Lean Management of IT Organizations - A Perspective of IT Slack Theory

Lean Management has been successfully implemented in production organizations since several decades. The study at hand investigates the implementation of Lean Management to IT organizations (Lean IT). The study offers three contributions: First, it explains on a conceptual level how Lean Management can be transferred from production to IT organizations (philosophy, principles, tools). Second, it provides a theoretical perspective on why Lean IT can be beneficial for IT organizations (IT Slack theory). Third, it provides insights to the stated research questions (three benefits and three propositions) from an initial case study of an internal IT service provider for a large international insurance company (> US$25 Billion revenue; >20,000 employees; active in >120 countries) and lays out the research methodology and potential focus areas for

[1]  Kieran Conboy,et al.  Agility from First Principles: Reconstructing the Concept of Agility in Information Systems Development , 2009, Inf. Syst. Res..

[2]  Nick Rich,et al.  The seven value stream mapping tools , 1997 .

[3]  L. Bourgeois.  On the Measurement of Organizational Slack , 1981 .

[4]  J. Liker,et al.  The Toyota Way in Services: The Case of Lean Product Development , 2006 .

[5]  Pär J. Ågerfalk,et al.  Identifying Lean Software Development Values , 2012, ECIS.

[6]  Steven C. Bell,et al.  Lean IT: Enabling and Sustaining Your Lean Transformation , 2010 .

[7]  A. Strauss,et al.  Grounded theory , 2017 .

[8]  B. Loasby.  The External Control of Organizations. A Resource Dependence Perspective , 1979 .

[9]  Arno Müller,et al.  Lean IT-Management — Was kann die IT aus Produktionssystemen lernen? , 2010, Wirtschaftsinformatik Manag..

[10]  Tyson R. Browning,et al.  Can Innovation Be Lean? , 2012 .

[11]  Tony Gorschek,et al.  The lean gap: A review of lean approaches to large-scale software systems development , 2013, J. Syst. Softw..

[12]  N. Nohria,et al.  Reducing slack: the performance consequences of downsizing by large industrial firms, 1977–93 , 2005 .

[13]  Sanjay Bhasin.  Lean Management Beyond Manufacturing , 2015 .

[14]  Anselm L. Strauss,et al.  Basics of qualitative research : techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory , 1998 .

[15]  Gerold Riempp,et al.  Towards a Framework to Structure and Assess Strategic IT/IS Management , 2008, ECIS.

[16]  Daniel T. ones.  Lantech achieved unimaginable results by applying lean thinking to every aspect of its business . Beyond Toyota : How to Root Out Waste and Pursue Perfection , 2006 .

[17]  Bradley R. Staats,et al.  Lean principles, learning, and knowledge work: Evidence from a software services provider , 2011 .

[18]  Ben J. Hicks,et al.  Lean information management: Understanding and eliminating waste , 2007, Int. J. Inf. Manag..

[19]  Ann C. Frost.  Just another car factory? Lean production and its discontents , 2000 .

[20]  O. Williamson.  Comparative Economic Organization: The Analysis of Discrete Structural Alternatives , 1994 .

[21]  高橋 進.  サイアート, マーチの「A Behavioral Theory of the Firm」 , 1995 .

[22]  James Miller,et al.  Waste identification and elimination in information technology organizations , 2014, Empirical Software Engineering.

[23]  Tero Vartiainen,et al.  What Makes Information System Developers Produce Defective Information Systems For Their Clients? , 2012, PACIS.

[24]  R. Holden,et al.  From group work to teamwork: A case study of “Lean” rapid process improvement in the ThedaCare Information Technology Department , 2012 .

[25]  Kathleen M. Eisenhardt,et al.  Theory Building From Cases: Opportunities And Challenges , 2007 .

[26]  Markus Westner,et al.  Lean Management of IT Organizations: Implementation Success Factors and Theoretical Foundation , 2015, AMCIS.

[27]  Joan Richardson,et al.  An Empirical Study of Lean and Agile Influences in Software Configuration Management , 2014, PACIS.

[28]  M. Haley,et al.  Information technology and the quality improvement in defense industries , 2014 .

[29]  Jerry N. Luftman,et al.  Key Issues for IT Executives 2012: Doing More with Less , 2012, MIS Q. Executive.

[30]  Jayachandra Bairi,et al.  A scale for measuring the applicability of lean practices in IT support services , 2014, J. Enterp. Inf. Manag..

[31]  Daniel T. Jones,et al.  From lean production to the lean enterprise , 1994 .

[32]  Peter Middleton,et al.  Lean Software Management: BBC Worldwide Case Study , 2012, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management.

[33]  James P. Womack,et al.  Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation , 1996 .

[34]  Kyle B. Stone.  Four decades of lean: a systematic literature review , 2012 .

[35]  Barney Tan,et al.  Demystifying case research: A structured-pragmatic-situational (SPS) approach to conducting case studies , 2011, Inf. Organ..

[36]  Markus Westner,et al.  Lean Management of IT Organizations: A Literature Review , 2015, PACIS.

[37]  A. Pinsonneault,et al.  On the Business Value of Information Technology: A Theory of Slack Resources , 2012 .

[38]  Dag Näslund.  Lean and six sigma – critical success factors revisited , 2013 .

[39]  Per Vagn Freytag,et al.  Service supply chain management: A survey of lean application in the municipal sector , 2011 .

[40]  K. Eisenhardt.  Building theories from case study research , 1989, STUDI ORGANIZZATIVI.

[41]  David Parker,et al.  Critical success factors for Lean Six Sigma programmes: a view from middle management , 2012 .