Lean IT Fundamentals

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Information technology (IT) plays a vital role in the society. Almost everybody is now engaged in technology. The one that engages in direction and growth of I.T. is the so called Lean IT.
In the information technology, Lean IT has an important part where it extends the manufacturing and services that helps it to be managed well and for its development. It can be the means to make the work agile. With the help of this platform, the work becomes easier and faster to finish. The quick and fast delivery of result that is needed by the user makes this service more useful.
This manufacturing are widely exercised and used for more production in business. This has been great help for the businesses today. Being in the high tech world, all should be updated. There are similarities on manufacturing and IT services. One of this is that manufacturing, provides goods to its client and costumer as IT manufactures by means of its value to the businesses not only to the business itself but also to the costumers they are serving. Also the development of the services are from the different department of the company namely the production department, the resource department, the peace and order department and many more.
With the great use of technology today, business also uses the technology to reach out for their costumer. They use the internet and technology to be in line in the current world. They shift and advance their way of service to the people. And because of this service become more convenient and agile in the part of the customer as well as the business owner. The advance and easier way to transact gives the advantage of Lean IT. The reason of this are:
• Convenient to customer and business and develops the easier and faster way in transaction
This particular service can lessen the burden of both, customer and the business. With the help of this transaction become easier. The time that is allotted in transacting are being lessened.
• Decreases the wasting of work production
It became more productive. There have growth and development of the business.
• Decreases the defects or problem like unnecessary changes in the system and unproductive and improper way of executing the business project. This will affect the quality of service for the customer. And can lead to more problems of the company. It can also increase the business load for the maintenance and other services.
• Helps save time
The way the business response to the need of the customer is important. Business should have the effective time management in responding customer’s concern. Fast and proper response should be remembered. And because of wasting time the productivity of the business is affected.
• Avoid miscommunication
It is important to have a good communication between the customer and the business. Good communication will be the means to be more productive and the trust of the client should be developed.
• Be knowledgeable
Businesses should be knowledgeable enough to have the right ideas for the growth and development.

— Slimane Zouggari

What is Lean IT?

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Lean IT is considered as the extension of the lean services and manufacturing principles to manage and develop information technology services and products. Its main focus is to eliminate the waste that gives no value to the services or product applied in the context of information technology.
Even though the lean principles are well established having a broad applicability, its extension from the manufacturing to information technology is not only emerging. In fact, lean IT has important challenges for the practitioners while raising the assurance of no less benefits. Lean IT’s initiatives can possibly be limited in terms of scope and can deliver results quickly. The implementation of lean IT is a long term and continuing process that can possibly take years before the lean principles become instinct to the organization’s culture.
The Extensions of the Lean IT
As the lean is implemented, the lean principles extensions starts to spread to information technology and in other service industries. The industry analysts have seen that there are many analogues and other things that information technology and manufacturing have in common. The same with the manufacture process, the development of the business services entails a demand management, resource management, security issues, quality control and many more. The information technology also provides an enhancement to the productivity and efficiency of the employee with the use of communication technologies and software. It also permits the suppliers to deliver, collaborate and receive the payments.
Principles of Lean IT
Like others, Lean IT also has a principle that becomes its rule or law that is desirably followed and serves as a guideline on the way the system or nature of a certain thing is constructed. The system principles are those understood by the agile users being the most essential character of the system.
 Value Streams
This is the service that is provided by information technology function to parent organization to be used by the suppliers, customers, investors, employees, other stakeholders, and by the media. The services are differentiated into:
 Business service: this is the primary value stream. The examples are processing of point of sale, supply chain optimization and ecommerce.
 IT service: this is the secondary value stream. The examples are application performance management, service catalog and data backup.
 Value Stream Mapping
This is the counterpart of the lean manufacture that involves the methods of value stream mapping – analyzing and diagramming services into the component process and eliminates any steps that never deliver a value.
 Flow
This is related to the fundamental concepts of the lean formulated in the Toyota Production System or Mura. Mura is a Japanese term means “unevenness” that must be eliminated in the system that is tightly integrated.
 Pull or Demand System
Pull or demand is closely related to the mentioned flow concept. It is in contrast with the supply or push system. In the pull system, a pull is the service request. The primary request comes from the consumers or customers of service or product.
Minimizing the waste while maximizing the value of the consumers and customers can be achieved with lean, where the value intended for the customers and consumers are created, having a few resources at hand.

