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Chapter 8
Implementing and Sustaining
Lean IT Improvements
We ended the last chapter with a dose of reality that characterizes many IT
environments. Specifically, it is hard to implement improvements when there
is so much work to do just to keep up with demands. Let’s put aside for
the moment the fact that the problem we just represented is an example of
waste (backlog of work), and focus instead on the real dilemma of how an
IT organization can start to work on Lean improvements with all the com-
peting demands on time. The analogy that is sometimes used is that it’s like
changing tires on a car when the car is in motion. While that is a grap ...