The Challenge

Have you ever had the experience of having to navigate the rapids of a complex project or initiative? How do you make sense of all the data thrown at you? How do you decide, what the most important thing to do now, is? How do you keep an eye on the results, you get? Do they match what you set out to accomplish?

It is about focusing on value – not just effort and effciency.

A confusion of aims and perfection of means, seem to be our main problem.

No one has to change - Survival is optional!

Navigating the Rapids

A lot of decisions in organizations have to be taken very quickly, due to the ever changing circumstances. Often the traditional reporting structure is too slow and will distort information, total transparency is needed in order to react quickly.

To stay relevant to stakeholders and customers, organizations have to be able to navigate the complex currents of the world today. This calls for another approach than the classic plan-driven one, the Agile and Lean approach, focus on:

• The Value Chain – Always focus on creating customer value in all you do.
• Removing Waste – Always focus on removing waste in production and service.
• Respect for humanity – Always respect people, they are the greatest assets of an organization. Allow them pride of workmanship.

The Value

Putting the Puzzle Together

We started a company, 舎AgileLeanHouse A/S, to provide tools, knowledge and solutions for those, who work with leadership and project management in organizations. We have developed our first cloud based tool 現agemba to support these people in getting the most value out of their efforts. We chose the name of the product in reference to the Japanese word " Gemba" known from Lean thinking.

The whole solution is based on working using the 4W pattern (read more here...:

• Why – First focus on the value, what values or business objectives do you want to harvest?
• Who – Then focus on who the beneficiaries are? Who will benefit from this? Who will use this and achieve value?
• What – Then focus on what the strategies or ideas for solutions are? How do they contribute to the values desired? What is their cost and risk?
• When – Finally focus on the time-wise constraints. When do certain things have to be accomplished? Contracts, legislation, budgetting rounds are examples of the many constraints for initiatives that appear in the time domain.

Who is benefitting?

The focus is to help people with responsibilities for the outcome of projects and initiatives to focus on doing the right things. To enable them to make sense of the often conflicting demands, and focus on those that actually provide value to stakeholders. Not just doing things efficiently with low cost.

Everybody in projects and initiatives benefits from using 現agemba, they have transparency into what has happened, what should be done next and what the impediments are. However, special attention is paid to the people handling the strategic aspect of projects and initiatives. Think of CEOs, departmental leaders, project managers and product owners. 現agemba also helps small innovative startups to keep there eyes firmly set on the values they want to achieve and customer value adding activities.

In complex projects and initiatives, leaders work to increase levels of communication and interaction, in order to facilitate emerging solutions consisting of something known combined with something new.

The Solution

Although nothing beats physical interaction and paper and pen, sometimes you just need a tool to support collaboration, planning and reporting. Our cloud based tool is called 現agemba. It is a collaborative platform, where projects and initiatives can be designed and visualized using eXtended Story Maps, providing transparency to stakeholders throughout the organization.

A Different Kind of Solution

現agemba provides a number of qualities to users:

• eXtended Story Map. A full interactive overview of Values, Users, Solutions and Time Line is provided.
• Full Traceability. All changes to specification, acceptance criteria, completion etc. are logged, for every item there is a complete comments history. Users are automatically presented with what is relevant for them
• Integrated issue and idea tracking. As soon as users start working, future activities will be a mix of planned improvements and qualities plus things triggered by users providing feedback, issues and ideas.
• Value focused. Any deliverable, any item can be linked to an issue or idea it implements or value it contributes to.

All this, and more, provides an un-parallelled capability for the product owner or project manager to analyze value, cost and risk interactively, to make sense of it all and come up with the best prioritization under the given circumstances.

It ain't the things
you don't know, that gets you into trouble. It's the things you know for sure, that just ain't so!

Start using 現agemba

現agemba exists in a number of different packages depending on the number of licenses required. Licenses come in four different categories, within each a number of roles can be assigned. License groups are:

• Stakeholders – can see and comment on things generally and can submit issues and ideas plus suggestions for stories.
• Executors – can do everything Stakeholders can, plus operate on tasks and do things, typically used for Team members.
• Managers – can do everything Executors can plus perform all planning tasks.
• Admin – can do everything.

Send your request to 現agemba sales, read more here...

The Company

A Different Kind of Company

舎AgileLeanHouse is owned and backed up by a sizeable group of people with experiences and qualifications from every walk of life. Many people have joined together to create a truly great solution. Our 舎AgileLeanHouse network of people consists of:

• Ambassadors – promoting our solutions and services, implementing and coaching in using the principles and tools.
• Contributors – adding functionality or other qualitites to products and services. Some produce documentation, some test and some create software.
• Shareholders – providing funding for the team working in 舎AgileLeanHouse. A broad base of shareholders from across Scandinavia have joined already.
• Stakeholders – following progress, participating in Review & Refinement meetings to guide the direction of the company and the product.

All network members have influence and can contribute ideas and critique, they also enjoy benefits of early access and extended support.

Visit our company website at 舎AgileLeanHouse.