Ennova

Agile and Lean

Agile and Lean Enterprise Increasingly organisations are using Agile and Lean to improve the delivery of projects and the operation of existing systems. When combined with effective governance, Agile and Lean provide benefits that include increased business value, reduced risk, greater flexibility and improved transparency.

Ennova offers services to help organisations assess, adopt and improve Agile and Lean.

Agile

Agile foundation Agile is an umbrella term for a collection of values, principles and practices originating from eXtreme Programming, Scrum, Lean and other methodologies. At it's the core, Agile is based on a set of values that were documented as part of the Agile Manifesto over ten years ago. The values include a focus on human-centric methods, working deliverables, customer collaboration and embracing change. In addition, Agile encourages trust, shared responsibility, courage and respect.

Based on these values are a set of principles that are characteristic of an agile process. These principles include:

Agile Principles

    • Frequent delivery of working software
    • Responding to change
    • Technical excellence
    • Customer involvement
    • Process transparency
    • Self organisation
    • Simplicity and emergent design
    • Face to face communication
    • Continuous improvement
    • Sustainable working pace

On top of these principles are an extensive (and growing) set of agile practices. Teams typically select and adapt practices as a way of creating a practical delivery process that fulfils the Agile principles. Key agile practices are listed below with links to short instructional videos developed in collaboration with the Agile Academy:

Agile Practices

Collectively, these practices help teams achieve greater productivity, higher quality, reduced delivery times and lower overall costs. Ennova uses Agile practices internally and has many years of experience selecting and adapting these practices to suit different working environments, technologies and skill-sets. This experience enables Ennova staff to rapidly identify opportunities to apply Agile methods (regardless of work-type), create customised delivery processes and resolve barriers preventing optimal usage.

References

Lean

Lean principles Lean originated as an approach to improving manufacturing systems by focusing on creating value and eliminating waste. Lean has now come to represent a way of thinking and a set of practices that can be applied to almost any work process. There are five basic Lean principles:

Lean Principles

  1. Identify the value from a customer standpoint
  2. Map the steps within the value stream
  3. Create a flow of value toward the customer
  4. Establish a pull of work through the value stream
  5. Seek perfection by continually removing waste

Continuous improvement is fundamental to Lean and is based upon a structured process call Kaizen (meaning change good). Kaizen encourages every employee to participate in removing inefficiencies (waste) and improving quality. Waste (Muda) is considered any activity that a customer would not value because it either does not improve quality or reliability of delivery at the lowest price. Within Lean there are 7 (+1) defined wastes:

7 (+1) Wastes

  1. Overproduction (production greater than required)
  2. Waiting (between process steps)
  3. Unnecessary transport (parts and materials)
  4. Over-processing (higher than required quality)
  5. Excess inventory (raw materials, work-in-progress or product)
  6. Unnecessary movement (people)
  7. Defects (scrap or rework)
  8. Untapped Innovation (employee creativity and ideas)

To assist in identifying and eliminating waste, the Lean methodology provides a set of practices that include:

Lean Practices

    • Pull systems
    • Eliminate waste
    • Value stream mapping
    • Visual controls (Kanban)
    • Stop-the-Line (Jidoka)
    • Build quality in
    • Production levelling (Heijunka)
    • Just-in-Time inventory
    • Limiting Work-in-Progress
    • Cycle time (Cumulative flow)
    • Root cause analysis
    • Go see the real thing (Genchi Genbutsu)

Ennova uses Lean principles and practices to help clients achieve greater productivity, higher quality, reduced delivery times and lower overall costs. When combined with Agile, Lean provides an additional set of practices and approaches that are particularly relevant to operation and maintenance activities.

References

Agile and Lean