Conference Introduction - Day 1

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Why Large Agile Projects Fail: Scaling Practices over Lean Principles

The Agile Manifesto was signed in 2001, Lean Software Development was introduced just two years later, numerous scaling frameworks have been developed in the two decades since, and the DevOps movement has been revolutionizing the way we think about building software. Yet for all the theory, practices, frameworks, and no shortage of expert advice, over 80% of large-scale agile projects fail. This talk will look at some large-scale agile projects that have faced significant challenges despite their best practices, and the key Lean principles that were overlooked in each case. We will explore how following them could have saved those projects - or in some of them, still can - and help you identify what your own struggling project could still be missing to succeed.

Fixing the Contracting Problem – Lean in Law

Radiant Law is at the forefront of accelerating commercial contracting, upending the standard practice of law firms, which bill by the hour. In contrast, Radiant Law’s billing is per matter drafted. This demands a dramatic change to the business model, putting the elimination of waste firmly with Radiant. Founded eleven years’ ago by Alex, continuous improvement carries equal weight with quality. Clients operate globally with exacting speed-of-response requirements – a challenge fueling Radiant’s lean journey.

Lean IT Product Development: Learning Fast to Design the Right Digital Product

As everyone will have seen, the probability of failure of an IT project is directly correlated with its size. Many river projects have ended up being abandoned after two, four or seven years of hard work, shortened nights and tens of burnouts, even hundreds of millions of euros. "Too big to succeed".

These painful failures are always the consequence of a flawed preparation during the upstream study phase of product. Creating the wrong product is after all the worst possible form of waste.

What key problem does the product intend to solve?

What is the real current context in which the product operates within? What features are most critical?

Lean Digital engineering provides a key supportive tool applied to IT Product before rushing to foggy future.

Applying Lean Thinking to Mobility

Toyota is shifting toward a "mobility company" in what they call a "once-in-a-century period of profound transformation.” In his talk, Dave Brunt discusses how Toyota dealers can use Lean Thinking and the Toyota Way to enact this Toyota’s strategy. Drawing upon The Lean Enterprise Academy’s research with a number of Toyota dealers the discussion highlights the use of lean thinking in sales and service, how the best dealers are using The Lean Transformation framework to expose and close their gaps and the challenges dealers face in the transition.

Why Lean Is the Right Way to Scale Agile

When the agile manifesto was published in 2001, a wave of enthusiasm took over the developer community. Finally a decent, human-centered approach to development, full of common sense to replace the construction-inspired bureaucratic processes that were the state of the art at the time. But as the development community became more professional and the size of digital projects grew, bureaucracy came back. And this time with agile in its name.

How can we fight back against bureaucracy and bring back the enthusiasm of the early days, even at scale? Using our 12 years of experience pioneering agile, DevOps and lean on hundreds of successful software products, I will bring you back to the core DNA of the agile manifesto. And look at what research tells us on how we can scale it.

There is no silver bullet against bureaucracy... but lean combines 70 years worth of research on the topic of scaling while keeping the Big Company Disease away. This is the story of how we experimented with lean in software development to successfully scale the agile manifesto over the last ten years.

Using a Lean Approach to Manage Patient Flow in a Hospital

Hospitals serve an important need and use scarce and valuable resources. Yet many hospitals perform poorly, under-utilizing key facilities such as operating rooms, offering poor access to patients with urgent needs and keeping patients in hospital longer than required or discharging them before they are fit. A vital element of managing a hospital is patient flow: who is admitted, how interventions are scheduled, how the patient progresses form one stage of treatment to the next and how discharge is managed. In summary, how resource and loading are balanced across the system. Yet in many hospitals this process is not managed actively as the staff lack the both the awareness and necessary skills. Lean thinking can help but simple solutions do not work in complex environments. Peter Willats will talk about his experience of redesigning patient flow in a leading London hospital using a combination of advanced lean techniques and data analytics.

