Niels Loader is a Principal Consultant with Quint, and one of the leading experts on Lean IT. He is the Content Board Lead with the Lean IT Association (LITA) and is Chief Examiner of Lean IT with APMG. Niels brings extensive experience in the areas of IT Service Management, IT Performance Improvement, Lean IT and DevOps. Ensuring that an IT organization is competent at continuous improvement is essential to the success of Lean within IT. In the Lean IT Foundation, we looked at the basics of Kaizen (continuous improvement) and the DMAIC problem-solving method. The Lean IT Kaizen Lead training will help you on your journey to mastering continuous improvement and becoming a Lean IT Kaizen Lead. The Lean IT Kaizen Lead is someone who is involved with improvements based on Lean principles. The Lean IT Kaizen Lead may come from any level of the IT organization, in any ‘department’.

1. How Can You Continuously
Improve Your IT Using
Kaizen?

2. LITA
Executive
Webinar
June 8, 2016

3. WELCOME!

4. Host and Presenter
Deborah Burton
Member Marketing Team
Lean IT Association (LITA)
Channel Marketing Manager
ITpreneurs

5. LITA - Pioneering a Global Standard
for Lean IT Education & Certification
● Lean IT Association (LITA) is a non-profit organization founded by three
Accredited Training Organizations (ATOs) - ITpreneurs, Pink Elephant,
Quint Wellington Redwood and three Examination Institutes (EIs) - APMG,
EXIN, PEOPLECERT International Ltd. To realize its broader purpose
LITA aims to provide:
● An industry-standard set of Lean IT reference materials and other
resources for practitioner organizations to use;
● An certification scheme aimed at practitioner organizations looking to
adopt Lean IT principles in the IT Service development and operations
department as well as professionals that want to be certified in Lean IT on
various levels.

6. Today's Guest Presenter
Niels Loader,
Principal Consultant, Quint Wellington Redwood, Content Board
Lead, Lean IT Association, Chief Examiner Lean IT, APMG
● IT Service Management
● IT Performance Improvement
● Lean IT
● DevOps

7. 7
Watch Webinar Recording
Webinar Recording
How Can You
Continuously Improve
your IT using Kaizen?

8. About Quint Wellington Redwood
• Independent Management Consulting Firm
• Established in 1992 in Amsterdam
• More than 250 consultants globally
• Operations covering 49 countries
• Core business: Sourcing, Architecture, Governance,
• Lean IT, Service Management & DevOps
• Listed as Top Global Advisor on Sourcing & Governance
• Trendsetter in Service Management, Lean IT & DevOps

9. Today's Agenda
9
Objective
Understand how to successfully start building a culture of continuous
improvement in your IT organization.
1. The importance of continuous improvement for IT
2. The power of standardized problem-solving
3. Improving the effectiveness of ITIL Problem Management
4. Continuously improving IT – the realities
5. Pitfalls for those looking for “continuous improvement”

10. 10
The Good News …

11. 11
Traditional
▪ Problems are not welcome
▪ Positive story is better than a problem
▪ Problems are ignored
▪ Problems are polished over
Lean
▪ Problems are fully accepted
▪ Problems are opportunities
▪ Problems are challenges
▪ Solving is improving
Continuous Improvement Starts with Learning
to Love Problems

12. 12
Why Do You Need Continuous Improvement?

13. 13
Continuous improvement is about solving problems.
Every day, everyone, everywhere.
Kai means CHANGE
Zen means FOR THE BETTER
What is Kaizen?

14. 14
Daily Kaizen
▪ Related to the kaizen mindset
▪ Continuously looking for improvements
▪ Being constantly alert to issues that need to be addressed directly
Improvement Kaizen
▪ Improvement Kaizen is about bringing together a group of people who have an
interest in having a particular problem solved, and getting them to solve this
problem
The Two Bits of Continuous Improvement

15. 15
Seeing and
prioritizing problems
Be truly prepared to:
▪ uncover problems
▪ accept them as a part of daily life
▪ initiate action to identify the problems that most need solving
Solving problems
Be prepared to:
▪ invest time and other resources
▪ understand the root causes of problems
▪ resolve problems completely
Be driven to:
▪ share the lessons learned with others in the IT organization, so
they may benefit from it
Sharing lessons
learned
Kaizen Mindset

