SOFTWARE COMPANY AND SOFTWARE PRODUCT MANAGEMENT FROM TARIGO
Chronicles of Craft: “Kaizen” means good change in Japanese. Continuous improvement gives you an unfair advantage. It can beat strategy and it’s free.
Today’s Chronicle: Japanese continuous improvement programmes are now more powerful than ever. Staff are more engaged and happier. Quality, cost and time all improve at the same time. Learn from the East. The winners use Kaizen.
by Stephen Allott, Chairman of Tarigo Product Management Training, Honorary Member of the University of Cambridge Department of Computer Science and Technology
THIS CHRONICLE GIVES YOU THREE INSTANT USE CASES
Improve Product Quality
Reduce Defect Rates
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Run Meetings Better
KAIZEN ! QUALITY IS FREE
Follow these nine steps today
- Make asking for improvement ideas a normal part of everyday life. Make it continuous.
- Get improvement ideas from everyone and any one. Ask all staff members from top to bottom, not just the bosses and specialists. Make Kaizen the job of everyone.
- Work teams in Japanese car plants post their improvement ideas on the wall. Like a column chart. Then they compete to see which team can create the most ideas.
- When brainstorming, separate idea generation from idea evaluation. Write every single idea onto the whiteboard, flip chart or Post It note. People have to be able to see that their idea has been recorded. Make the rule that idea evaluation comes later. Once idea generation has been completed and everyone’s ideas are in front of the group, evaluation can start. This process rule is essential so that every idea survives rather than being strangled at birth. Ideas are easiest to kill when they are new born babies.
- Measure quality systematically and scientifically. Define quality as conformance with a supplier specification.
- Log non-conformances as “defects”.
- Count the number and types of defects. Count how many defects your company tolerates.
- To start improvement, pick an important area with high defect rates. Appoint a team or team(s) to eliminate the root causes of defects and install fail safe processes. Step into the world of Zero Defect. Say “Hello Quality.”
- There are 3 dimensions of improvement and they generally improve at the same time. Cost, Quality and Time support each other. Better quality is delivered fastest and at lowest cost. There is no trade-off between Cost and Quality, generally. Quality is Free.
- Enjoy watching your company performance improve.
GO LIVE IN A DAY
I was doing consulting for one of my best clients in Ad Tech. Winning a new customer was hard enough but it was taking 43 days on average to go live and generate revenue. Inspired by all those Japanese miracle stories of improvement, I set the team the goal to Go Live in a Day. Here is a copy of the slide from the project kickoff meeting.
It was complicated with many dependencies.
And we delivered our goal.
HOW TO RUN MEETINGS BETTER WITH KAIZEN
Learn something valuable and new every day.
Quality is free
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