I've discussed before how "Lean" principles could be applied to IT services. Lean.org has some texts about Lean as applied to services, and there is a LOT of material about Lean in Healthcare--but I haven't seen any material so far about Lean in IT specifically.

Recently I've been reading "Seeing the Whole," a book about getting upstream and downstream companies in your value stream to work together, which has gotten me thinking again about Lean. I've got three things on the mind:

1. request fulfillment seems like IT's "engine," the process by which IT provides much of its value.
2. defects are problems, and ITIL's service lifecycle could learn from Lean's "stopping the production line" when defects are found
3. you must have accountability for all your services

People talking about "Lean" principles can mislead their audience, because often "Lean" to the speaker means something very different (e.g. that "Lean" means holding kaizen improvement sessions, and that's it). So, take what I'm going to say with a bit of salt, because I have no Lean credentials.

In reading about Lean manufacturing (through "Lean Thinking," "Getting the Right Things Done," and now "Learning to See"), I have been working through how Lean concepts might apply to an Information Technology environment. One of Lean manufacturing's focuses is to create pull-based processes that minimize inventory on-hand, for example. By minimizing inventory you free up cash for new things and can respond more quickly to changing demand.

So--how does this relate to IT? Inventory, in a value-stream mapping, is the stuff waiting between groups. The two ITIL processes that seem to relate the best to the inventory concept are incident management and request fulfillment. Here's my thoughts: