Before Agile, better Lean

Before the new, let’s eliminate the old and improve the day to day.

Lean is related to waste elimination and continuous improvement (Kaizen). It is the predecessor of agile, and they are closely related as philosophies, both in terms of values ​​and principles. However, when put into practice and application, they can have a different meaning: Lean directly addresses improving daily operations, transforming Business as Usual. Agile focuses on developing projects.

I like to use the metaphor of approaching transformations like a house we want to fix up: Lean would focus on removing and cleaning out everything that doesn’t generate value (old furniture, unnecessary objects, obsolete papers, etc.) and organizing, so that your daily life is efficient and simple. Agile would be equivalent to that project of buying new things to make your new home more modern, comfortable, and therefore more adapted to our current needs. If you wanted to transform your home: where would you start? Would you buy new objects? Or would you start by eliminating what you don’t use, cleaning, and organizing? You probably resonate with the idea that it makes “more sense” to clean first.

But why does it seem like organizations don’t take the time to eliminate waste, optimize resources, and organize their daily routines? Why do we want to jump straight to the new without eliminating the old? I see many organizations where the general situation is one of excessive bureaucracy, processes that don’t generate value, work overload, full schedules, stress, and a lack of productivity. This is equivalent to having a house full of unnecessary things and implies that the operation isn’t productive enough.

When you have too many things and buy new ones, you don’t have enough space to store them, creating more clutter! And yes, that new pan you bought may be amazing, but adding it to your other 7 unused pans means, for example:

• You increase the time it takes to get your pan (because you have to search through more pans)
• You increase the likelihood of dust accumulation
• You generate the opportunity cost of making room for another gadget you’d use more often
• You might have a pan that was given to you as a gift and never used, but because you have so many other things, you forgot about its existence. Maybe you never should have bought the pan.
• You might find yourself dragged down by inertia and attachment to your “favorite old pan,” which you continue to use all the time and not prioritizing your new pan (which cost you so much).
• Among other possible side effects.

I support organizations’ willingness to experiment with agile, but they must be aware that this effort requires resources and capabilities that, if teams don’t have available, can lead to these new agile projects creating more pressure and stress (no matter how exciting they may be). It’s in these situations that I recommend, at least initially, working with a Lean philosophy to “clean up and lighten the house”: eliminating what doesn’t generate value, eliminating bureaucracy, freeing up space, reducing meeting times, visualizing work, mitigating bottlenecks, considering small, low-cost improvements that can be implemented immediately, organizing virtual and physical spaces, laying the foundation for an experimental mindset, and streamlining the workflow.

Once you have your home sufficiently optimized, you can ask yourself questions like, “Do I have everything I need, or do I need something new?” And then, by looking at your actual capacity and current needs, you can move forward with acquiring all the new elements you need.

Want more reasons to start with Lean?

• In line with the above, Lean explicitly focuses on efficiency and productivity, elements that have been repeatedly challenged in recent months: overloaded schedules, stress, multitasking, and a sense of disorganization abound. Agile, of course, focuses on productivity, but its explicit purpose is adaptability.
• Lean has a strong focus on optimizing daily operations, that “day-to-day life that overwhelms us.” Thus, it can be done immediately. It doesn’t require pilot projects or formal authorizations to test its practices. Yes, we know that Scrum (well executed) produces good results, but in practice, starting and sustaining purely agile projects requires considerable effort.
• Lean offers methods that don’t require structural changes. Agile frameworks like Scrum are great, but they require defining roles, changing work teams, etc. Kanban, which derives from Lean, gives us a lot of flexibility in making it a reality and can even be adopted at the individual level.
• Lean offers methods that don’t require structural changes. Agile frameworks like Scrum are great, but they require defining roles, changing work teams, etc. Kanban, which derives from Lean, gives us a lot of flexibility in making it a reality and can even be adopted at the individual level.
• Lean explicitly emphasizes the need for continuous improvement in the work system by making small, sustainable changes. Agile also seeks improvement, but it doesn’t explicitly encourage very low-cost improvements in day-to-day operations. Furthermore, proposing small changes allows people to be involved, connecting directly with their work.

In my opinion, I always recommend taking a Lean-Agile approach, but always including Lean, because Lean explicitly reminds us to constantly eliminate what doesn’t generate value and to continually improve: we’ve grown accustomed to being impulsive and “buying” things/ideas we like; but we haven’t grown accustomed to letting go. Reflections like: What can I get rid of? What can I let go of to make room for the new? are increasingly necessary, and Lean invites us to do so.

Finally, I believe the most successful agile adoptions are those that, along with improving product delivery, manage to make the day-to-day operations of Business as Usual more efficient. Because agile project management is worthless if the day-to-day operations aren’t, at their core, agile.

Want to learn more? Sign up for a Lean course.

– Claudia Salas