PANEL DISCUSSION
The Maturity of IT with Lean Thinking and Practices

It has been now over 20 years since application of lean principles and thinking went beyond the manufacturing industry. Multiple books influenced the IT industry to start utilizing some of the lean best practices. Still, does the IT industry understand and apply lean in the right way and to the right extend?

PANEL DISCUSSION
Application of Lean in Different Service Areas. Limitations and Ways to Adapt

After some good examples of lean application in Legal, Healthcare and Sales we will explore the possibilities to introduce those practices also to other services - which ones are more challenging, which ones are evolving and which ones are well established.

Lean for Robot-Run Business Processes

We look at how business processes would be 5 or 10 years from now. Will robots (Digital workers) be running lot of business processes? How will Robots and Humans collaborate? How would Lean contribute? How do you prepare for robotization of a process? Do you standardize first or automate first? How do you measure, analyze and continuously improve robot run processes? Can robots become self-improving?

How Does Lean Six-Sigma Prepare You for the Future of Work

LSS helps us develop crucial skills and mindset for the Future of Work. This presentation will share how the LSS methodology may help us better meet the requirements of the new business environment, improve our wellbeing, and achieve higher personal satisfaction. The approach has been tested in global business services organizations and the best practices come from LSS Belts from around the world.

Digital Revolution: The Right Answer to the Wrong Problem

Much is said about the application of agility in the digital transformations of companies, they all want to be connected in the most modern way, deploying Chatbots filled with artificial intelligence, Robotization for greater productivity and a lot of Big Data for strategic decision making. Vanity metrics make up the recognition of success, often masking the real situation experienced by customers. The main element of any successful lean journey is the alignment of purpose with deliveries of the value connected to the needs of your client. The customer experience is something individual and their journey as a protagonist in the value stream, designed by the company, should be with minimal waste from their own perspective. When we are thinking lean, being agile and using technology as a means, a true digital transformation takes place.

Extended Value Stream in Healthcare

The Instituto de Oncologia do Vale (IOV) have been practicing lean since 2008 enhancing its own value stream, in hospitals that we are involved with and few other partner organizations. Since 2018 we are co-leading an initiative from the Healthcare Authority of Sao Jose dos Campos – a 720 thousand inhabitants’ town in Brazil –to design and support a lean program to the healthcare system. From the Hoshin Kanri to the cancer, hypertension and diabetes value stream; we are involved in several of these initiatives that are improving the quality of life and care, and saving millions in resources to our population, fully reinvested in healthcare. We will present some of these initiatives, major results, and the strategy adopted to spread and develop leaders throughout the system.

The Great Enemy of Innovation

In the corporate world the big question is: how should companies react to this digital storm that is just beginning? Right now, to react is to transform. And it's about technology but it's also about radical changes in two interlinked matters: strategy and leadership model. In an unstable and fearful business universe, courageous leaders bet on innovation and do not follow the primer that success comes out of nowhere, without crises, learnings and adaptations.

How to Develop Strong Leaders by Applying Lean Principles

Leadership is and has always been one of the key success factors of every lean initiative. After many years of lean transformation activities, it became evident that sustainability of lean improvements cannot be achieved without efficient management system and right leader behaviors. Basically, selecting and developing the right leaders becomes more critical than ever. And even though many techniques are being introduced as core of lean, lean is above all a human development system.
In this presentation you will learn some hints on how to select and develop leaders as a part of a lean management system. Knowing is not sufficient to get the desired outputs unless you apply the knowledge daily. And daily application of lean, means that it should be part of your behavior. And how can we change the behaviors?

PANEL DISCUSSION
Lean and Automation - Competing for Improvement or Supporting Each Other?

We will dive into the positive and negative sides of automation before applying lean process improvement practices. We will also highlight where lean fully supports automation and actually enables the value flow.

PANEL DISCUSSION
How to Develop True Leaders No Matter the Industry

In this panel we will discuss examples of organizations where the leadership fully supported for quick transformation and what happens when the transformation is left only to the employees. We will talk about the role of leaders in services vs manufacturing or IT industries. Same expectations or different approach is required?