Lean IT & Agile Software Development

On October 13 and 14 will be held the 1st European Lean IT summit in Paris, France.

This conference, organized with the support of the Lean Global Network, is a major event for the Lean IT community for 4 reasons:

First, we’ll have the lean gurus - no less than 5 Shingo Prize recipients as well as international leading names in lean and IT:

• Dan Jones will start by helping us focus on the right questions for the lean IT implementation, making sure that IT contributes to the creation of value and the performance of the whole organization.
• Michaël Ballé will tell us about kaizen in design work - how designers can learn to better see the waste generated by their own technical decisions, and how lean principles such as customer value concepts, set-based concurrent engineering, design standards, lean testing and tooling can radically improve design performance.
• Jean Cunningham will talk about the traditional cost statements and metrics that derail a lean transformation, and how simple, easy to understand information can align the organization.
• Steve Bell will explore the fundamental, underlying cause for the chronic project failures, sluggish change, and mis-alignment that many IT professionals experience on a regular basis.
• Mike Orzen will show how to leverage the skills and knowledge of the IT staff to create sustained improvement.
• Mary Poppendieck will lead a waste-hunting workshop, revealing the biggest sources of waste that plague software development. Prepare to be surprised!
• Catherine Chabiron wil explain how work standards can be used in IT activities

Second, we’ll have 3 CIOs from major banks:

• BNL (BNP Paribas group): Paul Thysens will explain how Banca Nazionale del Lavoro dramatically reduced IT maintenance costs in one year for the benefit of development projects.
• Bred Banque Populaire: Pierre Pezziardi will share the first lessons drawn from one year of lean within his company’s IT department.
• Wells Fargo: Chris Vogel will talk about the lean voyage the American financial services giant started 7 years ago to optimize its document management operations.

Third, we’ll have early lean practitioners from many companies:

• Google: Mark Striebeck, will explain how he successfully developed a testing culture within the company and transformed the way people work. A first great step in the realm of Jidoka?
• Microsoft: Philip Cave and Kristin Poole will tell us how the IT teams that support the division in charge of Xbox and Kinect adopted lean to deliver high-value products in a timely manner.
• IBM Global Business Services: Aslam Jilani and Roald Droog will explain how they led a European lean transformation program which contributed to drastically improve the company’s service delivery system.
• ...and many other success stories from lean practitioners at Faurecia, Thales, Nokia Siemens Networks, Bouygues Telecom, SAP, etc.

And fourth, we’ll have an oportunity to meet!

I will be leading two sessions:

• Lean IT in a nutshell: I will present the fundamentals of Lean IT and the key elements for a successful implementation. I will explain how one can make sense of the myriad of lean concepts - Kanban, 5S, visual management, pull, flow - and get to the underlying model. I will then give examples to show how lean applies to IT activities such as support or projects.
• Software Kaizen workshop: I will show how kaizen and the rigorous problem solving approach used by lean practitioners can be used to drive the continuous improvement of a software product. Value, waste, performance management, PDCA, "genchi genbutsu", lead time reduction... you'll discover how to use all these principles to build applications that delight your users!

So what are you waiting for? 8^)