Liam Frady

Agile isn’t supposed to be a state of permanent urgency. For many organizations, however, this proves to be the case. They undergo a relentless cycle of sprints, reviews, and backlog cleaning sessions that generate motion but don’t maintain any sort of long-term progress. Deliverables are shipped, processes are iterated upon, and the organization stays stagnant. […]

Integration of Hoshin Kanri into an Agile workplace can seem somewhat daunting at first glance, given how disparate both approaches are. However, teams on the hunt for a hybrid approach that emphasizes strategic planning might find this combination to be just what the doctor ordered. It does take a deft hand when it comes to […]

Leveraging the Theory of Constraints for software development is easier than you think. While we often think of ToC as an approach geared toward physical goods, like manufacturing, it is widely applicable to disparate industries like software. The principles behind the approach focus on increasing throughput, and that is an area where software development can […]

Sometimes, a business process simply isn’t tenable. No matter what you try to do with improvements and initiatives, it won’t respond how you want. In scenarios like this, it can be difficult to think of a solid method of recourse. Business process reengineering is a drastic means of completely redesigning a business process from the […]

How do you tailor Six Sigma for software? When it comes to modern businesses, things are all about the speed of delivery. The faster you’re able to deliver upon your customer’s demands, the faster you’re able to move on to the next project. That doesn’t focus on quality necessarily, but rather the reality of your […]

Are you making use of legal Lean at your law firm? It might seem counterintuitive at first glance, but there is some serious potential when it comes to using the methodology for streamlining your legal processes. It takes some adaptation, sure, but like any methodology, you’re going to be tailoring it to better suit the […]

In Six Sigma, we’re often taught that variation is the enemy. We apply a deeply analytical lens toward complex projects to seek out wastes, excesses, and bring them back under heel. When applied to a complex workload like software development, the most feared and hated sort of variation you’ll come across is scope creep. It […]

When processes are fundamentally broken, you aren’t left with many choices. You can try to tweak and improve them incrementally. However, this only serves to spin the wheels, wasting resources and manhours. If a process isn’t working, you have to make the change, and that often means leaning on BPR to make things work. Business […]

A defect in Six Sigma is defined by the tangible. These are your marred surfaces, late deliveries, bugs in the code, or measurements that fall outside the Upper or Lower Control Limits. Black Belts hunting variances make use of the DMAIC roadmap, fairly standard practice for regular readers of our site. As we venture further […]

For many organizations, service operations are growing steadily out of control. Increasingly complex and verging on inefficiency, these processes often start with the best of intentions behind them. However, over time, process improvement measures, compliance mandates, and hacky ad-hoc solutions can turn fairly straightforward workflows into a convoluted nightmare. When service operations reach this point, […]

Streamlining and optimizing processes lead businesses to adopt known, trusted methodologies for continuous improvement, such as Six Sigma, Lean, and Kaizen. Over time, teams root out waste, guarantee consistency, and climb closer toward process excellence and overall stability. However, when margins begin tightening, you might see those gains start to plateau, and those incremental changes […]

In Lean Six Sigma, hard, actionable data is king. We obsess over capability indices, take stock in p-values, and make use of structured improvement cycles under the likes of DMAIC. If you follow the data, so we are told, then the solution will be self-evident. However, that isn’t the whole of the story when it […]

If you’re not keeping up with the latest threats, your overall security posture is at risk. Cybersecurity is a central concern for any organization’s operational strategy. Managing security initiatives is inherently complex, owing to the sheer scale and scope of even minor networks. Further, threat landscapes are constantly changing, along with shifting compliance requirements. Teams […]

The world of cybersecurity and data management rarely stays still, but that doesn’t stop some organizations from relying on large, sweeping initiatives, usually following an audit. This might see organizations making changes based on a quarterly audit, rolling out tools gradually, and seldom taking the time to practice breach or incident response. That’s fine for […]

Data is everything for a Six Sigma project. Before you can define a problem, analyze root causes, or confirm that improvements are taking hold, you need actionable data from a measurement system. Reliable numbers aren’t just a nice thing to have, but an expectation if you’re looking to have any effort take off. As such, […]

Even the most well-conceived strategies can fall short without proper execution. Across many industries, leaders spend months or years crafting bold plans, only to see those fade away in the face of daily operations. Why does this happen? There is a persistent execution gap, where organizational strategy fails to connect with the activities that drive […]

Recently, many organizations have started name-dropping Lean, with the notion being that it helps to reduce cycle times, lowers inventory levels, and leads to improved throughput as a matter of course. However, these organizations aren’t sticking to the principles and teaching, and as such, fail to sustain gains or deliver value to customers time and […]

Security operations centers (SOC) are under a great deal of pressure. Threats continue to evolve and change, with attacks growing more sophisticated, and bad actors getting more refined in their deployment of such attacks. Despite the prevalence of cutting-edge tools and skilled, trained analysts, many security operations centers will struggle with dealing with inefficient practices […]

Imagine for a moment that you’re in the middle of a major presentation to stakeholders. The dashboard you’re looking to showcase goes dark. Something your team has spent months tuning up to reduce human error has become the point of failure. Automation, as you’ve intended it, isn’t functioning as it should. A bot is churning […]

When looking at modern markets, speed is relentless. Customer demand means shorter development cycles, faster product launches, and fierce competition. That said, customers expect quality as well, not just speed. In turn, this has led to organizations seeing reliability and performance soar. The tension found between speed and quality isn’t a paradox, but rather a […]

For modern manufacturing, efficiency and precision are just part of the equation when it comes to profitability. That said, despite the technologically advanced production environments we see in manufacturing, defects and rework are still a pressing concern. Both can erode profit margins, delay deliveries, and test customer trust. As such, manufacturers are asking themselves what […]

Incremental and continuous improvement is the backbone of methodologies like Lean, Six Sigma, and even standalone Kaizen implementations. These methodologies hone in on minimizing waste, improving quality, and refining processes over time. Such an approach works well, especially if an organization is working with an otherwise mature, effective system. What happens when continuous improvement doesn’t […]

The promise of AI revolutionizing the modern workplace is a rather seductive one. You feed it your data, find patterns that might have been missed, and optimize your decisions based on said findings. You might even find the ability to automate those processes, freeing up valuable man-hours for other work. For the most part, this […]

Compliance is a central part of any business’s operations, especially given how highly regulated the landscape is today. As a strategic necessity, organizations are facing increasing pressure to show transparency, accuracy, and fit within the regulatory requirements necessary, regardless of whether they’re in finance, healthcare, public services, or any other sector. Adhering to these compliance […]