— Slimane Zouggari

Benefits of Lean Manufacturing

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Lean manufacturing is a methodical process on the removal of waste in an industrial system. Lean also considers waste formed through overload and through disproportion in workloads. Operating from the viewpoint of the customer who uses a product or service, “value” is something that he would be ready to compensate.
Basically, lean is focused on making what puts worth by decreasing everything else. Lean production is a controlling idea derived from Toyota Production System and recognized to be “lean” in the 1990s. TPS is well-known for its concentration on the decrease of original Toyota wastes to expand total customer importance, however there are changing perceptions on how it is attained. Toyota started as a small company and grew into the world’s largest auto company.
There are a number of lean manufacturing principles to be understood in order to apply lean. Without understanding and applying these principles, it will most likely result in disappointment or a lack of commitment from everyone in the organization. The process becomes unsuccessful without commitment.
The following are guiding principles of lean manufacturing:
Continuous Improvement
Continuous improvement is the most critical among lean manufacturing principles. It forms the foundation of lean implementation. Absence of continuous improvement ceases progress. As it implies, there must be constancy as it is necessary in achieving a desirable outcome. Innovations can be big or small as long as it is towards improvement.
This should be a philosophy that is true throughout the organization. Though the focus is on a large scale of enhancement, it should not only center on big ideas but also on the minimal concepts because they can sometimes minor details can also lead to major improvements.
Leveled Production
Lean manufacturing is leveled production. The level of every day workload is the basis of this principle. Manufacturing companies wait for what their customers order before manufacturing products. This result to increased distribution time and sometimes dissatisfy customers’ needs.
Some companies produce products based strictly on forecast. There might be excess products not needed by customers. Leveled production lays account on both forecast and history. Pull system utilization is one key factor because it shows the demand.
Respect for Humanity
This lean manufacturing principle is all about human resource—manpower. Companies need people to work for them and so they are also obliged to give fair and good treatment to workers. Respect must always be present. Problems in lean implementation may arise if there is no coherent relationship and communication among personnel. They must feel worthy of the job and be contributors on the achievement of company goals as well.
Time-Efficient Production
Produce what is necessary, when it is needed and the quantity needed. Working with leveled production, this works well a pull system. It permits movement and production of parts only when needed.
Built-in Quality
Quality is built during the manufacturing process—from the design up to the packaging of the product. Making sure that every part is best in quality and free from defects.

— Slimane Zouggari

Lean IT: What You Wish You Know about It

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More and more businesses are now engage in advance technology. The development in information technology is one aspect when it comes to bringing advancement to services of the businesses.
The Lean IT seeks for the growth and manages its services that extend in the aspect of IT. It has a great help to the development of IT (information Technology). Lean is an important aspect in organizing the Lean IT. It is an aspect that should be regarded in order to have a successful business as well as to satisfy the needs of the clients. It should be lean or inclined to the business for it to function orderly.
Because of this service, manufacturing of the businesses become more convenient. The quality of service that the customer wanted is now being emphasized. Manufacturing that is beneficial for both. Today more businesses are implementing this kind of manufacturing through the use of this service. They are now engage with this kind of manufacturing. It is an effective means to the businesses to use this kind of service especially in today’s modern world. In today’s way of living that almost everybody is engage in technology, people wanted their work to be easier and faster. And by means of this service they are being updated.
The development of this service can be explained by the following concepts:
1. Remove unnecessary waste or scrap
The elimination of the scrap or waste can be the means for the success of the business. To eliminate waste or the scraps one should recognize to be an organized in the process. It should start in organizing the process for you to come up with a good and right outcome. It should have a proper implementation and business should have the recognition that is needed for the business to work. Be well managed and have a careful way of implementing the process. There should have the careful analysis in the process. Customers want an easy and fast process. Business should deal with it. The quality of service and immediate action to the problem should be remembered.
2. Unfinished work
It is not proper to have unfinished business or work. When it happened there are times that you will commit mistakes. Work should be one at a time. You cannot focus if you shift to another process even you are not finished the first.
3. Time consuming
Costumers want an easy and faster transaction. Avoid a process that is time consuming as it will cause costumers irritation that can affect the performance of the business.
4. Disfigurement
Costumers wanted a good quality service. There should have the proper way to avoid the defects or disfigurement of the service.
With this advance technology the process become more agile. In a way that businesses are able to process the orders or even the payment of the customers in easy and faster way. Businesses are now agile in responding to the customers’ needs. The lean IT has an important part in today’s transaction. It became more convenient for parties, businesses and customers.

