Re-Reading Allen Ward

On a long plane flight yesterday, I spent some time re-reading Allen Ward's Lean Product and Process Development. I had first read the book in a blitz right after I got my hot little hands on a copy at the 2007 Lean Transformation Summit. It's been a reference book for me since.

This re-reading was prompted by my attempt to introduce some of this material into the introductory talk that I do about lean product development. That didn't go over so well. There are so many new concepts embedded in that book: the entrepreneurial system designer, trade-off curves, set-based concurrent engineering, development cadence, etc - that 45 minutes of speaking time isn't enough to scratch the surface of the material. There is a lot of dense information in that book, but it may be difficult for someone new to the field to figure out how to get a toehold on this new world of product development that Dr. Ward envisioned.

The answer to "This is great - now what?" is found in the foreward at the beginning of the book by John Shook and Durward Sobek, where they describe the LAMDA cycle of learning. The act of simply Looking at your product development process - not the forms and slidesets, but at the stuff you actually produce - is a good first step, followed naturally by Asking why? Why do we repeat the same mistakes? Why do we have design loopbacks late in development? Why was one product a hit and the next one a fizzle?

LAMDA didn't make it into this version of the book, which he wrote three years before his death - he hints at it, but the idea isn't yet fully formed. Later on, Ward and his clients recognized that LAMDA supplies the necessary foundation for lean product development. An organization's ability to effectively execute the other practices depends upon the quality of their LAMDA cycles.

LAMDA is the on-ramp for lean product development. It is easy for an individual to try on his or her own to get a taste of lean product development, and build the company-specific case for it, and it is the first thing that an organization needs to spread across development if they want their lean product development efforts to bear fruit.

String Quartet Uses Lean to Support Creativity

"Lean" has spread from the manufacturing floor into the accounting office, order fulfillment and occasionally even the strategy process. But a string quartet?!

According to Benjamin Wolff, Associate Professor of Music at Hofstra University and the member of a string quartet, lean principles help his ensemble and his students make the most of their rehearsal time, by improving the routine processes to free up more energy for the creative process. Professor Wolff gave an insightful presentation at this month's AME Regional Conference in San Diego.

Ben's presentation showed his quartet rehearse a specific piece for an upcoming recital. Without necessarily telling the group what he was doing, Ben began using lean principles to rethink the rehearsal process. For example, all four members of the quartet play string instruments that must be retuned at least once during the rehearsal. Ben has used lean thinking to reduce the amount of time it takes to tune the instruments, and to ensure that the tuning process produces a more consistent result each time.

The major takeaway from Ben's presentation was this: creativity thrives in an atmosphere of disciplined practice and routines. By using lean processes to standardize and improve the supporting processes (the microprocesses), the musicians have more time and energy to innovate where it counts: the musical interpretation.