Visual Management: Strategy 2 Market Gets Lean with Playbook

This is a guest post from Strategy 2 Market, a Playbook partner based in Chicago. Strategy 2 Market provides Lean New Product Development consulting for Medical Device and Industrial product companies like AT&T Bell Labs, Hollister and Johnson & Johnson. After seeing the "Wow" in Playbook, Strategy 2 Market decided to become a reseller of Playbook software.

Visual Management

Strategy 2 Market is excited to join forces with Playbook, Lean Agile project management software.

Again and again, we have seen our clients struggle when it comes to choosing the right projects, optimizing resources and improving time to market. More often than not, this is because they lack visibility into key pieces of information that can translate into a better bottom line.

"If you’re looking to shed months off your new project schedule, improve team culture and collaboration and track project execution in real-time… it might be time to hang up those tools that no one seems to pay attention to, and ax that weekly status meeting that seems bloated with old information."

Playbook Methodology - Lean, Agile, Theory of Constraints

At the heart of Playbook is a lean execution tool that thrives on 7 important principles:

Teams should work on small batches of work, to improve throughput time
Project task “buffers” or “padding” can actually be optimized
There is an optimum level of activities for team members to be effective
Team members should “Pull” tasks rather than be “Pushed” tasks
Tasks that are following the Critical Path should be re-prioritized
Planning starts with each team member
 Daily stand-up meetings clarify priorities and quickly identify roadblocks

Having software to organize information is key. But at the end of the day, it is the overarching methodology and processes that can empower an organization to reduce waste and become a Lean new product development machine. Just think of Strategy 2 Market as a trainer and pace leader for a marathon, and Playbook as your Garmin GPS/heart rate monitor. We know you get it. And with that, it might be time for you to sign up for your first 26.2-mile race.

Learn more about Playbook Lean project management and visual work management principles and tools in this on-demand webinar.