When Kanban decides against lower lead times
Certain organizations applying Kanban principles may choose not to include IT operations specialists in cross-functional teams, on the assumption that it would be very hard to keep such specialists busy. These organizations prefer, instead, to group the operations specialists in their own teams, thereby increasing the risk that an operations specialist might not be available immediately when a work item is assigned to that team. In other words, a compromise is made in favor of higher occupation levels for these specialists, as opposed to higher levels of throughput and lower lead times.
This article discusses the paradigms for organizing IT personnel that underpin such decisions. The choice between a pure cross-functional team and the separation of developers and operations into separate teams is more nuanced than a simple choice between optimizing occupation levels as opposed to lead time. [Read more…] about Organizing for Kanban