IT needs to run lean, and technology managers can learn from decades-old concepts that worked for Toyota, according to Informatica's John Schmidt and David Lyle. Find out how with these guidelines from their book, Lean Integration, and Schmidt's Informatica blog.
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The Toyota Production System (TPS)eliminated waste in three key areas.
Wasted Motion Excessive steps needed by factory workers to do the job.
Wasted Transportation Unnecessary movement of materials.
Wasted Time Waiting and downtime on the floor.
Lean Integration for IT Builds On: Customer focus, continuous improvement, elimination of integration waste.
Lean Integration Eliminates Wastes in Software Development
Overproduction Waste No added features beyond those required.
Information Waste Data remains constant from designer to coder to tester to implementer.
Process Waste Best practices collected and repeatedly taught to staff.
Lean Objective: Break the Bottleneck Caused by Data-quality Issues Between Disparate Systems During Integration
Build quality integration through pre-project data assessment. Don't test quality "downstream".
Automate routine activities to free staff for innovation, customer-value delivery.
50% productivity gains can be achieved with product/systems familiarity and re-use.
Documentation is Key Documentation of projects must be easily retrieved, understandable for years to come.
Vital Product/Solution Project Metrics: Cycle time of total project implementation Business value of a project (operating costs, sales) The "Net Promoter Score" - subtract the number of dissatisfied customers from happy ones.
Cultivate "Coaches" on the Floor Encourage enterprise team to eliminate waste, clarify objectives, ask good questions.
Eliminate Fear of "Zero Defects" Failure is a learning opportunity. Not time to search for guilty parties.
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