KPI visual management of CIO

Agile and lean management of IT department by digital visual management

Concept lean IT & CIO

Lean management also called also called “management without waste” is not a new management system contrary to what one might think. It was created in 1970 in Japan and became famous in the 80s in the United States. It focuses on productivity, quality, time and cost.

Agile concretely

Today, the majority of CIOs have tested and use agile methodologies. According to the 7th annual state of development survey in 2013, 54% of lean companies chose the Scrum methodology (=Complex product development organization scheme). This methodology is based on the breakdown of the project into sprints followed by a demo.

Improved performance through lean & visual management

Applied to IT, lean management aims to improve the value of client rendering and satisfaction while increasing operational performance.

It makes it possible to obtain fast and lasting gains thanks in particular to the notion of pull flows. This principle allows to improve the quality and to reduce and control the level of work in progress compared to the request of the client.

Visual management digitization

In the era of company and factory of the future, visual management is digitized for better collaborative performance. Real-time displayed information is a source of motivation and performance for each team and employee.

Understanding your data and the most important information at a glance while removing reporting tasks: effective digital visual management reduces the time spent searching for information or trying to understand the current situation. This is essential in pulled and/or just-in-time flows.

It is important to implement visual KPI management in order to more quickly visualize the problems to be corrected and therefore to share and prioritize the work of each one through screens.

Since the leitmotiv of lean management is the elimination of waste and reduction of complexity, don’t hesitate to simplify data and tasks to maximum and don’t dwell on actions without real added value.

Interest for IT  department

KPI visual management and agile methods are at the origin of many benefits for the IT department:

• They bring together the business lines and IT, make the business line accountable for prioritizing requests and thus contribute to better collaboration of team members
• By better visibility and understanding of the projects, they contribute to the improvement of projects’ productivity (reduction of up to 20% of project costs) and especially limit the overrun of project deadlines

In order to take this approach to agility, it’s important to determine in advance the objectives, the difficulties you want to meet and the means.

The answer to these questions will help to define precisely the most appropriate methodology and approach to be implemented.