My Lean compadre Hal Macomber, one the leading experts in Lean applied to construction project management and also a speaker at the forthcoming UK Lean Conference [sign up now to guarantee your place at the RSA in September] has beaten me to the punch reviewing Ric Merrifield's new book Re-th!nk. Hal's written a really insightful, thoughtful well balanced review over at Reforming Project Management, go read it now!
The book's subtitle "a business manifesto for cutting costs and boosting innovation" talks to the times we live in today. However, the book has been about a decade in the making and about 2 years in the writing. Behind the book is an analysis methodology that Microsoft brands as Motion and Dennis Stevens of Synaptus (one of Ric's collaborators on the early work in the method) calls Capabilities Analysis.
The idea is simple! Companies get hung up on how they do things and try to optimize those while they ought to be asking what they do! For example, if someone in an office is sending a fax then we observe the how - sending a fax - and we may try to optimize that - more functions such as delayed send, automatic retry - or switch to a new how such as email. But if we asked the person sending a fax what they were doing they might tell us that the were confirming an order. If we think more about the what - confirming an order - then this can lead to useful insight, cost savings and innovative thinking.
Capabilities Analysis allows firms to analyze what they do in different divisions and to identify duplication. Instant cost saving! The results on this are astounding. Some firms have saved tens of millions with this one step alone. Meanwhile, the remaining capabilities can be analyzed with questions in a survey of stakeholders and classified into brackets such as stragetic/non-strategic, work class leader/competent/not competent and so forth. Combinations of these can then be used to make recommendations.
For example, if something is not strategic and we are not good at it then we should outsource it and buy the service instead. If we are good or world class at something but it is not strategic then we should spin it out and sell that service to our competitors. This will realize more shareholder value. If something is strategic but we are not good at it then we should invest in it.
Capabilities Analysis is a service that David J. Anderson & Associates is offering to our clients primarily through Dennis Stevens working as an associate.
I should mention that both Dennis and Ric are friends of mine. I've known Ric since I worked at Microsoft. Their third collaborator and co-author their 2008 Harvard Business Review article: The Next Revolution in Productivity, Jack Calhoun was an early fan of my book Agile Management for Software Engineering and used to hand out copies to Microsoft executives. Pity none of them actually read it!
Microsoft use Motion as a method to analyze businesses and make strategic recommendations for investment in Service Oriented Architecture. They teach SOA by showing businesses how to re-engineer into a plug-n-play set of services. This makes SOA easier to implement and more aligned with the business strategy. In my observation Capabilities Analysis is powerful on its own but when tied to a SOA strategy it becomes the Next Revolution in IT Strategy!
Ric's book is very readable. It's full of stories of businesses he's observed that have understood their what's and haven't been attached to their how's. It's an enjoyable read and/but very light on the theory of Capabilities Analysis. So if you like the message and think Capabilities Analysis is something that would benefit your business contact me and Dennis and I will be in touch. Technorati tag: Ric+Merrifield, Re-th!nk, Dennis+Stevens, Jack+Calhoun, Harvard+Business+Review, HBR, Management, Business
