Guide ·
A short gemba guide
How to go see the work before you fund a build.
Gemba means the real place. For a software project, that is wherever the job is actually done — not the conference room where the job is described.
Go with a question, not a solution. You are there to see one cycle of work and to learn what 'better' means to the person who will live with the change.
Watch first. Ask second. Interrupt only when you are lost. People narrate a cleaner process than the one they perform if you put them on stage.
Record facts: timestamps, systems touched, information copied by hand, errors, and the moment someone says 'we usually just…'. Those asides are the requirements.
Leave with three things written down: the constraint, the number that would prove it moved, and the smallest slice that could move it. If you leave with a feature list, go back.
Repeat after the first release. The second walk is where you learn whether the software helped or simply moved the workaround somewhere new.