InfoQ Homepage Continuous Improvement Content on InfoQ
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Applying Hoshin Kanri at Toyota
Toyota uses Hoshin Kanri to give direction on where they want to improve using Lean IT. Employees at various levels can exchange ideas about Hoshin items, and potentially get them approved by higher management. This approach makes results stronger and increases buy- in from the employees who contribute upfront.
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Lean and Agile Culture at the Finnish Broadcasting Company Yle
Scaling lean and agile is not a question of frameworks, it's about values, principles and mindset. At Yle the company management has been involved in the agile transformation by carrying out experiments, learning and doing; not by implementing frameworks. Magic happens when you work together with people in teams on all levels.
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Driving Improvements with Lean Pilots
Lean, agile and Lean Startup can strengthen each other for driving improvement. Lean Pilots, a data-driven improvement framework for removing major cross-functional organizational impediments, has been used to drive internal continuous improvement.
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Organizing Improvements with Lean Leadership at ING Bank
It’s the manager’s job to organize improvements and to make sure that real learnings take place. For real learnings you must accept the unknown and move outside of your knowledge boundary. Agile, lean and continuous delivery help to boost your learning capabilities.
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Overcoming Self-Imposed Limitations
People can feel limited when challenged, which slows them down or keeps them from trying. It can be a real problem, but their fear might actually be in their imagination. Sometimes the only thing that's holding you back is yourself. Survival rules can hinder us- sometimes you have to break them.
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Experimenting with Peer Feedback in Tech Teams
Feedback can be used to build trust in teams and help individuals improve their skills and grow in their craft. Emily Page and Doug Talbot shared their experiences from experimenting with peer feedback at Ocado Technology at Spark the Change London 2016. An interview with Emily Page, Organizational Catalyst at Ocado Technology.
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Increase Learning with 10% Autonomy Time
Giving teams autonomy to spend 10% of their time for learning reduces delivery time, increases quality, and increases motivation. The 10% rule gives teams full autonomy to work on things they consider important. It results in freeing up people's creativity and letting teams grow their potential.
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Don't Copy the Spotify Model
The Spotify model can help you to understand how things are done at Spotify, but you shouldn’t copy it in your own organization. It changes all the time as people at Spotify learn and discover new things. There is no one way in which software is developed at Spotify.
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Continuous Improvement Beyond Retrospectives
If you want continuous improvement you can start with retrospectives, but you must go far beyond that with change management, culture change, and innovation. The most important thing in order to make change happen in organizations is creating new habits and changing your culture.
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Getting the Data Needed for Data Science
Data science is about the data that you need; deciding which data to collect, create, or keep is fundamental argues Lukas Vermeer, an experienced Data Science professional and Product Owner for Experimentation at Booking.com. True innovation starts with asking big questions, then it becomes apparent which data is needed to find the answers you seek.
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Marketing Communications Chapter by Agile Consortium
The Agile Consortium has launched the MarComs chapter which aims to exchange knowledge on agile among marketing and communication professionals. InfoQ interviewed Jeremy Curtin, one of the founders and chair of this initiative.
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Applying Feedback Techniques
Dan North talked about models and techniques for giving and receiving feedback and how to apply them effectively at the QCon London 2016 conference.
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Moving Fast at Scale
Jez Humble talked about organizational obstacles to moving fast at scale and how to address them at the GOTO Berlin 2015 conference. InfoQ interviewed him about how we can focus on value, why having a shared understanding of an artifact can be very valuable, removing waste and discovering the needs of customers quickly with low costs, and how to use the concept of improvement kata.
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Human Refactoring: Applying Refactoring to Your Life
Bryan Beecham gave a keynote about Human Refactoring at the Agile Testing Days 2015. InfoQ interviewed him about how Human Refactoring can help us to improve our lives, how it relates to refactoring code, why he considers eating healthy food to be important, how agile teams can benefit from human refactoring, and where people can find more information about self improvement and individual growth.
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Agile and Lean Adoption in Greece
Small and medium sized companies have adopted the agile way of working in Greece and there are few examples of agile in larger organizations, interest in agile from the local industry is growing. Among the topic discussed in agile meetups are whether companies should implement Scrum or Kanban, Scrum for startups, dealing with fixed price and scope contracts, productivity, and happiness in teams.