Practice what you Preach. Using Skore in Lean Process Improvement

In the early days of Skore we didn’t set out to build a Lean improvement software. We just wanted a way to make process discovery workshops easier, quicker and more engaging than the traditional method using brown paper, sticky notes and a lengthy writeup. 

Initially I was surprised by the resistance displayed by Lean teams when presenting the capabilities of Skore. However I quickly realised that this had nothing to do with Lean and everything to do with human nature. Humans, generally, don’t deal with change very well. Change brings uncertainty and that makes us uncomfortable.

Ironically It turns out that it doesn’t matter even if you’re in the business of change and transformation, you’ll just as likely rail against the uncertainty that change brings. Competition, although, is a great motivator and recently we’ve seen more and more Lean teams turn to us when looking at ways of improving how they deliver their own work.

Make your Process Discovery Lean – How Skore is different. 

In our efforts to improve the effectiveness of  process discovery workshops we looked at how processes are described. A number of notations and approaches are available but we wanted something simple. Not to remember a lot of symbols or explain them to others and certainly we didn’t want to waste time discussing their meaning. So we reduced the shapes we use to 2.

We did want people to think about the value of their work so we introduced the Why box. This ensures that for every piece of work that we describe in Skore we need to have a discussion about why we do it. That discussion could be 15 seconds, or it may take 15 minutes, but it’s essential to know whether the work is adding value or not.

We created a software interface easy enough to use in a live environment and capture a process at the speed of conversation. This is done on a screen in front of people while they describe the process. We recognised writing sticky notes distracts from the flow of information from participants.  Whether re-writing a spelling mistake or having to completely rearrange all the notes on the board because they missed an important step out somewhere.

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Of course the by product of this ‘process improvement’ is everything you capture is immediately stored digitally. There’s no need to take photos, roll up the paper and transcribe it into various formats afterward. Content is shared instantly at the end of the workshop. In a recent example one of our partners saves 2 days of follow up work for each workshop they run. At around 100 workshops per year  – that’s a significant saving of 200 days.

Using Skore going forward.

Finally Skore addresses the waste issues concerning the ongoing management of documents following a workshop. Huge amounts of information are gathered, not just process flows. Roles and responsibilities, risks, timings, costs, delays, questions, actions, issues, the list goes on. All are documented somewhere and relate to specific parts, or steps, in the process. They must be updated and kept in sync. Skore stores this directly against the process so that any change you make will instantly highlight any dependencies and be reflected through all the information. 

Using Skore enables Lean teams to ensure that their information gathering and process mapping is efficient and effective. Surely Lean consultants themselves should be able to recognise that sometimes we all need to change and embrace the new ways, even if that means recognising that Lean approaches can produce wastage too. 

Skore Digital Discovery is cloud based software that enables you to align your people, processes and tools. A process discovery, insights and improvement platform with a live workshop tool, it reduces the capturing processes stage from weeks to days. Skore’s Lean Assess module identifies value add and non value steps in processes and calculates savings for your organisation. Click here for a free trial.