Operationalization of Lean thinking through Value Stream Mapping with Simulation and FLOW

Nauman bin AliSupervisors: Prof. Claes Wohlin Dr. Kai Petersen

Opponent: Letizia Jaccheri

letiziajaccheri.org

Content

• Introduction & Background• Summary of Thesis• Critical discussion of the issues in the Thesis• Conclusion

Software Development

Resources Activities Products

• Hardware• Software• Documentation

• Planning• Analysis• Design• Construction• Testing• Training• Implementation• Follow-up• Enhancements• etc...

equipment

How to improve?

• Attempt to organize the software life cycle by defining– activities involved in software production– order of activities and their relationships

• Goals of a software process– standardization, predictability, productivity, high product quality,– ability to plan time and budget requirements

Software process model

• “determine the order of stages involved in software development and evolution, and to establish the transition criteria for progressing from one stage to the next.

• These include completion criteria for the current stage plus choice criteria and entrance criteria for the next stage. Thus a process model addresses the following software project questions:

• What shall we do next?• How long shall we continue to do it?”

Process model goals (B. Boehm 1988)

• Software process enactment – software development environments (to automate the activities)

• Software process simulation (to predict and decide)

Software process simulation

SOME AGILE METHODS- Agile software process model [Ayoama, 1998]- Adaptive Software Development [Highsmith, 2000]- Crystal Family of Methodologies [Cockburn, 2000]- Dynamic Systems Development Method [Stapleton, 1997]- Extreme Programming [Beck, 1999]- Feature-Driven Development [Palmer & Felsing, 2002]- Lean software development [Poppendieck x 2, 2003]- Scrum [Schwaber, 1995; 2002]- Mobile-D™ [Abrahamsson et al., 2004]]- Agile Modeling [Ambler, 2002]- Internet-Speed Development [Cusumano & Yoffie, 1999; Baskerville

et al., 2001; Truex et al., 1999]- Pragmatic Programming [Hunt & Thomas, 2000]

Lean

• Lean – manufacturing developed by Toyota between 1950’s & 80’s

• Developed by – Taiichi Ohno @ Toyota • Lean - reason for Toyota’s consistent success in a

stagnant industry• Initial Agile enthusiasts were inspired by lean

manufacturing.

7 Principles of Lean Development

1. Eliminate Waste2. Amplify Learning

3. Decide as late as possible

4. Deliver as fast as possible

5. Empower the team

6. Build integrity in

7. See the whole

22 Tools of Lean (Mapping to Principles)

• #1 Eliminating Waste

1. Seeing Waste

2. Value Stream

Mapping

#2 Amplify Learning

3. Feedback

4. Iterations

5. Synchronizations

6. Set Based Development

#3 Decide as late as possible

7. Options Thinking8. The last responsible moment9. Making decisions

#4 Deliver as fast as possible

10. Pull Systems11. Queuing Theory12. Cost of delay

22 Tools of Lean (Mapping to Principles)

• #5 Empower the team

13. Self-determination

14. Motivation

15. Leadership

16. Expertise

#6 Build Integrity In

17. Perceived Integrity18. Conceptual Integrity19. Refactoring20. Testing

#7 See the Whole

21. Measurements22. Contracts

#1. Eliminate Waste

1. Learn to see Waste

2. Value Stream Mapping

“Can you please do an hour’s worth job in a day!“- Taiichi Ohno (Non-value activities adds up to the cost)

Lean focuses on eliminating waste by focusing on flow of value from request to delivery

Muda Muri and Mura

Wastes in IT World

• Unnecessary features• Gold plating• Delays• Hand-offs• After the fact QC• Interim work artifacts• Meetings• Complexity• Inefficiency• Constant re-prioritization

of active work

• Interruptions, start-stop work

• Handoffs• Discarded / lost knowledge • Miscommunications• Useless Information• Wrong tools• Excess Troubleshooting for

problems solved in the past• Obsolete policies and

standards

#1. Eliminate Waste – 1. Learn to see Waste

Value Stream Mapping

• Used to understand visualize current system, future system and eliminate waste

#1. Eliminate Waste – 2. Value Stream Mapping

Modeling language

Value Stream Mapping

• Don’t find faults / improvements in current VSM• You haven’t yet mapped where you want to go• The next step after current value stream map is to ask

“How do we want our VSM to be after 3 years in the future?”

