’Lean Principles’ now being applied to information technology
Source：Star Tribune
From：Taiwan Trade Center, Los Angles
Update Time：2019/07/11
The Japanese auto makers after World World II used lean production to grow market share. In the 1980s the American auto makers started using it as well. Today, almost all auto makers use lean production as they cannot survive without doing so.
Lean production uses statistical process control and a flexible organization to design and build products while reducing variance (i.e. errors) in the manufacturing process.
Information technology has been the exception to lean production until recently. Almost all large organizations use lean principles to optimize manufacturing and services. Information technology has not done because it is more difficult to optimize software versus optimizing physical products. In addition, corporate information technology has not been around as long in comparison at only 50 years old.
Recently, the rise of DevOps (development/operations) is how information technology gets the results of lean production. The effect of DevOps on how we work and interface with technology has been revolutionary.
One of the authors of the DevOps movement, Gene Kim, believes it operates on the following principles:
1. Continuous experimentation – the organizational culture is allowed to experiment and take risks and learn from failure as well as use repetition and practice to reach mastery.
2. Systems thinking – this is focusing on the performance of the entire system versus the performance on a particular project or department.
3. Feedback loops: - this is having an understanding of customers and responding back to them all whether internal or external, to shorten response time and amplify feedback.
Isaac Cheifetz ( a special to the Star Tribune) recommends the 2013 book “Phoenix Project” to learn more about DevOps. It is a story about a struggling auto parts chain that discovers the power of DevOps.
As society moves more into being driven by information, being able to optimize IT just like manufacturing and services has done using lean principles is one giant leap forward.
Source：http://www.startribune.com/lean-principles-now-being-applied-to-information-technology/510069502/