The IT Skeptic - lean

Limitations of the industrial manufacturing paradigm, including Lean and ToC.

skeptic — Wed, 13 Nov 2019 22:44:07 +0000

Be careful how we apply industrial manufacturing paradigms, including Lean and Theory of Constraints(ToC), to IT. Linear stream flow models only work in IT (or, I suspect, manufacturing), at a close scale. Zoom out and they fail us, its not linear any more, not even to an approximation.

Lessons the world took from ITIL

skeptic — Sun, 18 Mar 2018 19:06:12 +0000

ITIL aspires to be customer-centric. If only the reality matched the aspiration. If only the main lesson people took away from ITIL was customer value. In practice I think the world takes away quite different lessons.

Here is a bunch of awful fallacies that the world actually took from ITIL:

images of Lean

skeptic — Sun, 20 Aug 2017 01:01:36 +0000

Here are some graphics of Lean which I created. Enjoy.

DevOps has three parents: Lean, Agile, and ITSM

skeptic — Thu, 09 Mar 2017 22:11:59 +0000

DevOps synthesises three bodies of knowledge: Lean, Agile, and ITSM.

Get out of the way

skeptic — Wed, 28 Sep 2016 22:46:57 +0000

A basic principle of DevOps is for "Necessary Non-Value Work" to get out of the way of Value Work.

In the Require-to-Deploy value stream, this NNVW includes

security
architecture

Railroads don't have a batch size of 1

skeptic — Tue, 27 Sep 2016 04:06:54 +0000

Lean theory tells us that the optimal batch size is 1 [update: no it doesn't. Optimal batch size is often 1, especially in a manufacturing context.]
i.e. we perform each unit of work on demand and it flows independently through the value stream.
Certainly that is the case when you order one of my books which are printed on demand individually and posted directly to you.

I am still learning about systems and flow. Some of you will know that I am a train nut: I like railways. So it puzzled me to read an article recently in Trains magazine about the trend to larger trains, which have increased by a factor of 100 over the last 150 years.

Challenging the operational rites

skeptic — Sat, 25 Jun 2016 04:01:14 +0000

Over time a strange set of rites and rituals grow up around the Require-to-Deploy value stream*. Some of them are there to protect the quality of the output but others have ceased to add value.

IT service build is not a factory

skeptic — Fri, 01 Aug 2014 10:05:19 +0000

There is a widespread idea in IT that IT is a factory, repeatably turning out code which can be treated as identical products on some kind of optimisable production line. This is only true for parts of our IT world: e.g. standard requests, standard incidents and changes, bug fixes. It's usually not true of building IT services.

The applicability of factory-floor techniques to IT

skeptic — Sat, 25 May 2013 09:54:58 +0000

In my review of The Phoenix Project I questioned the applicability of factory-floor techniques to IT. There is potential to be exploited there - hence I recommended everyone read the book - but we can go too far with the application of Lean, TQM, Six Sigma etc to IT. Manufacturing techniques are only partly applicable.

Lean IT and ITIL

skeptic — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 19:11:40 +0000

One sees a few remarks in the webisphere that suggest folk don't get the relationship between Lean IT and ITIL (thanks to my friend Bob Grinsell, RIPOFF #1, for reminding me of this issue by his comment on the itSMF USA forum). Lean is a method. ITIL is a framework. These are different things for different purposes.

Agile and Lean need Renaissance Man

skeptic — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 03:46:13 +0000

Agile and Lean both seem to be based on idealistic, some would say naive, assumptions about human nature and capabilities.