— Slimane Zouggari

SAFe: Value Streams

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Value Streams are known as the primary SAFe construct intended for organizing, understanding and delivering value. Every value stream is considered as a long-lived series of the steps which an enterprise would use in order to offer continuous flow of value to the customer. The main goal of the SAFe portfolio would be about financing and nurturing set of solution development activities which either delivers the end user with direct value or whether to support some other business value streams. It is considered as a critical skill to identify and optimize value streams of the Lean-Agile enterprise.
It is a fact that organizing around value would offer substantial benefits into the organization such as faster learning, higher quality, solutions, higher productivity and shorter time of marketing which are all better fit into the intended purpose. SAFe would definitely be of great help for you in terms of organizing around value that would be accomplished first by understanding the value streams and finally organizing the SAFe Agile Release Trains in order to realize them. The art and science of SAFe is realizing the value streams through the ARTs. Apart from that, value streams would lend themselves into systematic analysis as well as improvement through value stream mapping that is utilised in order to identify as well as address the delays and also the non-value added activities therefore helping in terms of accomplishing only the shortest sustainable lead time.
What are the types of Value Streams?
For SAFe, system builders should be aware about the two types of the value streams that are present in a certain enterprise. The first one is the operational value streams which show the steps to be used in order to provide services and goods to the customer both for external and internal. And this is how the said company would make money. The second one is the development value streams that are to show the steps being used in order to develop new products, services capabilities and systems. In most cases, these are the same, once a solution provider would develop the product for sale as well as feeds distribution directly. However, in the said case there is only a value stream being the development as well as operations are considered to be the same. Still, it is critical to understand both types of the value streams since the development value stream would feed the operational value stream.
How to identify value streams?
Within some organizations, it is a simple task to identify value streams. Most are simply the services, products and solutions they develop as well as sell. Once the enterprise gets a bit larger the task would be more complicated as well. Value would flow via applications as well as services and might across numbers of parts of the distributed organization to numbers of external and internal customers of different types. In some of the larger IT shops, value might move across numbers of departments as well as organizations and also across numbers of deployed systems. And in that case, finding the value stream might be an essential analytical as well as business context-related activity which provides basic foundation intended for the Lean-Agile transformation.

