Kaizen Mindset.
Varun Maheshwari
Passionate about "Delivering Value" and "Improvements that can be measured" | Agile Coach | Scrum Master | Delivery Lead | Kaizen Coach | SAFe Agilist
First of all : What is Kaizen? Well, Kaizen means "the change for the better" and it is a Japanese term by the way. Kaizen asserts breaking down our current process, reassemble different parts or steps again and put it back together in an improved manner.
The result of Kaizen should be an improved process which utilizes skills and exp of the people involved.
In order to do Kaizen effectively we have to practice below 3 steps :
- Gemba Walks: Now, Gemba literally means Actual place and Gemba Walks refers to 'go and see' where work is actually happening. This is for leaders to do.
- Genbutsu means looking at Actual parts or deliverable built by your team. So, instead of looking at powerpoint presentations or some reports , why not play with the system yourself? This way you , as a leader, will get a feel of how ur customers will fell when we will ship this product to them.
- Genjitsu means getting the facts. Now, your teams have build the product , so why not see the actual users using your product? Talk to them , help them if they are having any difficulties in locating certain features. This step is very important because we might think that building product A will change the world and we will make huge $$ but reality might turn out to be very different.
The last thing to remember here is : To do step #1 above , we have to ask permission from team that we can enter their work area. This also shows that we respect team's decisions and simultaneously we earn trust.
Now, How can we start and where to start Kaizen : Simple. Take your toughest pain point, talk to ur team and start. You might learn along the way and eventually will get better and better. And that is the ultimate aim anyways. To get better , not to be perfect.
Some interesting videos on Kaizen OR Continuous Improvement mindset :)