Really successful organizations—Apple, Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Google, and more—got that way through continuous improvement. They realized that to remain competitive, they needed to constantly look for ways to improve their processes, the outcomes that they were delivering to their customers, and their organizational structures. This is why these organizations adopt a kaizen-based approach of improving via small changes. We can do even better than that by taking a guided continuous improvement (GCI) approach that leverages the knowledge base contained within the Disciplined Agile® (DA™) tool kit.
Continuous improvement requires us to have agreement on what we’re improving. We’ve observed that teams that focus on improving on the way that they fulfill the promises described here, including improving on the way that they improve, tend to improve faster than those that don’t. Our team clearly benefits by increasing safety and diversity, improving collaboration, improving predictability, and keeping their workload within capacity. Our organization also benefits from these things when we improve upon the other promises.