SAFe: Strategic Themes

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Lots of organizations utilize strategic themes in their strategy map. These themes could help organize those groups of related strategic goals, which work altogether to present a valuable and specific business result.
Let’s Take a Thorough Look of What Strategic Theme Really Is
Strategic themes are itemized, specific objectives, which link a SAFe Portfolio to the changing business strategy of an enterprise. It offer business context mainly for decision making in the portfolio at the same time affect investments in the Value Streams and be able to offer inputs to the following decisions:
– Program Backlog
– Solution
– Portfolio
– Budgets
– Economic Framework
These themes don’t need to restate the evident, as majority of elements of the vision of portfolio are comprehended through context. In addition, portfolios stakeholders are typically understand well what the portfolio is really for, handle, and create their own visions and goals.
What does it offer?
To a certain extent, strategic theme is capable in providing the enterprise along with the differentiators that is going forward coming from the present state to the unknown state. These aid drive competitive differentiation as well as innovation, which is achievable through efficient portfolio solutions.
In addition to that, strategic themes are crafted as a result of a collaborative and structured planning process – one, which includes the executives and fiduciaries of the enterprise and the key stakeholders coming from every portfolio.
Devising Strategic Themes
Creating strategic themes is one practice in strategy formulation; however, it is not the state of SAFe portfolio context. According to the guidance of a certain enterprise, this theme is an output of a collaborative process, which is a kind of process wherein the enterprise portfolio stakeholders are able to work along with portfolio stakeholders to analyze a collection of inputs prior to getting at conclusions.
Following are some common samples of strategic themes:
(1) Create shingle sign-on in the portfolio applications into the internal enterprise apps
(2) Online retailer or lower warehouse costs
(3) Execute operational and product support for securities in FOREX trading (security company)
(4) Demand to a younger demographic or online retailer
(5) Regulate on three (3) software platforms
How Strategic Themes Affect the Portfolio
Vision
Strategic themes are one of those primary inputs into the portfolio vision at the same time plays as elements of Economic Framework, which affects Agile Release Train budgets, Value Streams, individual ART vision, Portfolio Backlog and Roadmap.
 Economic Frameworks – it affects some of the major parameters such as product cost, cycle time or development, risk, product value and development expense
 Value Streams – such theme affect value stream budget that present the spending s well as the personnel allocations needed to build the portfolio vision.
 Vision & Priorities – here, the Product and Solution Management was able to apply such them to affect the roadmap.
 Portfolio Backlog – themes offer decision making filters on the system of Portfolio Kanban thus affecting the portfolio backlog.
Keep in mind that strategic themes are quite essential tool for corresponding strategy to the whole portfolio. It offers a memorable, simple reference frame and at the same time must seep into the thinking of everybody included in Solution delivery.

SAFe: Non-functional requirements

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If there’s any one thing that all projects should have to ensure a successful project outcome, that is a comprehensive and sensible collection of non-functional requirements, aside from functional requirements.
NFR or non-functional requirements is responsible for describing how the system runs. Essentially, it identifies how the system should work and that is a constriction on the behavior of the system. Also, you can think of NFR as a quality attribute of a system. It covers all the remaining necessities which are not comprised by the functional requirements. Instead of specifying specific behaviors, they identify criteria that judge the system’s operation.
What are the typical non-functional requirements?
There are many typical NFR included, some of them include:
• Performance
Requirements on resources required, throughput, static volumetric, utilization, benchmark utilizations, response time or whatever thing that is having to do with performance.
• Precision and accuracy
This refers to the precision and accuracy of the data. However, each one is advisable to become beware of the one hundred percent requirements, as they frequently cost great amount of money.
• Modifiability
This is the requirements about the effort needed to make software changes.
• Reliability
Requirements on how frequent the software fails. Often, the measurement is expressed in mean time between failures (MTBF). The description of the failure should be clear. People also get confuse between reliability and availability, which, in the first place should not because they are quite different types of requirements. Make sure to identify the results of software failure, a strategy to detect error, a correction strategy and how to protect from failure.
• Portability
This is the required effort to move the software into various target platforms. Mostly, the measurement is person-months or percent of elements that need altering.
• Usability
The requirements on how challenging it will be to learn and run the system. Often, the requirements are conveyed in learning time or other similar metrics.
• Security
One or more requirements on system protection and its data. The measurements may be expressed in a range of ways such as time, skill level and effort, among others, to get in the system.
• Integrity
Integrity requirements describe the system’s security attributes, which restricts access to data or feature to particular users as well as protect the privacy of data entered in the software.
• Robustness
A robust system is the one responsible for handling error conditions in a graceful way, with no failure. This includes a forbearance of invalid data, unexpected operating conditions and software detects.
There are other typical NFR included, and some of them are capacity, scalability, availability, maintainability, recoverability, serviceability, environmental, manageability, regulatory and interoperability.
With the increasing demand in this system, more and more companies are trying to get the interest and trust of clients, promising them a high quality service and product. But if you really want total assistance, Scaled Agile Framework is the best partner you can depend on with your non-functional requirements.
SAFe is a freely, online revealed expertise base of credible and proven success patterns when it comes to implementing Lean-Agile systems and software development at company scale. It offers extensive guidance for project at the enterprise Program, Value Stream, Portfolio and Team levels.

