kaizen

"Change for better"

How we work matters. This is our guide.

"Agile planning balances the effort and investment in planning with the knowledge that we will revise the plan through the course of the project."

Learn & Adapt

Respond to unpredictability through incremental, iterative work cadences and empirical feedback.

Kaizen is a personal mindset and a practice. As a mindset, it suggests “My work is to do my work and to improve my work” and “continuously improve for its own sake.”

Master techniques/processes “by the book”
Experiment until you find a better way, then make that the new ‘standard’
Repeat forever

Steps 2 and 3—Relentlessly and incrementally change and improve practices, usually in small experiments, though large-scale systems. Almost no practice, process, or existing policy is sacred—anything can go. “Challenge everything”

Methodology

Make decisions slowly by consensus, thoroughly considering all options; implement decisions rapidly.

Today’s problems come from yesterday’s ‘solutions
The easy way out usually leads back in
Small changes can produce big results…but the areas of highest leverage are often the least obvious
You can have your cake and eat it too—but not all at once
Dividing an elephant in half does not produce two small elephants
There is no blame
Once a decision is made, execute fast!
Be reliable and thoroughly test the work

Be Thoughtful

Personal Mastery

Personal mastery is a discipline of continually clarifying and deepening our personal vision, of focusing our energies, of developing patience, and of seeing reality objectively."

Aim for mastery

To have a kaizen mindset—to have high expectations and to challenge ourselves, team members, and partners to levels of skill, mastery, waste reduction, and vision far far beyond the status quo.

Why? - The battery is dead. (first why)
Why? - The alternator is not functioning. (second why)
Why? - The alternator belt has broken. (third why)
Why? - The alternator belt was well beyond its useful service life and not replaced. (fourth why)
Why? - The vehicle was not maintained according to the recommended service schedule. (fifth why, a root cause)

Go to the source [the place of real value work—"gemba"] to find the facts to make correct decisions, build consensus, and achieve goals at our best speed.

The 5 whys...

Find Truth

Base management decisions on a long term philosophy, even at the expense of short-term goals

Consider a relay race
The racers are standing around waiting for the baton from their colleague. This may appear as a terrible underutilization ‘waste,’ and would probably mandate a policy to ensure all the racers are 'busy' and 'productive.'

Long Term

Watch the baton, not the runners
Whenever there is a choice to optimize a team output or the whole product, we always chose the whole product.

Stop & Fix
Build a culture of stopping and fixing problems to ultimately build quality in; teach everyone to methodically study problems.
Stop and Fix is a deep and repeating theme about understanding root causes and introducing deep countermeasures.
Minimize debt
Actively work to drive the open-defects list down to zero before adding new items and feature.

Stop & fix

Process Agility

ITTERATE AND IMPROVE

Out-learn the competition , through generating more useful knowledge and using and remembering it effectively.

Share Knowledge

Standardize
Learn and communicate system design patterns and leverage the use of existing design insight and standards.
Standardization is the foundation for continuous improvement and collaborative empowerment.