Making IT Lean

62  ◾  Making IT Lean: Applying Lean Practices to the Work of IT

There is an often-cited “eighth waste,” the waste of human potential that

one might associate with the frequent declines in quality that character-

ize many service delivery operations, and are frequently attributed to poor

morale, lack of training, inefficient resource allocation, etc.

When we look at real-world examples of IT operational processes, we

often find examples of waste, but sometimes they are not easy to see. This

is because it’s easy to become habituated to wasteful processes. Indeed, we

often become unwitting participants in the very inefficiencies that we casu-

ally critique. When individuals talk about waste, they mean it seriously but

unscientifically, as in commen ...