How do you apply lean and agile principles to your administrative processes?

1 What are lean and agile principles?

Lean and agile principles are based on the idea of continuous improvement, customer focus, and adaptive response. Lean aims to reduce waste and optimize value by eliminating unnecessary steps, resources, and activities in a process. Agile aims to deliver value quickly and frequently by breaking down a project into smaller and manageable units, and adapting to changing requirements and feedback. Together, lean and agile principles can help you create efficient, effective, and flexible administrative processes that meet your customers' needs and expectations.

2 How to identify waste in your administrative processes?

One of the first steps to apply lean and agile principles to your administrative processes is to identify and eliminate waste. Waste is anything that does not add value to your customers or your organization. Waste can be categorized into eight types: defects, overproduction, waiting, non-utilized talent, transportation, inventory, motion, and extra processing. For example, defects are errors or mistakes that require rework or correction, such as typos or inaccuracies in a report. Overproduction is producing more than what is needed or requested, such as printing too many copies of a document. Waiting is idle time that delays the completion of a task or a process, such as waiting for approval or feedback. Non-utilized talent is wasting the skills or potential of your staff, such as assigning them tasks that are below their level or not aligned with their interests. Transportation is moving items or information from one place to another unnecessarily, such as sending emails with attachments instead of using a shared drive. Inventory is storing items or information that are not needed or used, such as keeping outdated files or documents. Motion is moving people or equipment unnecessarily, such as walking to a printer or a scanner. Extra processing is doing more work than what is required or adding features that are not valued by the customers, such as formatting a document with fancy fonts or colors.

3 How to map your administrative processes?

Another step to apply lean and agile principles to your administrative processes is to map your processes. Mapping your processes means creating a visual representation of the steps, inputs, outputs, roles, and resources involved in a process. This can help you understand how your processes work, identify waste and inefficiencies, and find opportunities for improvement. You can use different tools and techniques to map your processes, such as flowcharts, value stream maps, swimlane diagrams, or SIPOC diagrams. For example, a flowchart is a simple diagram that shows the sequence of actions and decisions in a process. A value stream map is a more detailed diagram that shows the flow of value from the customer's perspective, including the time, cost, and quality of each step. A swimlane diagram is a type of flowchart that shows the roles and responsibilities of different people or departments in a process. A SIPOC diagram is a high-level overview that shows the suppliers, inputs, process, outputs, and customers of a process.

4 How to improve your administrative processes?

Once you have mapped your processes and identified waste and inefficiencies, you can start improving your processes by applying lean and agile principles. To do this, you can eliminate or minimize waste by removing unnecessary steps, resources, and activities. Additionally, you can simplify or standardize your processes by reducing variation, complexity, and ambiguity. You can also automate or digitize your processes by using technology to perform repetitive, manual, or error-prone tasks. Integrating or aligning your processes is also important for ensuring that they are consistent, coordinated, and compatible with organizational goals and strategies. Finally, optimizing or enhancing your processes will increase the quality, speed, and value of your outputs and outcomes.

5 How to implement your process improvements?

To ensure success and sustainability of your process improvements, you should use agile methods to implement them. This includes breaking down the improvements into small and manageable units, prioritizing them based on value, urgency and feasibility, planning them in short and iterative cycles, executing with collaboration from your team and stakeholders, reviewing regularly and frequently, evaluating based on results and feedback, and adapting based on evaluation and learning.

6 How to sustain your process improvements?

The last step to apply lean and agile principles to your administrative processes is sustaining process improvements. This involves making sure that they are maintained, supported, and improved over time. To do this, you can document your process improvements with clear and concise guidelines, manuals, or templates. Additionally, it’s important to communicate your process improvements by sharing and promoting them with your team and stakeholders. Training your staff and users on how to use and follow your processes is also essential. Moreover, you should monitor your process improvements by collecting data on their performance and impact. Additionally, establishing and enforcing standards, rules, and policies for your processes is important for controlling them. Lastly, continuously improve your process improvements by seeking feedback, suggestions, and innovations.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?