change control, and then use a continual improvement approach to develop that activity in a way that meets the real needs of the organization and is also acceptable to the stakeholders. Let me call that simplest of processes […]
The 5 S and Service Management
Are the 5 S applicable to service management? What could the 5 S, originating in the management of the workplace in a factory, mean for service management? The 5 S are generally represented in English as Sort, Systematic Arrangement, Shine, Standardize and Sustain. These terms are derived from the Japanese Seiri ( 整理 ); Seiton […]
Stopping the clock vs. waiting time
Stopping the clock is a pernicious practice There is a tradition among certain service providers to “stop the clock” when measuring process cycle time. They consider that any process activity under the responsibility of someone other than the service provider should not count against the agreed service level. There are two main cases: when the […]