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  I can’t imagine a better starting position. Thank you so much! ~  Simon Marcus, CTO of The Library Corporation

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Consulting / Training / Team Launches

Modus Cooperandi has worked with clients of all sizes to discover their own paths to effective teams. A typical consulting engagement lasts one week, and involves initial training, value stream mapping, examination of existing culture, impediments to success, and methods of continuous improvement. We help teams identify and solve problems over time and on their own. We  focus on rapid, high-value engagements with clear objectives. A Modus Cooperandi engagement ends with a detailed after-action report that covers issues discovered and next steps for all involved.

We offer direct training for corporate clients.  Teams learn to communicate better internally and with the rest of the organization using the visualization and clarity facilitated by Lean and Agile principles and better communication. Training includes the techniques of Personal Kanban for individuals and teams, ways to integrate Personal Kanban into work flows, value stream mapping, the metrics of kanban, and how to us retrospectives to create cultures of continuous improvement.

Training should never occur out of context, so most training includes an examination of actual team work flows, management styles, communications channels, policies, and practices that impact productivity and value creation. During the course of the training, we help teams discover better ways of managing and communicating that will survive beyond the training session. Our training never consists of a talking head; it is highly relevant and participatory.

Interested in hearing more? Write us, or give us a call.

The Principles We Use

Lean Coffee in Australia

Modus Cooperandi works with organizations to:

• Apply Lean principles to knowledge work
• Better visualize work
• Build collaborative management systems
• Increase productivity and effectiveness
• Improve communication
• Build and support highly-functioning teams

Our guiding principles reflect a philosophy incorporating the Lean, Agile and Social Media disciplines.

Lean Principles

Lean principles focus on increased communication and collaborative networks to achieve focused business goals. In order for knowledge workers to focus on projects and tasks-at-hand, they must both be informed and in control of their processes. We use lean principles to:

• Map value streams
• Understand the flow of work and information
• Improve decision-making
• Improve coordination with team members, as well as with other teams and other organizations (reducing transaction costs and raising effectiveness)
• Build cultures of continuous improvement

Agile Principles

Agile principles focus on providing information to and between team members. Agile creates systems where value and responsibility at a team level is clear at all times. We apply Agile principles to:

• Create team practices that maintain focus and cohesion
• Build real-time and retrospective systems of team management
• Understand the role of the team in the organization

Social Media Principles

Social media helps us respond to the need for better communication within an organizational system, whether subscribed to Lean, Agile, Scrum, or a tailored approach to managing the work of the business.  With social media, the communication infrastructure, the relationships between people, the definition of value, and rewards for good collaboration are defined and tracked. Social media augments Agile and Lean by creating a social and communicative foundation upon which robust networks of transparency and success can be built.

The Tools We Use

We use a large tool set from Lean, Agile, and other project and time management disciplines. We believe there is no “silver bullet” for management. Every client and their situation is unique, needing processes and tools to suit. A partial list of the tools we use is as follows:

Personal Kanban

We use Personal Kanban to:

• Map value streams so teams can see how their work is actually conducted
• Limit work-in-progress to focus on completion and ensure quality
• Communicate work to others within their group and throughout the rest of the organization
• Prioritize work effectively by seeing true opportunity costs
• Maintain a running record of work completed
• Continuously improve work by seeing the impact of the choices made

Lean Coffee / Lean Meetings)

The Lean Toolkit

There are many tools in Lean thinking that we use on a regular basis. Too many to list here, but a short list might include:

• Systems Thinking: Teaching people and organizations that our management systems have the largest impact on our work
• A3: A simple one-sheet problem solving and action definition tool
• Five Whys: A conversation-based root cause analysis tool (also part of A3)
• Cycle Time and Lead Time Metrics: Simple metrics based on the actual completion time of work (not guess work)
• Kaizen: Continuous Improvement

The Agile Toolkit