A friend and colleague, 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. Join her Linked In “Lean I.T. Professionals Group” (http://linkd.in/p39H4k). A few tips I’ve learned from her include:

  1. Provide value – forget about the latest and greatest technical gadgets and software fads; instead, think about how to leverage your systems to provide value for your customers.
  2. 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.
  3. Streamline – if you cannot automate, how can you streamline the process utilizing the system?
  4. Leverage – how can you leverage your systems to improve decision-making and drive bottom line results? Look for underutilized assets, systems, fields, functionality etc.
  5. Eliminate waste – are you performing non-value added tasks or extra steps? Routinize maintenance tasks and systematize all tasks that do not require high skill levels so that your valuable resources focus on what’s most important.