> Ticket management is not busy work, it's a necessity for everyone to keep updated.
Yes and no. If I oversimplify one of the important Lean points, you can divide activity into 3 buckets: 1) value-creating, 2) necessary waste, 3) pure waste. It's important here that "value" is always measured from the customer perspective.
For example, imagine a hamburger joint. You have ordered a cheeseburger. The person at the grill cooks a patty for you, puts some cheese on it, and assembles a burger. Then somebody else walks that burger to you. Except they get distracted after they've picked it up, so they end up walking to the back before coming up to give it to you.
Making the burger is value creating. You wouldn't want a raw patty, and you want it put together right. Walking the burger to you is necessary waste, in that moving the burger does not increase its value, but we have to do it to deliver value. The little stroll to the back is unnecessary waste in that you could receive the same value without it. Make sense?
With that framework, let's think about software. Ticket management is not a value-creating activity. If I do an extra hour of ticket management, that does not guarantee increased value. At best, it's necessary waste: I just can't figure out how to get you what you want without N hours of ticket management. But quite often it's unnecessary waste, labor performed for some purpose other than customer value. For example, a lot of planning activity is about making high-status people feel important. Or part of somebody's ongoing battle for increased status. Or the downstream consequence of previous unaddressed failures causing distrust.
So can ticket management be necessary waste? Sure. But it's often pure waste. I've done whole companies with no more ticket management than you get out of a bunch of index cards on the wall. [1] And we got there by relentlessly cutting the waste of heavier processes, something that a lot of companies won't even think about, much less attempt, because there productivity is relatively unimportant.
If the ticket is a direct conduit to the customer, I think you could argue that ticket management in the form of asking clarifying questions so that you build the right thing (or fix the right bug) is creating value?
People argue all sorts of things here. People argue that building large specs so as to get approval of the grand poobahs to fund the project to build the thing is creating value. But the easy rule of thumb is "If you do more X, does a customer receive more value?"
Another way to look at it: If I put the customer at the bottom of a well and the only way to communicate is by cranking notes up and down in a bucket, does turning the crank constitute a value increase? Mainly I think it's focusing on the wrong thing. Why is the customer in the well? Maybe we should let them out. Maybe if we have a question about how they work or what's good for them, we should visit them and study them as they work and then maybe ask them a question or two. And then, most importantly, ship something and see if it really does make things better.
So no, even in that narrow and unfortunate case, that is not creating value. It is at best necessary waste. Building the thing and giving to them, if it turns out to be valuable, is creating value (probably with some waste mixed in). The fact that communication is through a constrained and stilted channel is just a sign there's pure waste in the necessary waste that we can try to remove.
Yes and no. If I oversimplify one of the important Lean points, you can divide activity into 3 buckets: 1) value-creating, 2) necessary waste, 3) pure waste. It's important here that "value" is always measured from the customer perspective.
For example, imagine a hamburger joint. You have ordered a cheeseburger. The person at the grill cooks a patty for you, puts some cheese on it, and assembles a burger. Then somebody else walks that burger to you. Except they get distracted after they've picked it up, so they end up walking to the back before coming up to give it to you.
Making the burger is value creating. You wouldn't want a raw patty, and you want it put together right. Walking the burger to you is necessary waste, in that moving the burger does not increase its value, but we have to do it to deliver value. The little stroll to the back is unnecessary waste in that you could receive the same value without it. Make sense?
With that framework, let's think about software. Ticket management is not a value-creating activity. If I do an extra hour of ticket management, that does not guarantee increased value. At best, it's necessary waste: I just can't figure out how to get you what you want without N hours of ticket management. But quite often it's unnecessary waste, labor performed for some purpose other than customer value. For example, a lot of planning activity is about making high-status people feel important. Or part of somebody's ongoing battle for increased status. Or the downstream consequence of previous unaddressed failures causing distrust.
So can ticket management be necessary waste? Sure. But it's often pure waste. I've done whole companies with no more ticket management than you get out of a bunch of index cards on the wall. [1] And we got there by relentlessly cutting the waste of heavier processes, something that a lot of companies won't even think about, much less attempt, because there productivity is relatively unimportant.
[1] e.g.: https://williampietri.com/writing/2015/the-big-board/