Presentation at the Virginia Tech 2018 Implementing Lean for Operational Excellence Conference, February 28 - March 1, 2018

1. Lean IT Service Management
Implementing Lean for Operational Excellence
February 28 – March 1, 2018 • Roanoke, VA
David J. Williamson, PhD, PMP, ITIL
Instructor, Continuing & Professional Education
Principal Consultant, Leverage Point IT Consulting

2. Summary
• Lean IT focuses on delivering customer value, improving
flow, and reducing waste.
• Traditional IT Service Management (ITSM) has improved
IT and business alignment, reduced IT cost and risk,
stabilized production environments, and improved
customer satisfaction.
• However, it is process-intensive, inflexible, and slow.
• ITIL is the classic example of traditional ITSM.
• Lean complements ITIL in some ways and contradicts it
in others. The ITIL Practitioner guidelines are a partial
response to this conflict.
• DevOps is an effective and growing approach to Lean
ITSM.
• Organizations that implement DevOps outperform their
peers significantly.
• High Velocity ITSM is another emerging approach to
Lean ITSM.
• Organizations at any stage of an ITSM rollout can benefit
from the application of Lean ITSM principles.
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3. Lean IT
Waste
Value
Flow
Continuous
(Kaizen)
Radical
(Kaikaku)
Revolution-
ary
(Kakushin)
What is Lean IT?
Waste
• Defects
• Overprovisioning
• Waiting
• Non value-added
processes
• Transportation
• Inventory
• Motion
• Employee skills
untapped
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Value stream mapping
Implementing Lean for Operational Excellence
• Muda – non value-
added work
• Mura - variation
• Muri - overloading

4. What is IT Service Management (ITSM)?
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ITIL v3 Framework
• A set of practices and principles that help align IT services with
organizational needs
• The most common traditional approach is ITIL (formerly Information
Technology Infrastructure Library)
• Benefits
• Better alignment
• More consistent service delivery
• Reduced cost
• More effective resource use
• Reduced risk
• Fewer service disruptions
• More stable environment
• Greater customer satisfaction
• Criticisms
• Makes process change more difficult
• Harder to implement in a cloud
environment
• Overemphasis on control
• Creates delays
• Focus on stability over delivery
• Outdated model that treats
technology as mysterious and
inaccessible
• Slow response to technology change

5. Does Lean complement or contradict ITIL?
Lean Agree / Disagree ITIL
Focuses on customer value Disagree Focuses on control
Focuses on flow Disagree Focuses on stability
Reduces waste Disagree Adds process overhead
Reduces variability Agree Improves predictability
Encourages rapid process
change (kaikaku, kakushin)
Disagree Encourages planned and
structured process change
Encourages continuous
process improvement (kaizen)
Agree Strongly encourages continuous
incremental improvement
Emphasis on metrics Agree Emphasis on metrics
Encourages small batches,
frequent deliveries
Disagree Encourages large batches,
planned and formal deliveries
Methods and tools Different
Purpose
Framework
• Lean and ITIL agree on some points,
disagree on others
• There are cultural differences between
Lean and ITIL, lean and an ITSM
emphasis
• ITIL is a framework, and Lean is a
method
• ITIL response: ITIL Practitioner
• Focus on value
• Design for experience
• Start where you are
• Work holistically
• Progress iteratively
• Observe directly
• Be transparent
• Collaborate
• Keep it simple
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6. Is DevOps Lean ITSM?
ITIL DevOps
Planning Iterative
Processes Incremental
Procedures Collaboration
Documentation Experiments
Sequential/Waterfall Lean/Agile
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• DevOps practices (Amazon)
• Continuous integration
• Continuous delivery
• Microservices
• Infrastructure, configuration, and
policy as code
• Monitoring and logging
• Communication and collaboration
• Benefits
• Speed
• Rapid delivery
• Reliability
• Scale
• Improved collaboration
• Security
• Criticisms
• Prone to security risks
• Need for controls
DevOps is an emerging set of IT practices where development and
operations collaborate throughout the service lifecycle, using many
of the same agile tools and approaches. DevOps emphasizes
infrastructure automation, continuous delivery, and system reliability.
There appears to be an inherent conflict between ITIL and
DevOps.
However, some practitioners (IBM) suggest they are complementary
and compatible.

