‘Those people in IT, I don’t know why we have them around.” Richard, a department head for a major healthcare firm, stared at me across the table. “They have projects that are six months late! Projects they told us would take only a few months to do! We’d be better off if we just outsourced the whole department.” He shook his head. “It can’t be fixed. We tried.”

There were more than 200 people in this company’s application development group. You needed a small theater to get them all in the same room. Why couldn’t they seem to complete simple tasks—simple by even their own definition?

Finding the gemba

The first place to visit was the gemba. Go talk to the programmers, see their space, and gain an understanding of what predictable impediments might be slowing them down. When visiting any shop floor, we usually find, first and foremost, physical manifestations of undue constraints or poor management. Unfortunately, software developers are engaged in knowledge work that is invisible. There is no gemba, merely people staring back at you from behind their keyboards.

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