Agile principles outside of IT?

[Ben]

Does anyone know of any orgs using agile principles outside of IT to
manage their company?

[Mike Danko]

I'd pushed in the past to get this accomplished on the operations side
of our house for a while, but with little success. The concept of
process seems lost on a lot of people, and when it's not, people tend
to hang on to their own.

Maybe in addition to your question, I'd be interested in knowing how
people have effected process.

On Tue, May 8, 2012 at 9:21 AM, Ben <benbla...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Does anyone know of any orgs using agile principles outside of IT to
> manage their company?
>

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[Ben Blanquera]

Michael,


There's a overlap between lean and agile in how some of the practices and
there's a long history of operations folks using lean principlesŠyou can
walk into most modern mfg plants and see the practices in play..

I'd like to better understand your question regarding how people have
affected the process. Can you clarify?


Best Regards,
Ben


Ben Blanquera
(614) 467-0236



http://www.linkedin.com/in/benblanquera


The information conveyed in this message is considered confidential

[Jon Hogue]

The agile term is so overloaded, it's hard to answer a question like
this. I've seen some extremely rigid "agile" processes in I.T. in
Columbus.

Ask 10 random people in IT what agile means, and I suspect you will
get 10 different answers. Ask that question outside if IT, and you
will get less diversity.

So, I think you have to be more specific.

Sent from my iPhone

On May 8, 2012, at 9:21 AM, Ben <benbla...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Does anyone know of any orgs using agile principles outside of IT to
> manage their company?
>

[Ken Barker]

We should be getting 10 different answers.  The point isn't to do what others are doing.  The point is to build in feedback and continual improvement in our processes. 

Ben, we try to be agile (lowercase) in our operations, but most of our ops are project and app development and delivery.

Ken

--
Ken Barker
614.403.7044

[Jon Hogue]

definition #1

"The point isn't to do what others are doing.  The point is to build in feedback and continual improvement in our processes.". 

Sent from my iPhone

[Joe OBrien]

Ben,

I've seen and heard lots of examples of this, but usually under the lean flag, not agile.

As Ken said, EdgeCase has always been founded on the principles of lean:
- iterative execution, measurement and correction
- collaboration
- shortest possible feedback cycle

I was having a conversation with a guy from CarMax recently about how much they embrace the Toyota philosophy and lean principles. Very interesting insights.

-Joe

[Jonathan Hogue]

Just sold a car to carmax yesterday :-) That company impresses me, and
I'm happy every time I do business with them. It's interesting how all
of their forms have bar codes on them, then they scan every sheet of
paperwork into their system.

I wouldn't be surprised if Rave Cinemas in Grove City has a lean
culture, too. Their customer service and general customer experience
is impressive, especially for a movie theatre. Carnival cruises is
another good example. All raises, bonuses, promotions there are based
off customer feedback.

Lean seems to have a more consistent meaning for people.

2 examples of "agile" processes I've witnessed in Columbus.

1) New management brought in "agile" experts. There were iterations,
story boards, daily 1 hour stand-ups, backlogs, etc. The focus was on
getting pretty graphs out of a complicated "agile" tool, by having all
the devs spend considerable time updating it and talking about it in
the long daily stand-ups. Most of the feedback in the retros was
ignored, and the process never deviated much from the "scrum master's"
vision.

2) At a different place, in the name of agile, they discarded all the
cubes (which I used to hate but now miss), and put in very compact
furniture (which saved this company tons of money on real estate). We
did a daily stand-up, had iterations, wall cards, etc. They even put
in this "anonymous feedback whiteboard" near the elevators.

Some commented that there was a policy about start times, but certain
people seemed to never follow it. The discussion continued for a
couple of days. Some arguing that the start time policy was dumb any
way. Others that it was unfair for unequal enforcement etc. Resulted
in the manager "anonymously" lecturing the board participants about
not being so negative at work. (policy was never changed, and uneven
enforcement continued. anonymous wall board was never used by anyone
for feedback again.)

Leadership at both of these companies claimed they were "agile",
although, I'm sure they would claim the other shop is not.

[Scott Preston]

Software Development is a "game". Usually a game against time maximizing utility at some cost either variable or fixed. Agile is a type-of strategy employed in the software development "game". Points, Story Cards, Burn Downs... It's funny how much it really looks like a game. 

I think what you'll find is that some companies excel at collaborative games, which share some strategies practiced in the "agile game", some companies are equally competitive employing other strategies. 

Cheers,
Scott

[Jonathan Hogue]

definition #2 :-)

[Isaac B Sanders]

I think Agile takes away the power that people have when they have more information than you. If your management can handle sharing at that level, then the agile implementation seems to go better, and everyone can perform better. If Agile becomes another vehicle for process, then people will grow a resentment.

Following a strict definition of Agile seems to be the anti-thesis of what Agile wanted to accomplish.

On Tue, May 8, 2012 at 1:51 PM, Jonathan Hogue <j...@hogue.org> wrote:

definition #2 :-)

>  Agile is a type-of strategy employed in the software development "game". Points, Story Cards, Burn Downs...

[Ray Trask]

Check out http://fisher.osu.edu/centers/coe for all sorts of local companies looking at lean in more areas than just IT.

[James Bender]

We've been using agile to run all aspects of our business (including
marketing, accounting, recruiting and sales). We've been very
successful with it and "living it" has helped create a culture at our
company where I think I can safely say that everyone, no matter their
position or job function understand and value agile principals.

James