Help Your Pilot Teams Over the Bar: Run Them as the Experiments They Are

Key Takeaways:

  • A pilot team is an experiment.
  • Like any experiment, a pilot team needs a well-defined hypothesis.
  • There are only two things that can cause a pilot team to fail - and both of them are within your control as the lean product development champion.

Run Pilot Teams As Experiments


Type: Knowledge Brief
Tabloid (A3): 11x17 (PDF)
Letter (A4): 8.5x11 (PDF)

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Author: 
Katherine Radeka
Created: 
May 10th, 2013
Updated: 
May 10th, 2013
The “Business Casual” A3 Report: Why Handwritten A3 Reports Drive Collaboration and Creativity

Key Takeaways:

  • The informality of handwritten A3 reports improves collaboration and creativity in systematic problem-solving.
  • You can write an A3 report on a blank sheet of paper, make a “giant A3” on a whiteboard or keep a notebook for your personal A3s.
  • The benefits of handwritten reports outweigh the fears that your writing isn’t readable.

Handwritten A3 Reports


Type: Knowledge Brief
Tabloid (A3): 11x17 (PDF)
Letter (A4): 8.5x11 (PDF)

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Author: 
Katherine Radeka
Created: 
May 3rd, 2013
Updated: 
May 3rd, 2013
The Evolution of an A3: How A3s Change Over the Life of a Problem to Build Reusable Knowledge

Key Takeaways:

  • Problem-solving A3s often evolve into Proposal A3s.
  • Any type of A3 can evolve into a Knowledge Capture A3 - in fact, this is one of the best ways to begin capturing reusable knowledge.
  • Your investment in the evolution of your A3 pays off in the increased impact your ideas will have on the whole organization.

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Author: 
Gene Radeka
Created: 
February 20th, 2013
Updated: 
February 20th, 2013
Systems Thinking, Lean Thinking: Root Cause Analysis for Complex Systems

Key Takeaways:

  • Lean tools like kanban systems and SBCE work because they address the complex causes of problems in manufacturing, product development and other parts of the enterprise.
  • Causal loop diagrams make the feedback loops visible for complex problems.
  • We find better solutions to complex problems when we understand the feedback loops and look for points of leverage to mitigate harmful loops and reinforce helpful ones.

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Author: 
Katherine Radeka
Created: 
September 23rd, 2011
Updated: 
March 20th, 2012
TRIZ for Lean Innovation: Increase Your Ability to Leverage Innovation Across the Enterprise and Beyond

Key Takeaways:

  • TRIZ is a structured problem-solving method based on patterns of problems and solutions.
  • Product developers use TRIZ to create breakthrough solutions by applying existing
    knowledge to problems in unexpected and innovative ways.
  • TRIZ supports lean product development by strengthening a team’s ability to leverage and
    reuse knowledge across the enterprise and pull in knowledge from other companies and
    industries.

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Author: 
Katherine Radeka
Created: 
September 8th, 2008
Updated: 
March 20th, 2012

Assess your organization’s opportunities and challenges as you begin to use lean product development to improve product development performance. This questionnaire looks at key dimensions of product development performance and the foundational problem-solving and decision-making skills of lean product development.

Use this tally sheet with the Lean Product Development Self-Assessment.

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Author: 
Katherine Radeka
Created: 
March 19th, 2012
Updated: 
March 19th, 2012

Assess your organization’s opportunities and challenges as you begin to use lean product development to improve product development performance. This questionnaire looks at key dimensions of product development performance and the foundational problem-solving and decision-making skills of lean product development.

If you intend to use it with your team, you can download the LPD Self-Assessment Tally Sheet to help you analyze the results.

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Author: 
Katherine Radeka
Created: 
March 19th, 2012
Updated: 
March 19th, 2012

This is an example of a Proposal A3 Report.

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Author: 
Katherine Radeka
Created: 
March 18th, 2012
Updated: 
March 18th, 2012

This A3 report captures the plan to solve a "wicked problem" - one with lots of interrelated dependencies.

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Author: 
Katherine Radeka
Created: 
March 18th, 2012
Updated: 
March 18th, 2012

This is the template to use for a Problem-Solving A3. It most resembles the type of A3 report found in Managing to Learn by John Shook.

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Author: 
Katherine Radeka
Created: 
March 18th, 2012
Updated: 
March 18th, 2012
Prepare the Ground: A3 Reports, Nemawashi, and Effective Decision-Making

Key Takeaways:

  • Knowledge has no value if an organization does not use it to make decisions.
  • Nemawashi prepares the ground for effective decision-making by bringing the stakeholders into alignment around a proposal before they are asked to make a decision.
  • It eliminates the wastes of revisited decisions and unproductive meetings by ensuring that proposals only get accepted when the organization is ready to commit fully to their success.

Prepare the Ground


Type: Knowledge Brief
Tabloid (A3): 11x17 (PDF)
Letter (A4): 8.5x11 (PDF)

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Author: 
Katherine Radeka
Created: 
August 11th, 2010
Updated: 
August 11th, 2010
Nemawashi: Preparing The Ground for Solid Decision-Making

Key Takeaways:

  • Nemawashi directly eliminates the wastes of unproductive meetings and revisited decisions.
  • It is highly efficient for the decision-makers while taking about the same amount of time as the traditional process for the person submitting a proposal.
  • It leads to decisions with solid buy-in from key stakeholders.

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Author: 
Katherine Radeka
Created: 
May 20th, 2010
Updated: 
May 20th, 2010
How to Tame Wild Octopi: Lean Thinking for Wicked Problems

Key Takeaways:

  • Wicked problems defy solutions using traditional problem-solving methods.
  • The key to a wicked problem is understanding competing stakeholder needs and acceptable trade-offs to develop a negotiated solution.
  • We tame a wicked problem by deciding what interests are the most important and then using a series of rapid learning cycles to explore potential solutions.

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Author: 
Katherine Radeka
Created: 
May 20th, 2010
Updated: 
May 20th, 2010