Knowledge Base · Getting Started
What should my first 30/60/90 days of CI look like?
Days 1 to 30 follow the book's Starter Kit exactly: observe, ask why about one small frustration, run one small PDCA experiment, and share the story. Days 31 to 60 repeat that cycle with your team involved and the wins made visible. Days 61 to 90 standardise what worked, share it wider, and choose the next problem using the same small cycle.
Days 1 to 30: learn to see, and finish one cycle. This is the appendix Starter Kit. Observe for 15 minutes a day in week one. Pick the smallest frustration and apply the 5 Whys in week two. Run one tiny PDCA experiment in week three. Share the story in week four, whatever the outcome.
Days 31 to 60: make it a team habit. Repeat the same cycle on the next frustration, this time with colleagues doing the observing and the asking. Keep improvements visible as you go, in the spirit of the Small Wins Log described in Chapter 12, and acknowledge ideas publicly so people can see that contributing leads somewhere.
Days 61 to 90: make what worked stick. Standardise the changes that held up, share the learning beyond your immediate team, and pick the next problem in the same deliberate way rather than expanding into a large programme. In the book's Kaizen pattern, standardising and sharing are the step that stops a good result fading.
Keep the shape modest throughout. Three months of small, finished, shared cycles gives you evidence, a few standardised changes, and a team that has practised improvement, which is a stronger base than a large plan that is still being prepared.
Build the plan in the free course capstone
Related questions
- Where do I start? A 30-day plan for continuous improvement
- How do I run a small improvement experiment this week?
- Why do improvements fade after a few months, and how do I stop it?
Source: Continuous Improvement in the Workplace, Appendix.