Why Look at IT? What Is the Problem?

Lean is a methodology that is focused on the elimination of “waste.” Introducing Lean into an organization that likes to think of themselves as leading-edge innovators and as the masters of efficiency and improvement, like information technology (IT), is often considered to be offensive and demeaning. Any, and probably all, of the resource areas identified as part of the IT world contain waste. Lean is the methodology that identifies the waste and then utilizes a bag of tools to attempt to eliminate this waste. Utilizing Lean principles provides an IT environment that is more efficient and more responsive to the customer and, therefore, more competitive overall. Once programmed and documented, the IT installation team takes the software and implements it at the user location. For far too long IT has been treated as a hands-off organization of techies that bask in the aura of their exclusiveness. Management avoids them because they can effectively “technobabble” their way through most issues.