Since the Lean initiative began, the IT department has identified roughly eight to ten metrics to monitor on our daily huddle-board. Some metrics are tracked on a monthly basis, and some are daily. Daily metrics keep us from trending in the wrong direction for too long and having to sprint to catch up. One metric that has shown significant improvement is the fulfillment of SARF (Security Access Request Form) Service Requests.

IT receives an average of 15 SARFs per workday that have gone through all of the proper manager approval. At that point IT can begin to fulfill the request. We’ve set our goal to 30 or fewer open SARFs at any given time. The idea is to average fulfillment within two days. When we started tracking our backlog was 170 SARFs. Now we consistently hover between 25 and 40. If the metric meets the goal it is recorded in green. If it fails to meet the goal it is recorded in red. To save time we only discuss the red metrics. In addition to baseline (170), goal (<30), and current metric, we also keep track of the previous day to trend whether we’re getting closer to, or further from, the goal.

In addition to the huddle-board, each area of IT has a project board as well. The board contain the project name, owner, due date, next steps, and last update. The project boards are a quick and easy visual to help us stay organized with the dozens of projects going on at any given time.

The IT huddle board is on display in the CHSB 3rd floor suite 319.