SAFe: epic abstract

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Epic Abstract
Epics are considered as containers intended for important initiatives which would help in guiding value streams through larger aim of a portfolio. In doing so, they would drive more of the economic value for a certain enterprise. They are as well considered to be large and commonly crosscutting at the same time crossing numbers of value streams and also ARTs or the Agile Release Trains. They are also investment intensive as well as far ranging in impact like formulation as well as analysis of impact, cost and opportunity as a serious matter. And Epics as well need lightweight business case as well as financial approval prior to implementation. The two types of epics are enabler epics and business epics and are to appear in the value stream, portfolio and program levels.
Portfolio business epics and Enabler epics are considered as the largest epics that would capture that biggest crosscutting initiative which happen in a portfolio. Business epics are to bring business value directly while enabler epics are utilised in order to evolve the Architectural Runway therefore supporting the upcoming business epics. So, epics are captured initially within the Portfolio Kanban and would move into the system under WIP limits or the work-in-process. And this would help in reassuring that the ones doing the work would have some time needed in order to conduct a responsible analysis.
In connection, Kanban system is about helping manage the expectations intended for reasonable scoping as well as time frames intended for implementing the new ideas of a certain business. The final decision as for the actual implementation of every epic would be subjected into the authority of the PPM or Program Portfolio Management. Once resources are available, those decision makers could now choose from the numbers of business opportunities for there would be numbers of analysed epics within the backlog any time. And the epics that are being approved would proceed to Portfolio Backlog, waiting for the implementation capacity.
Epics are indeed the most important initiatives in a portfolio that’s why they should be analysed carefully prior to the implementation. The owners of epic should also take into responsibility for the said important task at the same time the architects of the enterprise would shepherd the enabler epics which support the technical considerations for the business epics. Those most worthy epics would be passed to analysis once space would become available within that queue. And from there, effort as well as economic impact are defined a lot better, cost estimates are as well established, WSJF prioritization would be refined and also lightweight business case will be developed.
Some of the things included in the analysis would be the following:
• Workshops along with business stakeholders for the purpose of describing and understanding the business benefits of the business epic
• Implementing spikes, exploration and research activities through teams
• Define the success criteria for the epic
• Workshops for architects as well as system engineering right from value stream and program levels and to the agile team allowing them to understand the implementation of the impact and effort in recent solutions and also some other related SMEs could be included
• Develop concrete examples in order to resolve certain ambiguities
And the result of the said analysis phase would be a lightweight business case which captures the results of the analysis such as refined description, estimates of time and cost of implementation, success criteria and also program impact.

SAFe: Enterprise Abstract

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Every SAFe portfolio is comprised of a collection of Value Streams and added constructs essential to offer governance and funding for the services, products as well as Solutions, which the Enterprise must fulfill.
Along with those small and medium-sized businesses today, one single SAFe portfolio could generally be utilized to direct the whole technical solution set. On the other hand, to those bigger businesses, normally those along with over 500 to 1,000 technical practitioners, there could be countless portfolios, one for every line of business:
 Smaller Business
One ART, 1 value stream, value stream level not required
 Larger Business
Countless value streams where some comes along with different ART and complete solution context required
 Largest Business
Different SAFe portfolios by which some smaller, some larger
Essential Guidance on How Enterprise Could Communicate and Define
What does a SAFe Portfolio Symbolize?
This portfolio represents the utmost and highest level of issues articulated within SAFe. In addition to that, each program involves primarily a collection of Value Streams, which offer value. The level talks about the constructs necessary, which includes:
(1) Epics
(2) Portfolio Backlog
(3) Lean-Agile Budgeting
(4) Portfolio Kanban System
(5) Program Portfolio Management or PPM, etc.
Nevertheless, bear in mind that every portfolio is present for a one reason and that is to complete or accomplish its contribution in the direction of realizing the whole Enterprise strategy. How could this be done? The answer to that question is very simple. This is accomplished through aligning every vision of the portfolio into the strategy of the enterprise.
The main mechanisms for making this are those value streams, the whole portfolio budget, strategic themes, which correspond to changing strategic intent as well as to the constant feedback using portfolio context.