• Then you can draw the VSM of the future state

Current State

Future State

Unclear Territory

Adopted from Mike Rother/Improvement Kata

#1. Eliminate Waste – 2. Value Stream Mapping

Research framework • Experiment• Literature review• Case study

– Students– Professionals

• Action Research

WorldScience

1564, Pisa, Italia

Content

• Introduction & Background• Summary of Thesis • Critical discussion of the issues in the Thesis• Conclusion

Concepts - Title

• operationalization– of

• lean thinking– through

• value stream mapping (VSM)– with

• Simulation (SPSM)– and

• FLOW

Systematic Literature Review (Ch.2)

• Nauman bin Ali, Kai Petersen and Claes Wohlin, ‘A Systematic Literature Review on the Industrial Use of Software Process Simulation’, Journal of Systems and Software, Volume 97, November 2014, Pages 6585, ISSN 01641212.

• Important points– Existing reviews – Review Q: what evidence has been reported that the

simulation models achieve their purposes in real-world settings?

– 87 primary studies – No reported cases of the transfer of technology; not

inexpensive; no evidence to substantiate the claimed benefit of SPSM

Case study with students (Ch. 3)

• Nauman bin Ali, Michael Unterkalmsteiner, ‘Use and evaluation of simulation for software process education: a case study’, In Proceedings of the European Conference on Software Engineering Education (ECSEE), Seeon, Germany, 2014. <Won best paper award>

• Important points– SPS game– Assessing software development process understanding (RQ1)– Impact of SPS on students’ understanding of software

development processes (RQ2)

Literature Review and Action Research (Ch. 4)

• Aggregating software process simulation guidelines• Important points

– Understand SPSM studies– Six steps process– System dynamics based simulation model to be tested at the

companies

Research Process – Two Industrial case studies (ch. 5)

• Simulation assisted value stream mapping for software product development: an investigation of two industrial cases

• Important points– Two products at Ericsson AB Sweden– 10 workshops – Simulation for discussion not prediction

Research Process – Industrial case study (Ch. 6)

• FLOW-assisted value stream mapping in a large scale software product development

• Important points– Combine VSM with FLOW notation– Ericsson AB Sweden

Meta-Literature Review (Ch. 7)

Identifying and evaluating strategies for study selection in systematic literature studies

Publications International conferences:1. Nauman bin Ali, Michael Unterkalmsteiner, ‘Use and evaluation of simulation for

software process education: a case study’, In Proceedings of the European Conference on Software Engineering Education (ECSEE), Seeon, Germany, 2014. <Won best paper award>

2. Nauman bin Ali and Kai Petersen. ‘Evaluating strategies for study selection in systematic literature studies’. In Proceedings of the International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM), Turin, Italy, 2014. <Won best shortpaper award>

3. Nauman Bin Ali, Kai Petersen, Mika Mäntylä, “Testing highly complex system of systems: an industrial case study.” Proceedings of the ACMIEEE international symposium on Empirical software engineering and measurement ESEM 2012: 211220

4. Nauman bin Ali, Kai Petersen, “A consolidated process for software process simulation: State of the Art and Industry Experience”, 38th IEEE EUROMICRO Conference on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications (SEAA), 2012: 327336 for the best paper award and invited to submit an extension to an ISI journal

5. Kai Petersen, Nauman Bin Ali, “Identifying Strategies for Study Selection in Systematic Reviews and Maps”. International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement ESEM 2011: 351354

Journals:

1. Henry Edison, Nauman bin Ali, Richard Torkar, "Towards innovation measurement in the software industry", Journal of Systems and Software, Volume 86, Issue 5, May 2013, Pages 13901407, ISSN 01641212

2. Nauman bin Ali, Kai Petersen and Claes Wohlin, ‘A Systematic Literature Review on the Industrial Use of Software Process Simulation’, Journal of Systems and Software, Volume 97, November 2014, Pages 6585, ISSN 01641212.

