DailyKaizen

We have all heard a variant of this story: “The Kaizen went really smooth except for Department X that wasn’t able to move quickly enough to change things around.” “Department X” from what I have heard has tended to be “I.T.” or “Facilities.” We could talk about how respectful it is to have a Department react with no notification separately, of course. Putting that aside though, what would happen if your I.T. partner heard about your LEAN transformation and said, “I want to transform with you?”

At the urging of our Chief Information Officer, then, I went to visit the Director of Information Technology for our Model Line work. I’ve included pictures with descriptions below.

This business unit has adopted Agile Methodology for its work, and the Director had a well read copy of Lean Software Development on his bookshelf. He also had all of the other LEAN books that I have read, which made me feel very at home.

Read on for more…

The thing that he said was so important in their transformation was planning. They use a Sprint process where business owners are involved in developing Stories (or Use Cases) which include a description of the work and value to the member. These are prioritized, and then turned into a series of tasks, with a defined “Sprint” period. During the Sprint, stories are assorted visually, with tasks underneath them, and staff assign themselves to tasks. All along the way, estimates are made as to the complexity of the work, and estimates versus actuals are visible using burn charts. You can see in the pictures that there are times when the estimates are not accurate. This is an iterative process. When a story is completed it is Done, and visually celebrated on a large wall in the office. The goal is for all of the walls of the office to be covered with accomplishments. All along the way, there are regular standup meetings (typically daily) where stories are reviewed, impediments are discussed and cleared.

You can see different stages of development here, as another team (Membership and Billing) is just getting started on a visual system, with a kitchen analogy.

That’s the description of things in a nutshell. What’s different than before? Well, I was told that business owners are now directly involved in creating stories and monitoring their completion. In the past, a business owner may have thought something was being worked on, but in actuality it had dropped in the priority list due to other changes in the business. This visible process leaves no work hidden. It is either being addressed, or it isn’t. Also in the past, only the staff doing the work knew that it was done. On my visit, the idea that things were happening was unmistakable.

As we talked, it seemed to both of us that this was the next level in adopting the philosophy - from visual systems all the way to a predictable cycle of productivity.

Since I have visited the Model Line, I can tell that the business owners there know how and when to interact with I.T. partners to have needed development completed as part of the planning process. I don’t think it’s likely that they would say, “I.T. isn’t able to change things quickly enough for us.”

The most important thing that I saw was the passion of the Director showing me the work. And as I have found with leaders like this, the question, “May I publish this on the public Internet for all to see?” was “Go for it.” We both reflected on the idea that our Information Services group is still very much transition. This is not the norm for the way business happens, yet. There are still more visits to be had, more demonstrations of how this is different for the rest of the Division. It will happen.

And as usual, I saw applications of this work in many aspects of clinical medicine. Imagine, if you will, that a “Story” was “Immunization rates for Children aged 2 and under,” and care teams assigned themselves to create tasks and created sprints to keep our children protected. With that in mind, I took the invitation that was provided to me by this Director and provided one back; to visit one of our Medical Centers. I hope he visits soon….

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