YouTube Resource: Microsoft's next CEO - Who is Satya Nadella?

Today, Microsoft announced its next CEO, Satya Nadella. He becomes the third leader in the company's 38 year history, replacing Steve Ballmer. The video below is an interview Microsoft posted today on its website as interviewed by Microsoft's Steve Clayton.

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Webinar: Introduction to Lean Concepts - A Quick Primer Part 1

Today, I am kicking off on my blog a mini series on Lean Concepts. Recently, I have been asked to prepare such a webinar by some of my blog readers and my subscribers at my other website ShabanaWollin.com. Hence, I have prepared the 1st episode in a series of 3. It is my hope that you find it useful and that it gives you enough basic knowledge to follow along with the subsequent episodes with ease. As always, I welcome your feedback by posting in the comments below.

Watch this Introduction to Lean Concepts - A Quick Primer Part 1 by Shabana Wollin, PMP, Six Sigma Black Belt

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How a Commercial Photography Studio Successfully Applied Lean Principles to Tackle Waste: Part 2 of 2

In the Part 1 of this series, I introduced you to the basic lean principles and the three (3) major categories of waste and the seven (7) wastes. Today, we will look at how one organization successfully was able to implement lean and identify some of these categories of waste. Set production in the photo studio has multiple sub processes, but for the purposes of this blog post, I will illustrate the painting process. A photography studio for a large retailer is a very fast paced environment with many moving parts and lots of people and equipment involved. Multiple activities are occurring in parallel and it is almost is like a fine tuned orchestra.

The roles that you will find most commonly across many studios are:

·         photographers

·         art directors

·         photo assistants & lead assistant

·         lighting technicians

·         digital technicians

·         studio managers

·         models

·         hair & makeup artists

·         project managers.

There is a lot of workflow, many pieces of equipment and numerous processes. Everyone seems to understand what their role is, and how they work together to produce the end result. It is just amazing for an outsider looking inside.

The areas of improvement that the photography studio management wanted to focus on were:

i) efficiency in resource (people & equipment) utilization

ii) increase production capacity and

iii) avoid costly rework. In a photography studio, rework usually means a re-shoot or re-do of a photo shoot, which has a huge domino effect on multiple processes and a huge one is always cost.

iv)lack of consistency in process understanding

 Once the above areas were identified, the process areas responsible began their lean journey to address them. The following were some of the lean tools and how they were utilized in this scenario:

1) Value Stream Mapping: As a first step, the process owners for each of the processes were identified and documented. A value stream mapping workshop was facilitated under the guidance of a Black Belt for the process owners to understand how each of their processes pushed and pulled from one another. The value stream mapping also helped to eliminate any non-value added steps.

2) 5S: The next step was to use 5S to organize the work areas. The results from this tool were almost immediate.

 3)Identify & Eliminate Muda: Once this exercise was complete, the process owners were able to go back to their areas and identify the waste. As a result of this exercise the painting process owner was able to identify the following areas of waste in the photo studio:

a)Rework: a set that has been painted in the wrong color, lighting is incorrect due to lack of a diagram, lack of instructions to the photographer on the look for photo shoot, a product shot on the wrong background, and differing perceptions on final look by art directors.

b)Over processing: retouching an look or image more than required, gold plating, and over planning a photo shoot

c)Overproduction: doing multiple photo shoots with multiple looks that might not always be needed or required, done for insurance in case it may be needed, maximizing on the availability of a high-end model that might not be available to come back for a re-shoot, etc.

d)Waiting: lots of time lost waiting for a process to complete, people waiting for other people or people waiting on equipment

e) Motion: Photographers having to move (walk) to various photo "bays" for shoots that are not necessarily close by or props that are not readily available on the current photo set. Equipment that has to be moved from one bay to the next for subsequent photo shoots.

f)Inventory: Backgrounds for photo sets, paint, props, accessories, and other camera equipment that might be used just for one photo shoot.

4) Muri: People that were not required to be present at meetings, unnecessary overtime, lack of creativity

The next step for this group is to address the above areas by applying some of the tools available and track their progress. Currently the leadership team has adopted a daily morning team Gemba walk that helps them check on the progress and study areas for further improvement. 