7. Who is doing Lean ITSM, and how is it working out?
Puppet Labs – State of DevOps Report, 2013-2016
• 25,000+ IT professionals
• Organizations using DevOps outperformed peers in
• Throughput
• Deployment (30x)
• Deployment lead time (200x)
• Reliability
• Production deployment success
• Mean time to resolve (168x)
• Organizational performance
• Market share, profitability (2x)
• Market capitalization growth (50% over 3 years)
(Kim, Humble, DeBois, & Willis, 2016)
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8. Where is Lean ITSM going?
High Velocity ITSM
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• Comprehensive approach
• ITIL
• Lean IT
• DevOps
• Agile
• Integrated Application Lifecycle Management (ALM)
• Cloud computing
• Virtualization
• Automation
• Containerization
• Configuration management
• Continuous release, testing, and deployment
(Sternberg, 2016)

9. Should we do Lean ITSM? Where should we start?
ITSM is new
Benefits
• “Green field” – no ITSM history to
overcome and change
Opportunities
• Reduce cost and waste
• Improve speed and customer
satisfaction
Challenges
• IT processes are highly
interconnected, hard to change
quickly
• Unstructured environment
Start with
• Find an IT service pain point
• Consider DevOps or an ITIL
Practitioner approach
• Do a pilot project
ITSM is underway
Benefits
• Change receptivity
Opportunities
• Reduce cost and waste
• Revitalize/energize improvements in
progress
Challenges
• Yet another change
• Issues with traditional approaches
not yet fully understood
Start with
• A project in progress or just starting
• Apply Lean principles to the
deployment and the process itself
ITSM is mature
Benefits
• Stable processes
• ITSM mindset
Opportunities
• Reduce cost and waste
• Reduce cycle time
Challenges
• Entrenched formal process mentality
• Interconnectivity makes rapid
change difficult
Start with
• Value stream mapping – look for a
process with waste that can be
reduced or eliminated
• Identify the opportunity for
continued improvement to existing
processes
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Lean ITSM is an improvement to traditional ITSM approaches, not a wholesale rejection.

10. References
Agile Admin. (2017, July 24). What is DevOps. Retrieved from
https://theagileadmin.com/what-is-devops/
Amazon. (2018). What is DevOps? Retrieved from
https://aws.amazon.com/devops/what-is-devops/
Elder, M., Crume, J., Hahn, T., Pogue, S. W., & Sharma, S. (2014).
Security considerations for DevOps adoption. IBM developerWorks.
Retrieved from https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/d-
security-considerations-devops-adoption/index.html
Kim, G., Humble, J., DeBois, P., & Willis, J. (2016). The DevOps
handbook: How to create world-class agility, reliability, and security
in technology organizations. Portland, OR: IT Revolution Press.
Lean Enterprise Institute. (2018). Muda, mura, muri. Retrieved from
https://www.lean.org/lexicon/muda-mura-muri
Martin, K., & Osterling, M. (2014). Value stream mapping: How to
visualize work and align leadership for organizational
transformation. New York, NY: McGraw Hill.
Snyder, J. (2017). DevOps with controls. IBM developerWorks. Retrieved
from https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/d-devops-
cloud/index.html
Steinberg, R. A. (2016). High velocity ITSM: Agile IT service management
for rapid change in a world of DevOps, Lean IT, and cloud computing.
Bloomington, IN: Trafford Publishing.
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Cover image:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ducks_in_a_row.jpg
Back cover image:
https://drfreex.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/herding-cats.jpg

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Creative Commons
Contact Information:
David J. Williamson, PhD, PMP, ITIL-F
david.williamson@leverage-point.com
www.linkedin.com/in/davidjwilliamson
540-632-1982

