One of my colleagues, Vicki Jeter, is exceptional at designing and implementing lean for I.T. – in essence, Lean I.T. is about providing value in the eyes of the customer, driving out non-value-added work, and leveraging systems to achieve bottom line results. A few tips I’ve learned from her include:
- Provide value – forget about the latest and greatest technical gadgets and software; instead, think about how to leverage your systems to provide value for your customers.
- Automate – look at each task for what is non-essential and can be automated. There are endless opportunities to automate in I.T. and for the business.
- Streamline – if you cannot automate, how can you streamline the process utilizing the system?
- Leverage – how can you leverage your systems to improve decision-making and drive bottom line results? Look for underutilized assets, systems, fields, functionality etc.
- Eliminate waste – are you performing non-value added tasks? I’d be surprised if you weren’t as I’ve yet to see a “perfect” scenario. Keep an eye out for waste. After a while, people don’t even see waste, even if it’s piled high next to them.