I shall continue to remain in touch with the process owners at this organization to learn about their progress on their lean journey. If you have any comments or questions on this article, please leave them in the comments section below or feel free to email me.

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5 Aspects of a Holistic Service Design in IT Service Management

This is probably not the first time you have heard the word 'holistic'.  Have you pondered over the thought of what is the actual meaning of the word holistic and why it is used so much in the IT world these days? Well, this blog post will help shed some light on this topic. Miriam's Webster Dictionary defines holistic as : relating to or concerned with wholes or with complete systems rather than with the analysis of, treatment of, or dissection into parts.

Holistic medicine concerns with approaching treatment to the whole body rather than just treating the symptoms of an existing condition. Similarly, when approaching service design, we must take a complete, big picture perspective of the overall service that is being designed. It should not be done in isolation, the impact on the entire service, its management, tools, systems and architectures, other supporting processes and metrics should also be considered. 

A holistic approach to Service Design takes into consideration the 5 key aspects within all its process activities. It ensures that consistency and integration within all IT activities and processes are achieved both in function and quality.

The 5 key aspects to a holistic approach in service design are:

1) Gathering Service requirements for new and/or changed services: Requirements for new or changed services can be elicited through requirements analysis or extracted from an organization's service portfolio. Each requirement needs to be carefully evaluated, documented and agreed upon, so that the design document can be constructed.  This design document can then be compared to the strategy and constraints of the IT's service strategy to ensure that it is conforming to existing policies. Also, it must ensure that the new or changed service is easily integrated with the existing services and other underpinning services that support it.

2) Leveraging Information management tools like service portfolio and service catalog: The existing management tools must be closely evaluated to ensure that they are capable of supporting the new or changed service. Some of the key management systems in a service oriented organization are its service portfolio and catalog. These reside within the Service Knowledge Management System (SKMS) and contain details on the design of the service, technology architectures and measurement methods & metrics.

3)Integration with Enterprise technology architectures and management architectures: Any new or changed service needs to be aligned with the organization's existing technology and management architecture to remain consistent and to ensure that the service is operable within the constraints of the existing architecture. If not, then either the architectures would need to be updated or the service's design would require modification to be successful.

4)Discovery of the processes required: As with any new or changed service, there is impact to roles, responsibilities and skills of individuals involved. Existing processes need to be reviewed to ensure that the new or changed process is not creating a major impact on how they function. If it is, steps need to be taken to educate personnel in their changing roles and processes need to be updated to accomodate for the new or updated service. This includes all service management processes, not just the one process in question.

5) Measurement metrics and methods: This is an often overlooked aspect when new or changed services are introduced. Existing measurements methods and metrics need to be reviewed and updated so that the new or changed service can be accurately measured and tracked. This might not be required if the change to an existing service is minor or does not impact the measurement metrics.

Considering the above 5 key aspects during the service design phase ensures that the new or changed service is integrated into the existing environment consistently and with minimal impact to the user.  ITIL's foundational principle is about IT as a service organization focusing on the business processes it supports and the value that the business receives or realizes as a result of its service. Hence, as a result of this model, the impact of technology on the business and how a business change may impact IT can both be predicted and measured. Adoption of a holistic approach to service design ensures that all aspects of the organization are considered and included within all new or changed services. 

Do you currently practice a holistic approach to service design in your organization or have an example of an approach that has worked for you in your organization? I would love to hear it! Please share your experiences in the comments section below.

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TED Talk Resource: Sugata Mitra- The child-driven education | Video on TED.com

Prof. Sugata Mitra is a Professor of Educational Technology at the School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences at the Newcastle University, United Kingdom. He is the founder of the "Hole in the Wall (HIW)" experiment, where in the year 1999 a computer was placed in a kiosk created within a wall in an Indian slum in New Delhi and the children were allowed to freely use it. The experiment aimed at proving that kids could be taught to use computers very easily without any formal training. Prof. Sugata Mitra aptly termed this methodology "Minimally Invasive Education (MIE)". His interests include: Education, Remote Presence, Self organizing systems, Cognitive systems & Physics & Consciousness. The video below is from a recent talk Prof. Mitra presented at TED Global 2010.

Sugata Mitra: The child-driven education Video on TED.com

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