Muri is waste associated with pushing people, processes and equipment beyond the limits or overburdening. An organization may be enamored of working large numbers of overtime hours, but any benefit for such some at a cost, and this is an example of overburdening. I once worked at a place in which the employees averaged being […]
For those familiar with the lean approach to the work or the Toyota Way, you my already know about the concept of Muda. Muda is one of the three categories associated with lean that impact performance and costs to the organization. Muda is regarded to have seven waste types or areas or actions that cause waste. Over […]
We Have Started the Fire. Do you know how to start a fire? I am not talking about charcoal briquettes, or the use of combustion material such as lighter fluid, gasoline, or those special wax products that can be used in your fireplace, no propane or gas is used either. I’m talking about the fires […]
I recently saw a post on Twitter from the Great John Cutler on allow the team to pick the tools that they use to do the work. Generally, this is not a bad idea, but not necessarily a great idea either. It sort of depends. My experience in companies that also have hardware […]
Kanban and Visual Management Kanban is a lean method for identifying and managing the work and the flow, and it does so by creating a pull through environment. We will start by identifying the work we need to do. Each work item we need to do will end up on an individual card. The cards […]
In preparation for our trip to Eindhoven University of Technology to lecture on Configuration Management, we provide a brief excerpt on the evolution of the horseless cariage. Traditionally new market segments open due to the need to solve a problem. Such problems may be real as in the case of the environmental crisis solved by […]
Career; of Motorcycles and Trucks This blog continues from my last post describing the first part of my career. We continue with the tire pressure monitoring system. In those days, and for many years before that, my preferred form of transport was motorcycle. I had an accident a few years before taking this job that […]
My Career I have been very fortunate in my career, and that really means very lucky. Upon graduating from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, I had two job offers after sending my resume to more than 100 companies. That is not a very good yield, but it would be good enough. I selected […]
If you have been a project manager for any time at all, you probably have experienced competing demands from the sponsors for the project. The sponsor is the person(s) who drive the scope of the project in conventional projects. In some instances, the project manager may find that there are in fact multiple sponsors and […]
Value, Scope and Change Requests Change requests are part of any development project. Change requests are sometimes necessary as we learn by building and doing the work. In my experience, change requests often are born from requirements we thought we understood, only to learn by working with the product or system that we really did […]