12. Kaikaku 10 Commandments
10 Commandments of Kaikaku by Hiroyuki Hirano complied by
Norman Bodek
1. Throw out the traditional concept of manufacturing methods.
2. Think of how the new method will work; not how it won't work.
3. Don't accept excuses. Totally deny the status quo.
4. "Don't seek perfection. A 50% implementation rate is fine as long
as it is done on the spot.
5. Correct mistakes the moment they are found.
6. Don't spend money on Kaikaku.
7. Problems give you a chance to use your brains.
8. Ask 'Why' five times.
9. Ten person's ideas are better than one person's knowledge.
10. Kaikaku knows no limits.
http://www.kaizenworld.com/kaizen-blog/kaikaku.html
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13. ITIL Practitioner 9 Guiding Principles
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Focus on value Everything the service provider does needs to map, directly or indirectly, to value for the customer and/or the
organization. It is the customer who determines what is of value to them, not the service provider.
Design for experience It is critical to retain the focus not only on business/customer value, but also on the experience that both customers
and users have when they interact with the service or service provider.
Start where you are Resist the temptation to start from scratch and build something new without considering what is already available to
be leveraged. Based on the vision for the future and how that will deliver value to the customer, there is likely to be a
great deal that can be used.
Work holistically No service or component stands alone. The results delivered to the organization or customer will suffer unless the
service provider works on the whole, not just on the parts. All elements should be coordinated to provide a defined
value.
Progress iteratively Even huge initiatives have to be accomplished iteratively. Resist the temptation to do everything at once. By organizing
work into smaller, manageable sections the focus on each smaller improvement is easier to maintain and ensures that
real results are returned in a timely manner and built upon to create more improvement.
Observe directly To know what is really going on, measure and/or observe it directly. Going to the source allows a reduction in the use
of assumptions which, if proved unfounded, can be disastrous to timelines, budgets and the quality of results.
Be transparent The more that people are aware of what is happening and why it is happening, then the more that people will help
and fewer people will obstruct. Make things as transparent as possible.
Collaborate When the right people are involved in the right ways, improvements benefit from better buy-in, better relevance
(because better information is available for decision-making) and better likelihood of long-term success.
Keep it simple If a process, service, action, metric etc. provides no value or produces no useful outcome, then eliminate it. In a
process or procedure, use the minimum number of steps needed to accomplish the objective(s). Overly complex work
methods rarely maximize outcomes or minimize cost.
https://www.axelos.com/9-guiding-principles

14. DevOps Reading List – Ernest Mueller, The Agile Admin
• DevOps is still new so an undefined batch of blogs that changes monthly and following
people on Twitter is often the best source of up to date information. Yes, that’s annoying.
However, there are several books and other reliable sources of good information you can use
and then share with others.
• Top pick – The DevOps Handbook, by Gene Kim, Patrick Debois, John Willis, John Allspaw,
and Jez Humble, just came out in late 2016 and is finally a definitive source on DevOps. If
you just get one book, get this one.
• The Phoenix Project, Gene Kim, George Spafford, Kevin Behr – In novel format inspired by the
seminal Lean work The Goal, this is a narrative of a DevOps implementation in a troubled
software company.
• Web Operations, various – An O’Reilly book collecting a series of essays on Web operations
that are really thoughts from a lot of the key DevOps pioneers.
• Continuous Delivery, Jez Humble and David Farley – While CI/CD isn’t the sum total of
DevOps like some people would have it, it’s certainly a major area of innovation and this is
the definitive work on it.
• A Practical Approach to Large-Scale Agile Development, Gary Gruver – For those who think
DevOps is just for startups or just for Web software, this is the tale of how the HP LaserJet
firmware division transitioned to an agile/CI/DevOps structure.
• The Practice of Cloud System Administration, Tom Limoncelli, Strata Chalup, Christina Hogan
– A textbook style guide from the operations side, with loads of great new-style systems
guidance and a lot of explicit DevOps content.
• Release It!, Michael Nygard – There needs to be more books like this, it explains common
systems failure patterns and success patterns – I think of it as the Gang of Four Design
Patterns book for systems.
• Lean Software Development, Mary and Tom Poppendieck – Lean is being increasingly
adopted within the DevOps community, but starting from Deming and TPS is somewhat
intimidating. This book is the seminal work on Lean in software.
• And round it off with Gareth Rushgrove’s DevOps Weekly email newsletter.
-Ernest Mueller, Aug 2, 2010 – Last Revised Jul 24, 2017 https://theagileadmin.com/what-is-
devops/
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15. High-Velocity ITSM
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(Sternberg, 2016)