Natalie Hanson Recognizing Lean
Here is my list of the Top 7 ways to know you’re working in a Lean environment:
- You keep hearing references to Lean that don’t refer to Cuisine or cuts of meat.
- You keep hearing Japanese terms like kaizen or muda.
- People are talking about Flow, but they are not referencing the positive psychologist Csikszentmihalyi.
- You hear references to Value Stream and you’re not sure what people are talking about.
- You’re told that the team is trying to achieve Customer Pull, but you’re not sure you want to be pulled by a customer. You learn later that this means a rate of production based on customer demand; that in turn means the manufacturing process is so fast that items can be made to order.
- You’re told that your goal is to understand the Voice of the Customer; you fervently hope that has something to do with user research and not singing.
- You are told to genchi gembutsu (go see for yourself).
This is a teaser for a post I wrote about Lean and User Experience that will go live tomorrow, so I hope you’ll come back and check it out.
Natalie Hanson 