Have you ever questioned the assumptions that inspire your marketing? Have you asked yourself whether there is a better way to make your marketing more effective? I believe there is a tremendous amount that marketers can learn from Lean Development process.

Dr. Robert Charente of ITABHI Corporation developed the principles of lean development (LD) in the early 1990’s as not only a strategic as well as tactical business approach for the creation of change-tolerant business software intensive systems, systems that can rapidly adapt to or help in the creation of business change. He sets these lofty targets in his developments:

• 1/3 the human effort
• 1/3 the development hours
• 1/3 the time
• 1/3 the investment in tools and methods
• 1/3 the effort to adapt to a new market environment

Why the 1/3 targets? These goals are meant to challenge status quo thinking. Without audacious goals, ones that seem impossible to reach business managers won’t bother to think about the issues of software development in entirely different ways.

Could your marketing achieve 1/3 targets? Could you achieve them while providing more value to the customer? Can you think about your marketing in a totally different way?

Bob Charente expanded the thoughts of Lean Development to these 12 principles:

1. Satisfying the customer is the highest priority.
2. Always provide the best value for the money.
3. Success depends on active customer participation.
4. Every LD project is a team effort.
5. Everything is changeable.
6. Domain, not point, solutions.
7. Complete, don’t construct.
8. An 80 percent solution today instead of 100 percent solution tomorrow.
9. Minimalism is essential.
10. Needs determine technology.
11. Product growth is feature growth, not size growth.
12. Never push LD beyond its limits.

You can read an expanded version of these 12 principles on the ITABHI Corporation website.

Lean Development focuses on the creation of change-tolerant software. Setting up this model for marketing could be quite interesting. How flexible, how change- tolerant is your marketing? Why are you marketing the way you do? Is it the way that your customer wants you too?

Photo Credit by hanneorla

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Mike Osterling was the guest on the Business901 Podcast and this Ebook is a transcription of our recent podcast. After listening to the podcast, I was disappointed thinking that I let Mike down in the interview by not drilling down enough with the questions. After reviewing and editing the Ebook, I think Mike’s knowledge of Kaizen and White-Collar Kaizen was one of the most useful e-books that I have produced. Mike did an extraordinarily good job!

Mike has a new website up and running to start the new year: http://mosterling.com.

Kaizen in the Office Environment –

Mike is also the co-author of The Kaizen Event Planner: Achieving Rapid Improvement in Office, Service and Technical Environments

Related Podcast: Kaizen in the Office Environment

Related Posts: Kaizen Search on Business901 Website

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People hold Kaizen events to move a particular problem along quickly. As I had mentioned in a previous post, I had mentioned the importance of having a good project management scheme intact to accelerate the implementation and/or execution. However, what makes certain types of companies good at implementation or for that matter, even certain individuals? Franklin Covey in their 4 Disciplines of Execution course did a great outline of the basic structure need for execution.

Discipline 1: Focus on the Wildly Important (Their Thinking – A goal that makes all the difference. Failure to achieve this goal renders any of our other achievements inconsequential.)

Discipline 2: Create a Compelling Scorecard (Their thinking – You are not really serious about the goal until we start keeping score.)

Discipline 3: Translate Lofty Goals into Specific Actions (Their Thinking – Goals will never be achieved until everyone on the team knows exactly what they’re supposed to do about them.)

Discipline 4: Hold Each other Accountable – All the time. (Maintaining commitment to the goal requires frequent team engagement and accountability.)

This is one of the best descriptions of how an execution system should be developed that I have come across. However, the one quality that I have found in successful organizations that can implement a new process is a company that is already committed to continuous improvement.

Continuous improvement companies understand that not everything is right to begin with, it is just the beginning. They realize market conditions, new information that is uncovered, external and internal conditions will all affect the process of implementation. They are not looking for perfection. They know that is will come in time. These types of companies are very adaptable and seek to improve the process in small loops or in mini-PDCA cycles.

As you develop, your Kaizen plan, make sure that you look at two deliverables. One of course is the project or the problem that you defined. The other is the process. If you look and separate the process from the product, it will be much easier to make decisions. It also will allow you to continuously improve the process you use for future Kaizen events.

Related Posts:

How Cumbersome is your Project Management Tool
A Kaizen Event is one of the most popular ways to rapidly improve a process and make the gains stick. Or is it?
A Preview to Kaizen Week
Your Value Stream Map is not your Project Plan

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