Mark McDonald

Waiting is one of the seven sources of Muda or waste. Waiting wastes time and wasted time consumes resources, management attention and organizationally energy.  In Lean Thinking waiting is defined in terms of the time and resources consumed in between major steps in a process.  In IT waiting happens in areas like user signoff, requirements definition, testing, and other areas.  Waiting comes from multi-tasking that often comes from trying to fully-allocate IT resources.

Waiting and wait time destroy cycle time and end-to-end performance.  Long the subject of re-engineering efforts, eliminating waiting generally involved implementing solutions that addressed false starts, synchronizing production cycle times, and reorganizing workflows.

In IT waiting happens everywhere.  The business waits for IT to start a project; they wait for IT to come back with requirements, to complete the system, etc.  Within IT there is significant waiting between process steps as one step completes before the people in the next step are ready.

Waiting is both an execution and a structural issue.  At the execution level, IT managers see the project management problem and try to meet it with one that can be met with better coordination and control.  However, investments in tighter resource scheduling advanced workflow may reduce but will not eliminated waiting.

Waiting is a structural issue that is best addressed by managing IT processes based on throughput.  Throughput measures process performance in terms of the number of completed units for a given time and level of resources.  Introduced in Goldratt’s book “The Goal” and embodied in the ideas surrounding the theory of constraints.

Managing for throughput looks to raise process performance by reducing process bottlenecks that create resource buffers and waiting.  First you have to find your bottlenecks – the root causes of end-to-end process performance.  Then use throughput management to resolve bottlenecks in the process by either:

• Raising the productivity of the process by removing unnecessary steps, rebalancing the process with the right skills and making sure the process starts when it is ready to start.

• Properly resourcing the bottleneck processes to ensure that they have the capacity to handle the workload.  It is a false economy to trade time for dollars, particularly when the time you trade keeps the business from the capability it needs in the marketplace.

• Setting the pace of the process, the rate of work you let into the process based on the performance of the bottleneck process.  You can only run as fast and as far as the slowest part of your process.  Use governance to accepts only the amount of work with the right priorities into the process.  It is not waiting if the work is not approved.  Otherwise you will find a crowd of people waiting outside your door to get in and only getting frustrated.

Backlog puts a positive spin on a process bottleneck.  Having a backlog is seen as a good thing to many IT professionals.  A backlog says that you are busy, needed, perhaps overworked, but in demand.  One man’s backlog however is another man’s waiting?  Think of it this way, when that person waiting is the one paying the bills than the backlog is waste and anything but a sign of how important you are.

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Category: Lean Thinking Strategy Tools     Tags: Business Leadership, IT Leadership

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