Showing posts with label Process Engineering. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Process Engineering. Show all posts

May 11, 2018

Kanban Visual Task Boards

Just wanted to share this best practice for Kanban or Visual Task Boards

This is a way to layout work/workflow and track and communicate progress. 

Previously, many professionals use colored sticky notes on a wall or whiteboard.

Today, tools like ServiceNow have the capability built right in. 

This was an example that I created in just a few minutes. 

Visualize your team's work and focus on what needs to get done, who the tasks are assigned to, the status, and keep driving continuous improvement in the workflow and project. 

Color coding can be used for different tasks and you can see the legend at the top.  

Tasks can be easily dragged and dropped from one column (status) to another. 

Create transparency and collaboration on your projects--try Kanban Visual Task Boards. ;-)

(Source Graphic: Andy Blumenthal)
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April 30, 2018

DMAIC Reengineering

A colleague gave a wonderful talk the other day on process engineering.

The key steps to reduce waste (Lean) or variation/defects (Six Sigma) are as follows:

Define - Scope the project.

Measure - Benchmark current processes.

Analyze - Develop to-be processes (with a prioritized list of improvements) and plan for implementation.

Improve - Executive process improvements.

Control - Monitor/refine new processes.

It was amazing to me how similar to enterprise architecture this is in terms of: defining your "current" and "future" states and creating a transition plan and executing it.

Also, really liked the Project Scoping questions:

- What problem do you want to solve/what process do you want to improve?
- Why do you need this?
- What is the benefit?  And to whom?
- What are your objectives for this effort?
- Who are the key stakeholders?
- When is this needed and why?

I think process improvement/engineering methodologies like this can be a huge benefit to our organizations, especially where the tagline is "Why should we change--we've always done it this way!" ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
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