Measure and Manage Flow in Practice

The sixth iteration of this talk, presented at Lean Kanban France 2012 (the previous iteration was presented at Lean Agile Scotland 2012)

Transcript

1. Measure and Manage Flow in Practice @ZsoltFabok http://zsoltfabok.com/ #lkfr12 http://lkfr.org/ by Zsolt Fabok 2012.10.18 Broke the WIP limit TWICE Still on the team
2. 5 Stories from the life of a team by using real application and data The collected data is the courtesy of Digital Natives
3. #1 Too many open items
4. WIP point of observation Visualize the situation with Cumulative Flow Diagram solved
5. The Cumulative Flow Diagram Done Started Queued lead time cycle time WIP backlog time number of work items It offers more than just the WIP...
6. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Q D 3 4 1 2 The simplest way of collecting data:
7. CFD doesn’t say too much about the throughput A quick detour:
8. work item WIP lead time /* detour */ time
9. lead time work item throughput 2 WIP /* detour */
10. work item 2 2 /* detour */
11. Let’s add more people to the project so that “things speed up”! /* detour */
12. work item 2 2 3 coordination + communication cost /* detour */
13. Actually, “things slow down”, so it was not a good idea (solve the right problem instead - systems thinking). End of the detour.
14. #2 It takes too much time to deliver
15. lead time
16. lead time CFD was not much help here... ...because we didn’t know much about the nature of the lead time
17. Distribution of lead times days count 0 3 5 8 10 13 15 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 22 28 33 56 average median* *Calculation of medians is a popular technique in summary statistics and summarizing statistical data, since it is simple to understand and easy to calculate, while also giving a measure that is more robust in the presence of outlier values
18. time spent on implementation (hours) time spent waiting (hours) % 1 63 98 7 57 90 2 62 97 2 62 97 3 61 96 Some examples of work items with 8-day lead time
20. 95% of the lead time was spent on waiting
21. Distribution of lead times days count 0 3 5 8 10 13 15 1 4 7 10 13 16 33 Before average 0 3 5 8 10 13 15 1 3 5 7 9 11 13 22 count days After median
22. #3 Still too many open work items
23. How many times the item has been rejected
24. 0 4 8 11 15 31-32 33-34 35-36 37-38 Number of rejected work items count week
25. 0 4 8 11 15 31-32 33-34 35-36 37-38 39-40 42-43 44-45 Number of rejected work items count week
26. #4 Being predictable
27. Sales: “I want to know when the new features can hit the market!” Management: “I want to know how much it will cost me!”
28. All the work items we had so far (~20 work items) ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ v v v v v v v v
29. Categorizing them into three groups ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ v v v v v v v v S M L
30. The lead time distribution ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ v v v v M 0 1 1 2 3 3 4 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 12 13 16 days count
31. The lead time distribution ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ v v v v M 0 1 1 2 3 3 4 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 12 13 16 SLA days count
32. The lead time distribution ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ v v v v M 0 1 1 2 3 3 4 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 12 13 16 SLA days count Expired
33. The spent time distribution ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ v v v v M 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 6 7 8 9 10 hours count
34. The spent time distribution ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ v v v v M 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 6 7 8 9 10 SLA hours count
36. #5 Forced improvement
37. #1 We decided that we would force ourselves to keep the SLA #2 Nothing changed. Still the same ratio
38. Evolution of the team’s workflow
42. Final thoughts on measurements
43. “If you can not measure it, you can not improve it.” Lord Kelvin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lord_Kelvin_photograph.jpg
44. “If you start measuring something you start optimizing it, and I know it's the wrong thing to optimize.” Paul Graham http://paulgraham.com/swan.html
45. The Hawthorne effect might influence your measurements
46. The key ideas
47. 1. We develop software not models (value) 2. Demand first, supply second 3. Observe the system (lead time, throughput) 4. Start measuring, look back if necessary 5. Manage 6. Mind that data expires 7. Goto step 3.
48. Thank you very much for your attention! http://zsoltfabok.com/ @ZsoltFabok