CASE STUDY – How do you keep up with a market changing at the speed of light? The Chief Inventor of an Australian digital company explains how they are using lean to safeguard their future.
FEATURE – We often spend a great deal of time and effort trying to fit our organizations into a box instead of building a box that fits our organization, says Sharon Visser.
FEATURE – Is the traditional teaching model used in our schools obsolete? A high school in Italy has been experimenting with lean thinking and Scrum applied to students’ learning, and the results have been enlightening.
FEATURE – With lean thinking, Madrid-based Neo@Ogilvy is hoping to create a stronger connection with customers, thus learning to create value for them and redefining the overall purpose of marketing.
NOTES FROM THE GEMBA – The author visits a comparison website that is gradually integrating agile and lean thinking in its processes, identifying new and exciting improvement opportunities.
INTERVIEW – The Chief of Agile at Toyota Connected tells us about the agility journey of Toyota and explains why the divide between lean thinking and Agile has no reason to exist.
INTERVIEW – We have come to dread having to interact with customer support representatives, and quite rightly so. Basecamp has made it a mission to bring humanity back to this interaction.
BUILDING BRIDGES – This month, a CTO explains how his software company borrowed the kaizen spirit – and the idea of a dojo – from an avionics factory and put it to good use.
FEATURE – Organizations can only reap the full benefits of modern technologies if they pair up their digitalization efforts with an enterprise-wide lean transformation.
ROUND-UP – Looking back at the year that just ended, our editor Roberto Priolo reflects on the power and reach of lean thinking, and offers us a round-up of the best content from 2017.
FEATURE – Following a visit to a Toyota supplier in Japan, the authors reflect on the nature of kaizen and explain why we might be looking for it in the wrong place.
FEATURE – What if we ran our production schedule to time instead of quantity? While creating overproduction, running to time is a temporary first step to establish levelled production with fixed repetitive cycles.
PROFILE - When years of hard work to re-organize Patria's IT operations led to disappointing results, Sari Torkkola didn't throw in the towel. Instead, she started to build her department's understanding of lean.
INTERVIEW – Dan Jones will be a keynote speaker at this year’s Lean IT Summit in Paris. In this interview, he gives us a sneak peek of what he is going to talk about.
FEATURE – Not many people know that digital technology and the IT industry are rife with environmental waste. Discovering it and eliminating early can have beneficial effects on both the business world and the planet.
INTERVIEW – CI&T is a very successful Brazilian IT and software engineering company that has found in lean thinking a way to build on its agile work while better approaching leadership development.
FEATURE – Why doesn't lean have a manifesto? The authors highlight the core principles and values of lean thinking, but warn these can only go so far without the learning that comes from working every day towards solving the next problem.
FEATURE – It might be widely used as a planning system, but ERP – Ian Glenday argues – is not conducive to an environment where lean thinking can thrive: because it is based on a batch logic, it always creates a different plan and, with it, instability.
FEATURE ARTICLE – Danish company Solar has applied lean management principles to the rollout of a new ERP system to gradually strengthen the ties between an isolated IT department and the rest of the organization.
FEATURE – Day after day, groundbreaking technological advances are dramatically changing industry. It is clear that we are now experiencing a new industrial revolution, but what’s the role of lean thinking in this Digital Age?
INTERVIEW – Planet Lean speaks with telecommunications company Telefónica about the organization's attempt to apply lean startup principles in its R&D department.
COLUMN – Digitalization is now on the agenda of executive teams and is encouraging organizations to review their business models. But how does IT fit into the picture? What is its role? How can lean help?
INTERVIEW – The CIO of a French pharmaceutical company gives us a sneak peek of her presentation at the upcoming Lean IT Summit, focused on using the obeya to change the IT department.
VIDEO INTERVIEW - Planet Lean speaks with Jeff Sutherland, one of the inventors of scrum software development, about the evolution of this Agile framework and its relationship with lean.
VIDEO INTERVIEW - At the Lean IT Summit, we spoke with Amazon Web Services to understand what type of flexible and scalable IT infrastructure allows organizations to be innovative without breaking the bank.
INTERVIEW - Pierre Masai, CIO of Toyota Motor Europe, discusses IT across the company's operations in Europe, highlighting the importance of people engagement and experiments.
COLUMN - A lean transformation is not just a prerogative of top management, but a goal to be shared across an organization. Here's a few thoughts on how I.T. people specifically can contribute to a turnaround.
COLUMN - For those working in the I.T. world, identifying waste can be tricky. However, starting by tackling over-production will help you to eliminate every other form of waste.
INTERVIEW – At last month’s Lean Digital Summit in Lisbon, César Gon told attendees how, with lean digital, we have an opportunity to finally get the attention of CEOs and business leaders.
