Making IT Lean

Lean Problem-Solving: Identifying and Understanding Problems  ◾  109

efficiently, so it’s reasonable to expect that we will find plenty of waste if

we just look for it.

So how does the analyst get his or her head around this? We will use the

same general approach as in the previous scenario, specifically, interview-

ing various members of the organization who are involved in one way or

another with user provisioning. In this case, however, we need to do more

investigative research, and for this we can call upon a Lean tool we refer to

as Go-and-See.

Tool: Go-and-See (Gemba)

Gemba (Japanese) literally refers to the place where the action is, or to the

“real place.” Going to Gemba, therefore, means first and foremost being

physically present and obser ...