Which approach would be most likely to identify and eliminate wasteful or unnecessary work?

A consultant analysing an IT organization’s maturity has identified that many of the activities were carried out ad-hoc, and there was significant variance in how work was being performed. The consultant also identified that a lot of the work was unnecessary for the successful delivery of the organization’s products and services. Which approach would be most likely to identify and eliminate wasteful or unnecessary work?

OPTIONS

• Initiate a training and communications program to highlight the impact of wasteful work on the organization’s objectives
• Identify the team responsible for the wasteful work, and update their processes and tools so that their work is optimized
• Document value streams to understand where resources are focused on unnecessary work and use the continual improvement practice to manage opportunities to improve the overall flow
• Retire IT services that the organization considers to be low value, and then reassign staff to work on more important tasks

ANSWER

Document value streams to understand where resources are focused on unnecessary work and use the continual improvement practice to manage opportunities to improve the overall flow

EXPLANATION

Value stream mapping is useful because it can help organizations identify and remove waste.