What is Lean Enterprise?
When an organization adapts Lean thinking totally and not partially to provide the best quality product or services to the customer it is called a Lean Enterprise. It focuses on eliminating waste or unwanted actions to create value to benefit the customer. It is sometimes also referred to as Lean. It has a set of practices that reduce waste and improve effectiveness.
Principles of Lean Enterprise
There are five principles of Lean enterprise which is derived from Lean Manufacturing:
Value- Understanding customer needs and wants for the product.
Value Stream- This is the product life cycle from raw materials to finished products.
Flow- Maintaining the flow of the value stream to provide more value to customers.
Pull- Manufacture as the order comes.
Perfection- Remove impediments from the process continues to produce good quality products.
What are the Goals of Lean Enterprise? The main objective of Lean is to provide good quality products to the customer by eliminating waste throughout the value stream mapping. There are other goals as well:
Removing waste from the process.
Improving the quality of the products.
Discarding any unnecessary actions.
Reducing production time.
Reducing the total cost.
What is Agile? Agile is a group of concepts that are used by organizations to deliver value to customers. It is an iterative approach toward the complex processes of software development and project management. There are four values mentioned in Agile Manifesto that leads to business agility:
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.
Working on software over comprehensive documentation.
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation.
Responding to change over following a plan.
What are Agile Quality Practices? Built-In Quality is a concept that originated from Lean Manufacturing but is also one of the core values in the Scaled Agile Framework. This concept of Agile being inspired by Lean involves many other practices at different levels as well. According to this concept, Quality is of utmost importance at all stages if any organization wants to be bug-free. Let us discuss some key concepts of Agile Quality Practices:
Definition of Done- It is a phrase that is used to signify completion in Agile. DoD provides all the team members with a common ground and understanding about the end of a process.
Kanban- Kanban is a visual tool that helps in the management of the development process. All the stages of development and the backlog of product items can be visualized properly with its help. Many Agile frameworks adopt this practice to maintain transparency.
Continuous Improvement- Kaizen or Continuous Improvement is the key to delivering valuable products to consumers. It enhances the quality as well as the business process.
Waste- Any unnecessary activity should be eliminated from the process as it is a waste and delivers no value to the consumer. According to Lean as much waste as possible should be removed from the stream.
Inconsistency- A process needs to be consistent to provide satisfactory results to the consumer. Inconsistency leads to the production of waste that slows down the process.
Overburden- Overburden is a common thing for individuals and processes in software development. But it causes a reduction in quality and unevenness so it should be avoided at any cost.
Core Competencies of Lean Enterprise Scaled Agile Framework is developed on the concept of Lean-Agile principles. There are seven core competencies of Lean that help in Agile quality practices. Let us look at the core competencies of Lean enterprise that help organizations to achieve business agility:
Technical and Team Agility- The Agile teams need to create high-quality solutions for their consumers for which they need critical skills and Lean-Agile practices. It has three parts to it:
Agile Teams
Team of Agile Teams
Built-In Quality
Agile Product Delivery- Agile Product Delivery is all about customer satisfaction. The core belief of APD is to deliver value to the customers through the continuous flow of products. There are three dimensions to it:
Customer Centricity and Design Thinking
Develop Cadence and Release on Demand
DevOps and Continuous Delivery Pipeline
Enterprise Solution Delivery- The Enterprise Solution Delivery competency considers the whole process and guides the implementation of Lean-Agile principles. The three parts of this competency are:
Lean System and Solution Engineering
Coordinating Trains and Suppliers
Continually Evolve Live Systems
Lean Portfolio Management- This competency combines Lean and Systems Thinking to execute the process. The three fundamentals of LPM are:
Strategy and Investment Funding
Agile Portfolio Operations
Lean Governance
Organizational Agility- This is the competency where flexibility is induced in the process through its three practices:
Lean-Thinking People and Agile Teams
Lean Business Operations
Strategy Agility
Continuous Learning Culture- There is a lot to learn in order to continuously grow. Continuous Learning Culture offers a set of practices that help the enterprise to gain knowledge and innovate. The three parts of CLC are:
Learning Organization
Innovation culture
Relentless Improvement
Lean-Agile Leadership- Leaders are responsible for the successful implementation and development of Lean-Agile practices. The three areas of Lean-Agile Leadership are:
Leading by Example
Mindset and Principles
Leading change
Conclusion
Lean and Agile are two concepts that have solutions to the modern problems of product building. Many Lean practices are adopted to align with Agile quality practices by different frameworks like SAFe, Scrum, Kanban, etc. Advance Agility has a holistic approach to guiding through the implementation of SAFe. Many courses are available on this platform that can help you gain the required knowledge and certification.
FAQs
What is Value Stream Mapping and the steps involved in it?
Value Stream Mapping is a management method that is used to design the events needed to be performed to complete a process. It is a visual tool used to display all the critical steps. The steps involved in Value Stream Mapping are:
Identification of current process.
Listing every step in the process.
Establishing customer value.
Defining the perfect process.
Eliminate waste.
About Advance Agility
We, at Advance Agility, are the new-age Agile Coaching, Consulting, and IT services company. We enable end-to-end Digital Transformation. Agile execution is integral to our being. We are doing SAFe implementation with small, medium, and large organizations across the globe.
Our vision is to be the leading Agile execution player globally. To keep adding value at every process stage. We are on a mission to empower our clients and move from concept to cash in the shortest sustainable lead time by adopting the human-centric approach to business agility. Embracing change is in our DNA.
Things that keep us apart are Quicker and Seamless execution with End-to-end gamut of services. Our Global presence and Stellar Track Record give us an edge over our competitors.
Connect with us at advanceagility.com to learn about SAFe and SAFe implementation. Write to us at contact@advanceagility.com for any agile training or consulting needs. We are always looking for competent agile trainers as well. So if you are the one or want to become one, do get in touch with us to that we can learn, grow and achieve together.
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