After speaking with HR, Finance and Services about Kanban method advantages for BIT, Paul was expecting to be called by Emma, the General Manager of BIT. The call arrived but he was surprised by the Outlook invitation content: I wish you explain to me how the current ISO 9001 system is helping (if any) BIT Digital Transformation”. You have one hour.
Continue readingUsing Cumulative Flow Diagrams to Analyze Process Stability in Kanban.
The concept of a stable process is not new to the BIT service team. In the Kanban method, the definition of stability is not based on the (quite difficult) concept of assumption of stationarity but on the more intuitive notion that the arrival rate of new work items and the departure rate of completed work items are (in average) equals.
However, the bottom-line message is the same: if the process is not stable (under control), you cannot make forecasts.
Practically, it is possible to understand if the process is stable through the analysis of a chart: the Cumulative Flow Diagram (CFD).
Brief (and incomplete) history of the QMS.
This short video (about 10 minutes) is dedicated to quality practitioners that didn’t have yet the time (or interest) to reflect why and where the approach to QMS was born and how it evolved with particular attention to the ISO approach.
Kanbanize board: introduce WIP limits.
After visualizing the value chain, it is time for the service team of BIT to introduce Work in Progress Limits in the Kanbanize dashboard.
Continue readingKanban in practice: determine the value stream mapping.
The first step of the Kanban approach is mapping the value chain of the organization (or of the team, depending at which level the approach is focusing). The process should be mapped “as it is”.
At the starting point of the mapping process, particularly useful is the operating model canvas (that is part of the ISO 9001 system of BIT).
Let’s talk about Kanban with the Business Unit Managers.
After obtaining the sustain of HR and Finance, it was the turn to obtain the one from the Business Units managers. Let us have a talk with them.
Continue readingCost of delay to highlight the cost of queues: fundamental step to introduce the Kanban methodology.
Paul (the quality coordinator of BIT), was able to obtain the sustain of HR to introduce Kanban methodology in BIT. But this was not enough: he needed now the support of Finance.
Continue readingCan Kanban practices be used to prevent burn out?
In the last three years, BIT had 4 cases of employee burn out. Three of them were young employees, holding an operative level; one was a middle manager around 40 years hold.
Paul, the quality coordinator of BIT, who has also the role of Health and Security (H&S) agent, believes it is time to insert the prevention of psychological risks (PSR) in the QMS of the Company
A visual approach to project management reporting: Story Mapping.
After discussing with the team leaders and high management the 6 principles of the change management process of BIT, Paul was ready to design the different components of the process. It started with the reporting phase.
The importance to agree on principles in a change management process.
It is not the first time that the Quality coordinator of BIT needs to deep drive in the topic of change management. Last time (September 2018) was related to the migration of the QMS from ISO 9001 version 2008 to version 2015. In that occasion, the ITIL V3 offered a substantial help to arrive to write a practical (and accepted by BIT management) procedure; as well important, to agree on the change principles before discussing the procedure.
Continue reading
QMS in Operations 