3-Day Intensive Course for IT Leaders, Engineers & Process Teams

3 Intense Days
7 Hours per Day (Split into two 3.5-hour sessions)

Learning Path Visual

Your journey from IT operations to Lean transformation:

Day 1: Lean Thinking in IT — Principles, Value & Waste Elimination
Learn the foundational Lean principles applied to IT. Identify waste in tech workflows, align around customer value, and set up for Lean transformation.

Day 2: Lean IT Tools — Flow, Visual Management & Performance
Apply Lean tools like value stream mapping, visual boards, and daily management systems to increase throughput, reduce incidents, and improve team collaboration.

Day 3: Continuous Improvement & Service Excellence in IT
Establish Lean culture with Kaizen, retrospectives, and data-driven decisions. Design feedback systems and metrics that lead to lasting IT performance improvement.

Course Overview

IT departments face constant pressure to do more with less — while improving quality, reliability, and customer satisfaction. Lean Management provides a framework to meet those demands, reduce waste, and unlock team potential.

This hands-on course teaches IT professionals how to apply Lean thinking across operations, service delivery, DevOps, infrastructure, and support environments.

You’ll learn how to:

• Apply Lean principles like flow, pull, and value stream focus in IT

• Identify and eliminate the 8 wastes of IT (e.g., rework, waiting, overprocessing)

• Use tools like value stream mapping, A3s, and visual boards

• Build Lean operating systems (daily huddles, root cause analysis, ticket triage)

• Drive team-based continuous improvement and measurable results

• Align IT goals with strategic business outcomes

This course bridges operations, delivery, and service management using Lean — not just as a theory, but as a practical discipline for technical teams.

What’s Inside Each Day

Day 1 — Lean Thinking in IT: Principles, Value & Waste Elimination

• The Lean mindset and its relevance to IT

• 8 types of waste in IT (defects, overproduction, waiting, etc.)

• Value stream thinking for tech and service teams

• Understanding customer value in internal IT and DevOps

• Workshop: Waste walk and value stream sketch of your team’s workflow

Tools: Lean A3, Value Stream Maps, Miro
Focus: Principles • Waste • IT Value

Day 2 — Lean IT Tools: Flow, Visual Management & Performance

• Mapping IT workflows with value stream mapping

• Visual boards for daily management and issue tracking

• Metrics: Lead time, cycle time, MTTR, first contact resolution

• Service desk and infrastructure examples: Lean ticket triage, SLA tracking

• Workshop: Create your team’s visual board and improvement backlog

Tools: Miro, Jira, Trello, VSM Templates
Focus: Flow • Visibility • Control

Day 3 — Continuous Improvement & Service Excellence in IT

• Kaizen and small improvement experiments in IT teams

• Root cause analysis: 5 Whys, Ishikawa (fishbone), fault trees

• Establishing a Lean IT operating rhythm (huddles, dashboards)

• Linking Lean initiatives to OKRs and KPIs

• Workshop: Design your Lean IT playbook and CI roadmap

Tools: A3 templates, RCA forms, Kaizen trackers
Focus: Improvement • Metrics • Sustainability

Course Goals

By the end of this course, you’ll be able to:

• Understand and explain Lean thinking in the IT context

• Identify waste and inefficiencies in systems and workflows

• Use Lean tools to improve flow, quality, and responsiveness

• Establish team-level and cross-team improvement practices

• Build a Lean IT management system that supports long-term success

• Align IT practices with customer-centric and business-driven goals

Who Should Take This Course?

• IT managers and team leads overseeing service delivery

• System administrators and engineers looking to streamline operations

• Service desk and support teams aiming to reduce response times and escalations

• DevOps and SREs focused on performance and flow

• Agile coaches and transformation leaders bringing Lean to technical teams

• Process improvement professionals working in digital environments

Class Reference: AGL-70
Form Updated on: 06/17/2025 (Version 1)
Last Modified on: 06/17/2025

Program Note

Includes customizable templates for A3 reports, visual boards, value stream maps, and Lean metrics dashboards. Tailored for IT, DevOps, and service operations.

Links to resources for presentations or summaries:

The History of Lean – YouTube

Summary of The Machine that Changed the World by James P. Womack, Daniel T. Jones, Daniel Roos
Kanban | Crisp – Get agile with Crisp
Lean certification
Videos – limitedwipsociety
The Challenge of Developing Lean Management – YouTube
DMAIC Process: Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control | ASQ
TEDxKnoxville – Bill Peterson – Lean Applied to Us – YouTube
Focus Improvement on the Manufacturing Constraint | Lean Production