“Lean towards Agile”
In the late 80s and early 90s Ford Motor Company was undergoing a huge transition. We were under extreme pressure to change our management system to align with the way Toyota conducted business using their Toyota Production System. They were winning on many levels; speed to market, quality, and cost.

I am not only referring to manufacturing. In V-Engine Engineering (we designed all “V” shaped engines) we needed to improve our quality system in order to compete with the Japanese.So how do you take a building full of 2,500 highly paid engineers, developers, and managers and get them to think Lean? In the beginning, the wrong way! We learned that ramming new processes down their throats proved to be a futile effort. Instead, we chose to use a softer approach. Much like coaches use today to implement Agile in organizations.

The company mandated that we get ISO 9000:2001 certified, and they gave us one year to do it. I was part of a team of five people that help roll this out in our organization. I wish I could say it was easy, but it wasn’t. It was a tremendous struggle to get that many people aligned with a new system.

We had two primary areas within our division; Engineering and IT. My primary focus was on the IT side of the house. I had to delve into the inner-workings of the PMO and challenge their processes. That’s when the fun began…

Bio: Michael P. Barone (mbarone911@yahoo.com)
•Father of five (3 boys, 2 girls) and grandfather of three (all girls)

•Working in IT since 1990

•Agile mindset since birth

•LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelbarone

Standing Agenda:

Lunch Sponsored by Improving Enterprises

11:30am – 12:00pm – Gather to chat, network and eat lunch 12:00pm – 12:45pm – Presentation and Q&A