Your customers love what you do, you’re doing pretty well, you’re delivering effectively and reliably, but you know you could be delivering better. You want to do better for your customers. You want to see if you can cut your delivery time even though you don’t necessarily need to because you want to double the value for your customers.
This is certainly the ideal situation, and if it describes you, we’d love to work with you. Nothing is better than working with fully motivated people who just want to do their best. But the truth is that most people don’t want to change anything unless there is an urgent need to do so. They only seek a new approach because their present operations are falling short in one or more areas. In many cases, the need for change is urgent or even critical. Let’s talk about how the Kanban method can help even a highly successful company improve productivity.
How a Team at Vanguard Improved Their System Lead Time by 78% in 90 Days
Headquartered in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, Vanguard is one of the world’s largest investment companies, with trillions of dollars in assets and offices across the country and around the globe.
Nonetheless, the forward-thinking management of Vanguard saw room for improvement. The company brought in a Kanban coach to work with one of their teams for 90 days. The results were nothing short of dramatic. The Kanban-led team improved its system lead time by an incredible 78 percent in just 90 days.
Vanguard’s Team P was composed of 20 people who regularly worked together, including two team managers and two team leaders. Team P was responsible for a financial systems database platform. They performed a combination of project-based work, ongoing maintenance, repair demands, platform enhancement, and support.
The average delivery lead time ranged from 38 to 57 days. They identified a few problems that prevented them from reaching their full potential. They had no real grasp of who their actual customers were, and as a result, the team was unclear about what services they were actually expected to perform. The team was stuck in a Scrum stall position resulting from uneven flow that led to overburdening and generated rework like technical debt, and defects.
With Kanban, Team P focused on limiting the work in progress, which made it easier to define their services and see where improvements could be made. The team improved upstream flow control, and increased automation to support capacity management provided additional benefits.
Businesses like Vanguard that want to take their teams to the next level recognize the value of Kanban to enable them to serve their customers better.
Schedule a free consultation with me to learn more about how my approach is different.