Workshops and Theses

• Kai Petersen and Nauman bin Ali. ‘Operationalizing the requirements selection process with study selection procedures from systematic literature reviews’, submitted to the 6th Workshop on Requirements Prioritization and Communication, REFSQ, Essen Germany, 2015

• Nauman bin Ali, Henry Edison, ``Towards innovation measurement in the software industry'', Master Thesis in Software Engineering, Thesis no: MSE2010: 11, May 2010

• Nauman bin Ali, ``Towards guidelines for conducting software process simulation in industry", Licentiate thesis in Software Engineering, Blekinge Institute of Technology, ISBN: 9789172952577,2013

Contributions

• Contribution-1: Recognizes the central role of VSM in operationalization of Lean in the SE context and improves the existing guidelines for conducting VSM.

• Contribution-2: Determined the usefulness of SPSM to support VSM in artifact flow analysis and when reasoning about changing the process.

• Contribution-3: Determined the utility of FLOW to support VSM to capture, analyze and improve information flows in software development.

• Contribution-4: Determined the usefulness of SPSM in applied settings.• Contribution-5: Consolidated guidelines to apply SPSM in industry.• Contribution-6: Improvement in the guidelines for conducting

systematic literature studies by providing means to systematically perform and document study selection related decisions.

Content

• Introduction & Background• Summary of Thesis• Critical discussion of the issues in the Thesis• Conclusion

Some pointers before we get critical

• Candidate’s topic is clearly well chosen, and bears interest far beyond the immediate settings

• Candidate has defended his principal arguments in respected scientific forums world-wide

• The publication record is outstanding• Candidate has engaged in a truly industrial and

education research base• All of these facilitates the critical discussion…

Rationale for personal interest

• The topic clearly bears significant theoretical and pragmatic relevance.

• How did you decide to research the interconnection of LEAN, VSM, Simulation, and FLOW? What does come first and last?

MOTIVATING THE RESEARCH ANGLE

• You raise the role of VSM as a key role in LEAN• Could you elaborate, based on your empirical findings

how projects in the studied company have concretely suffered from NOT having a proper LEAN VSM in place?

• And what about SPM and SPMS?

Publications

• You have published extensively in several different conferences. This is a great demonstration of your academic performance skills and dedication.

• Could you elaborate on the relation – between the chapters (2 – 7) and the publications?– Between the publications? Literature Reviews (SPSM) – Case

Studies (LEAN VSM)

• Which of the conference publications do you believe have potential to be published in any of the fine software engineering journals?

• Are you planning to do this?

WHAT IS YOUR MAIN RESEARCH QUESTION?

• your work: How to operationalize LEAN Thinking in the software engineering context?– How to improve artifact flow analysis?– How to improve information flow analysis?

• Can you reflect about this RQ and the RQs which have guided the LRs?

Principal Concept Definitions are ambiguous

• Please explain us how you would define the main concepts that are often used in the Thesis– LEAN– VSM– SPSM– FLOW – Literature review– Case Study

• Which is the most important concept that people in this room should remember after today? Why?

Agile method selection not clear

• You have chosen Lean as the agile method representative

• Why?• Can you better explain

your choice? • Did you get feedback

from the company about this choice?

Issues Regardingthe Research Approach

– How were the company entities recruited?– What were the means you used to gain access to practitioners

and students?

Theoretical Impact

• In your view, what do you think are your primary contributions to theory development?

• What is the theory that your work contributes to?– If Lean and/or SPM, what

is the theory that they rely on?

Final question: the future

• Based on your research with company and students– what will happen to

• LEAN • VSM • SIMULATION• Literature reviews and empirical software engineering

– In the future?

Contributions

• Contribution-1: Recognizes the central role of VSM in operationalization of Lean in the SE context and improves the existing guidelines for conducting VSM.

• Contribution-2: Determined the usefulness of SPSM to support VSM in artifact flow analysis and when reasoning about changing the process.

• Contribution-3: Determined the utility of FLOW to support VSM to capture, analyze and improve information flows in software development.

• Contribution-4: Determined the usefulness of SPSM in applied settings (discussion not prediction?)

• Contribution-5: Consolidated guidelines to apply SPSM in industry.• Contribution-6: Improvement in the guidelines for conducting

systematic literature studies by providing means to systematically perform and document study selection related decisions.

Content

• Introduction & Background• Summary of Thesis• Critical discussion of the issues in the Thesis• Conclusion