Agile and lean are two important concepts that pervaded the organizations in the past 20-30 years, though they continue to have little effect on organizations’ operations.
Agile is rooted in the need to respond promptly to the changing needs of an organization. The agile philosophy was primarily groomed in Software Development to reconcile the changing customer requirements with disciplined project execution, however it can be applied to an organization’s processes as well. An agile process is in general a process designed to deliver the intended results in an effective and efficient manner by addressing promptly the changing requirements in customers’ needs.
Lean is a systematic method for the minimization of waste, rooted as philosophy in manufacturing. The lean mindset attempts removing the non-value-added activities from processes because they bring no value for the customers. Thus a lean process is a process designed to deliver the intended results in an effective and efficient manner by focusing on the immediate needs of the customers, what customers want and value (when they want it).
Effective means being successful in producing a desired or intended result, while efficient means achieving maximum productivity with minimum wasted effort or expense. The requirement for a process to be effective and efficient is translated in delivering what’s intended by using a minimum of steps designed in such a way that the quality of the end results is not affected, at least not for the essential characteristics. Efficiency is translated also in the fact that the information, material and resources’ flow suffer minimal delays.
Agile focuses in answering promptly the changing requirements in customers’ needs, while lean focuses on what customers wants and value while eliminating waste. Both mindsets seem to imply iterative and adaptive approaches in which the improvement happens gradually. Through their nature the two mindsets seem to complete each other. Some even equate agile with lean however an agile process is not necessarily lean and vice-versa.
To improve the effectiveness and efficiency of its operations an organization should aim developing processes that are agile and lean to optimize the information and material flows, while focusing on its users’ changing needs, and while eliminating continuously the activities that lead to waste. And waste can take so many forms – the unnecessary bureaucracy reflected in multiple and repetitive sign-offs and approvals, the lack of empowerment, not knowing what to do, etc.
There’s important time wasted just because the users don’t know or don’t understand an organization’s processes. If an organization can’t find rules that everyone understands then a process is doomed, independently of the key area the process belongs to. There’s also the tendency of attempting to address each exception within a process to the degree that multiple processes result. There’s no perfect process, however one can define the basic flow and document the main exceptions, while providing users some guidelines in navigating the unknown and unpredictable.
As part of same tendency it makes sense to move requests that respect a standard procedure on the list of standard requests instead of following futile steps just for the sake of it. It’s the case of requests that can be fulfilled with internal resources, e.g. the development of reports or extraction of data, provisioning of SharePoint websites, some performance optimizations, etc. In addition, one can unify processes that seem to be disconnected, e.g. the handling of changes as part of the Change Management respectively Project Management as they involve almost the same steps.
Probably it's in each organization’s interest to discover and explore the benefits of applying the agile and lean mindsets to its operation and integrate them in its culture
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