For CIOs

Being a CIO is probably one of the toughest jobs out there today.  You have to deal with a broad range of stakeholders, all of whom seemingly want more for less.  Everyone wants security, dependability, bandwidth, the latest hardware, software upgrades, and improved custom applications to drive key business processes.

At the same time you want to make sure that IT has the capacity to look forward and meet your organization’s needs in the future.

We believe CIOs are looking for five key capabilities:

  • Responsiveness – give stakeholders what they need ASAP
  • Cost-efficiency – avoid non-value-added spending
  • Insight- everyone can see what’s going on and how we are doing
  • Control – we can set goals and meet them
  • Dependability – our services will meet our users’ expectations

Because of the quest of dependability and control, IT organizations are often burdened with complex and bureaucratic management practices that slow down project execution, keep stakeholders waiting, and demoralize employees. Complexity often also leads to more difficulty in seeing and eliminating wasteful spending.  So the puzzle is, how can we get responsiveness and cost-efficiency while also retaining insight, control, and dependability?

Many IT organizations today are implementing some form of Agile software development, but scaling Agile and connecting it with quantifiable business value is proving difficult.  Agile methods are confined to software development and do not address the need to improve the organization’s performance as a whole.  A richer management framework is needed.

Originating with Toyota, the Lean Management methodology has been used to achieve significant gains in operating performance across a range of industries, including IT.   Key benefits from implementing Lean in the IT sector include:

  • Cost reductions from eliminating non-value-added work
  • 2-4 times faster product/application development
  • Improved customer satisfaction
  • Improved employee engagement and morale
  • Improved quality
  • A more agile, responsive organization

Lean engages your workforce in nonstop cycles of reflection, innovation, and implementation.  It thereby helps improve every function in the business.  A Lean transformation can be organized to focus on what will yield the biggest improvement in operating performance.

Resources for CIOs

  • Methodology:  A quick overview of our approach to implementing Lean.
  • Assessments and Briefings: The Lean Systems Institute provides customized assessments and briefings to CIOs  to explore how Lean might improve the performance of an IT organization. For a confidential discussion, please contact us.