Know more about Single Enterprise SAFe – Things to Consider
1. Bigger Enterprises Have Countless Instances of SAFe – In order to obtain larger purposes, enterprise would have countless SAFe portfolios, all having its own budget as well as strategic themes that represent that portion of the unit of the business strategy.

2. Portfolio Contexts Updates Enterprise Strategy – Development strategy must have continuous communication, collaboration as well as alignment from and with the downstream portfolios. In a nutshell, this needs complete and full understanding of the portfolio context that involves:

• Qualitative Data which includes weaknesses, strengths, market, threats, opportunities, analysis and accumulated solution as well as business knowledge of portfolio stakeholders.

• Key Performance Indicators that is present on the portfolio in order to present essential feedback into the financial and qualitative measure like market share, innovation counting, customer net promoter score and so much more.

3. Strategy Formulation – Understanding and defining the strategic themes and portfolio budget is one of the important exercises when it comes to strategy formulation.

4. Decentralize Execution – According to the Principle #9 of SAFe, which is Decentralize Decision Making, the creation or formulation of the business strategy is mainly a centralized however collaborative concern that the enterprise fiduciaries as well as key portfolio stakeholders serves as a central role. In addition, execution of the solution strategy, nevertheless, is decentralized into the portfolio and is sustained by constant feedback, transparency, right portfolio metrics and KPIs.

SAFe: enablers

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Enablers
When it comes to software engineering, enablers are the responsible one. Enablers are technical creativities meant to support and allow the development of business initiatives. They satisfy application domain requirements which include cloud infrastructure, big data processing and internet-of-things.
Enablers are highly regarded as work items that bring and capture visibility to any work essential to support delivery and development of future business structures. Primarily, they are used for system, exploration and solution architectural progress, as well as to improve testing and development environments. They are all treated like any other value added growth activities, and are therefore bounded to tracking and visibility, estimating, feedback, WIP limits and result presentation.
What are the types of enablers?
There are many types of enablers, namely:
 Enabler features and capabilities
This occurs at the Program and Value Stream levels, in which they capture project of that kind. They are sharing similar attributes, since these enablers are a kind of capability or feature. The similar attributes they possess include acceptance criteria and benefit statements. Also, they should be structured in order to match in one PI.
 Enabler epics
Enabler epics are an epic kinds. They have a tendency to intersect the PIs and value streams. A lightweight business case should also include to support their application and are discovered and tracked using the portfolio Kanban system.
 Enabler stories
These are a story type, and should conform to iterations. Though they may not necessitate user voice set-up, but they have acceptance measures to clarify the support and requirements testing.
Enablers are follow, prioritized and written the same rules as their corresponding Capabilities, Epics, Stories and Features. For instance, Enabler Features and Features are written through a Benefits and Features matrix, use story estimation points, WSJF for arrangement and have criteria for acceptance.
Managing and Producing Enablers
Most of the enablers are made when business initiatives, which creates their way through various Kanban systems, need examination enablers to validate the solution or need, infrastructure enablers to become prepared to integrate, test and develop the initiatives, as well as architectural enablers to cover the runaway.
Often, system engineering or architects create enablers at different levels, whether by Solution and System Engineering/Architects at the Program and Value Stream Levels or Enterprise Architects at the Portfolio Level. The architects or engineer who builds the enablers steer them with the Kanban systems, which offers the information required to implement and estimate, and guidance required to analyze them.
Some enablers, on the other hand, emerge nearby from the necessities of value streams or professionals to improve the current solution. To help your business, Scaled Agile Framework has created an excellent and superior service suitable to the needs and personal preference of people. You can choose a project you want for your enterprise and let SAFe do the hard work on your behalf.
Whether that is for Value Stream, Program, Portfolio or Team levels, SAFe has the knowledge and expertise to completely do the task assigned to them. Increasingly more large and small enterprises are able to get an excellent business benefits from partnering with SAFe.