BUILDING BRIDGES – A member of the Theodo team tells us about their attempts to improve the performance of their Web apps using lean principles.
GETTING TO KNOW US – We sit for a chat with the President of Institut Lean France. Not only has ILF created a vibrant community of lean CEOs in France; it also launched one of the most innovative lean events out there.
BUILDING BRIDGES - This month, we hear how addressing work-in-progress led a startup specialized in AI to productivity gains on their machine learning projects.
FEATURE – Technology should help people in their work, and it is with this in mind that the general manager of this car preparation center decided to learn to develop Apps.
BUILDING BRIDGES – In this article, we learn how a team of software developers leverages the lean concept of “red bins” to ensure the quality of the code they write.
PROFILE – The leader we profile today has a holistic view of the digital world. He brought Agile to Australia, and after embracing lean thinking he has helped to make REA Group one of the country's best digital brands.
NOTES FROM THE GEMBA – This month, the author meets a group of business leaders consistently breaking new ground in their exploration of the relationship between IT and sustainability by using a kaizen-like approach.
BUILDING BRIDGES – Struggling to scale a new product past its MVP phase, Theodo tried a number of things before realizing that the only way to retain quality and speed is kaizen.
FEATURE – In the second article in our series with Theodo, the CTO tells us about an experiment that showed how problem solving is easier when the job is clearly defined.
NOTES FROM THE GEMBA – Catherine’s gemba walks are back after the summer break. This month, she visits a start-up that is using lean to manage its growth, and learns about its management’s extraordinary turnaround.
INTERVIEW – With more and more organizations in the service sector adopting lean thinking to turn around their modus operandi, it only makes sense to highlight the struggles and misconceptions they still encounter.
CASE STUDY – Around four years ago, classified ads magazine Auto Trader printed its final issue and moved to a web-only business model. As its digital transformation progressed, the company discovered why real innovation must become business-as-usual.
INTERVIEW – After transitioning from agile to lean kanban, French insurance comparison company LesFurets.com has found in lean management an ever stronger foundation for value creation.
INTERVIEW – We meet one of this year's Lean IT Summit speakers to hear about her team’s effective approach to turning Nordstrom’s IT leaders into coaches and truly supporting the firm's lean transformation.
FEATURE – The banking sector is floundering in the face of heavy regulation and increased competition from fintechs. So what can banks do? The author suggests they embrace lean IT in order to change their ways.
OPINION – In a competitive and unpredictable market, the temptation to rely on technology is always strong, but experience proves that there is no better support than people's ability to learn and adapt to new situations.
FEATURE – Lean thinking is increasingly applied end to end, reaching virtually every area and function of the enterprise, and yet in many companies IT is still left out of the lean transformation. Isn't this dangerous in a world that is going more and more digital?
FEATURE – The goal of your digital transformation is not only to develop new technologies and innovative processes, but to turn your people into the kind of "smart creatives" who will lead your firm into the future. Lean will get you there.
COLUMN - In the first installment of her new column, the CIO of Finnish defense company Patria shares her thoughts on what makes lean management so critical in the life of the leader of an IT department.
INTERVIEW – When we think of innovation we rarely think of government, and yet the public sector is in desperate need to modernize and improve. Pierre Pezziardi is on a mission to bring innovation to the French government.
COLUMN - Menlo Innovations may not define itself as a "lean organization" but there is no doubt that its management style is akin to the principles lean teaches. Here, a front-line Menlonian shares her thoughts on the company's culture.
VIDEO INTERVIEW - We spoke with Toyota Motor Europe's CIO at the Lean IT Summit about hoshin and IT, the application of the agile methodology, and the power of coaching.
FEATURE - Traditionally seen as the mother of all evil, the IT department in our organizations has a long way to go before it fulfils its potential and becomes an actual facilitator in the delivery of excellent products and services. In the past few years, IT leaders have realized that lean management can help them to transform the function.
INTERVIEW - Håkan Borglund, CIO of Toyota Material Handling Europe, speaks with Planet Lean about Toyota principles and the role of lean IT at Toyota Material Handling.
CASE STUDY - How Spotify developed an alternative management system based on servant leadership, interaction-based learning and adaptability – changing the music industry along the way.
FEATURE – Lean management forces us to look at our IT service management from a different perspective and helps us to ensure it really supports our organizational needs.
FEATURE – This piece analyzes the different elements of scrum, an agile software development framework, as seen from the point of view of traditional lean thinking.
COLUMN - For her latest column, Sari Torkkola describes the initial steps that must be taken to move towards becoming a lean CIO and warn us against some of the pitfalls along the way.