16. 16
▪ Kaizen includes a structured problem solving approach, with important
characteristics as an ambitious goal, short period of time and a high
quality of the team.
▪ This method contributes to purposeful continuous improvement into
any IT organization
Purpose of a Kaizen
▪ Finding root causes
▪ Solve root causes
▪ A continuous improvement mindset
▪ Problems don’t come back
Results of a Kaizen
▪ Facts and figures about the problem
▪ Elimination of waste
▪ Standardization
▪ A solved problem
Improvement Kaizen

17. 17
Situation
● IT changes rapidly, resulting in new situations;
● New situations generate new incidents and new problems;
● Also disruptions to existing IT services.
Problem
● Incident: disruption or degradation of IT service;
● Problem: the cause of one or more incidents;
● DMAIC compatible with the Problem Management process.
Problem Management
● One of the core operational IT processes, with two parts:
● - Uncovering the root cause of incidents;
● - Removing the Problem from the IT service infrastructure.
Kaizen and IT: Problem Management

18. 18
Making a checklist of all the operational
tasks that have to be performed at the
beginning of each day. When placed on a
wall, this is the first thing you see at the
beginning of the day
Writing a script for installing software on
new laptops. Or when connected to an
office network this can be done
automatically
Writing down the different definitions of
work such as incidents, changes and
problems, to create a common
understanding
Share new ways of doing the work at the
Daily standup
Daily Kaizen
within IT
Daily Kaizen within an IT Organization

19. 19
What’s It Really Like?

20. 20
1
Understand
daily Kaizen
● Developing a Daily Kaizen mindset as a Lean IT Leader
● Coaching others to develop the Daily Kaizen mindset and teach the Kaizen technique
2
Develop teams by
practicing daily
routines
● Monitoring standards
● Rapid problem solving to return performance to the standard
● Identifying potential improvements to the standard
● Problem solving in order to raise the standard
3
● Creating a positive feedback loop that promotes culture change
● Performance review at local team boards to engage people’s creativity
Make practices
become habit
4 ● Make sure that new energy is added to the system, not doing the work directly, and
fostering Daily Kaizen
Support daily
Kaizen
Daily Kaizen Practical Routines for the Lean IT
Leader

21. 21
Define
● Describe symptoms and define the problem
● Ensure stakeholders agree on scope of problem
Measure
● Collect data and facts about the problem
● Validate the data
Analyze
● Analyze and structure the data
● Define and test hypotheses regarding the problem
Improve
● Define alternative solutions
● Decide on and implement improvements
Control
● Anchor the change in the organization
● Share lessons learned
Improvement Kaizen for the more difficult
problems

22. 22
week board day
board
improvement board
60 min. week start 15 min. day start
Use Visual Infrastructure to reinforce
Continuous Improvement

23. 23
Watch Webinar Recording
Webinar Recording
How Can You
Continuously Improve
your IT using Kaizen?

24. 24
● Expecting instant results
● Not making enough time available
● Letting a kaizen drag on for too long
● Jumping to conclusions
● Not getting the right people in the room
● Lack of sponsorship
● Management does not get involved
● Short-cutting the methodology
Pitfalls?

25. 25
Add energy to the system
3
1
2
One of the core misunderstandings of Kaizen is how daily it is
Fight the perception that there is not much room left for improvement
Advertize how people are improving
The key to continuous improvement

26. StIImprovement Potential y counting your blessings
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27. 27
Improve

28. LITA Supports Four Distinct Certifications
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29. Contact Us
Niels Loader
Principal Consultant Quint Wellington
Redwood, LITA Lead Author
Courseware Development
n.loader@quintgroup.com
Deborah Burton
Member Marketing Team
Lean IT Association (LITA)
deborah.burton@leanitassociation.com

30. Contact Us
Niels Loader
Principal Consultant Quint Wellington
Redwood, LITA Lead Author
Courseware Development
n.loader@quintgroup.com
Deborah Burton
Member Marketing Team
Lean IT Association (LITA)
deborah.burton@leanitassociation.com

31. Experience Lean IT in Action
We believe that “Lean Thinking” should be an integral part of every
Enterprise IT organization and also every IT professional’s toolkit.
Lean thinking is about understanding how to assess business processes, to identify and eliminate
waste. Today, many IT professionals stakeholders from cross-functional areas -operational, tactical
and strategic — have or are planning to get certified in Lean IT with the objective of reducing waste
and improving efficiency.
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