I like reading about Toyota and the ideas that have grown out of their systems and processes (lean, agile etc.).  There's so many articles out there that there's never a shortage of material to give another perspective on why Toyota has been so successful.  Though not a new article, I just came across http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/0869.html and http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/3512.html and they've really made me excited wondering how to map those ideas onto not just software development (XP, SCRUM etc.), but other types of process within IT services organisations.

 

The key ideas of assessing the need for improvement / problem solving by Failure to meet a customer need; Failure to do work as designed; and Failure to do work in an IDEAL fashion could obviously easily be applied to many organisations.  However to take action against these as described in those articles, the culture change needed in terms of management and employee behaviour is an interesting challenge.  I think there's obvious parallels with these ideas in parts of our business already and I for one will definitely be discussing this with other senior managers at some point.  For any Trinity employees reading this, I'd love to hear your thoughts.