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Enterprise Agility | NetObjectives: SIPOC helps you figure out where to start

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Some very good basic advice here from Jim Trott at NetObjectives about applying lean principles and systems thinking to improve software development.   An excerpt: 

"When it comes to analyzing where to start in helping a development organization, it often makes sense to talk to the Business, which is the customer of the dev group, as well as upstream to the Operations, which supplies the dev group. A standard lean technique is to do a simple SIPOC (Supplier-Input-Process-Output-Customer) to be explicit about who and how the organization interacts with the system. All too often, this simple step is forgotten as we are focused on building product.

"For example, a local team might already be reasonably productive, even without Scrum. But they are thrashing because their Business customer is not ready to work with them when they need answers. Or the change management system takes weeks to schedule a user acceptance test. These are structural issues dealing with upstream inputs and downstream outputs over which the local team has no control. Attack these root causes of thrashing and you improve the flow. Only then will it make a difference to improve the team." 

A quick read and worth a look! 

Technorati tags: Lean, Systems thinking, Agility

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