Value stream mapping and kaizen in agile retrospectives

QAI Quest 2016

[email protected] Twitter: @OakParkGirl

Deconstruction SAFe – the Scaled Agile

Framework in a Nutshell on April 20th from 1:30pm to

3:00pm


Decomposing SAFe

Saturday, April 30th, 2016 at IIT – Chicago

Always FREE!

Registration is OPEN! http://www.chicagocodecamp.com/

http://www.chicagocodecamp.com/

Discussion of Lean principals

Quick review of Agile

A Look at Agile Retrospectives

Kaizen

Value Stream Mapping

Kaizen and VSM in Agile Retrospectives


Specify value

Map the value stream

Establish flow and eliminate waste

Create pull

Continuously improve


Lean

Japanese term meaning "the real place.“

Lean definition = the place where work is actually being

done or value is being created

Go to where the problem is if you want to have a real

chance of solving it!


Lean

No one knows best what and how to improve than the people closest to the work!

Lean




Kaizen




Iterative development methodology where requirements evolve through collaboration between the customer and self-organizing teams. Agile business approach aligns software development efforts with business and customer needs.

Agile

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

Working software over comprehensive documentation

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

Responding to change over following a plan

OVER <> INSTEAD OF

Agile

State of Agile (VersionOne) 2015

Agile





Kaizen




Stop Doing

Start Doing

Continue Doing


Set the stage

Gather Data

Generate Insights

Decide What to Do

Close the Retro

Retrospectives

Set the stage

Gather Data

Generate Insights

Decide What to

Do

Close the Retro


1. Setting the stage: Think about the check-in process for the

QAI conference.

2. Gather Data: Did anyone not have a badge ready when they

arrived? Was your name wrong? How long did it take?

3. Generate Insights: Any patterns? Root causes?

4. Decide What to Do: What are some reasonable

improvements for the 2017 conference?

5. Close the Retro


Retrospectives

Process: Agile (kinda)

Team Size: 16 (3 BAs, 8 DEV, 2 AUTO, 3 QA, 1 PO)

Project: Complete rewrite and consolidation of 2 legacy

customer and employee portals into 1 website

Timeline: 2 years and still going strong. Original release

date was supposed to be Dec 1, 2015


Retrospectives

03/18/16 Retrospective Notes

Insights:

Standups are taking 45 minutes. Too hard to get through everyone’s status (scrum master)

Product owner not approving User Stories before grooming, so team committing to “half-done” stories and end up doing a lot of in-sprint refinement (dev lead)

Vendor shipping rates engine delivered a week late and quality was poor. Team wasted 2 days manually backing out the changes and restoring the old version to environments. (whole team)

Team sometimes waits up to an hour for CI builds to finish. Need another build server and CI environment. (dev lead)

The team carrying an average of 50% of committed stories into the next sprint (product owner)

Action items and owners:

Focus standups on WIP only, avoid stand-up turning into a status meeting - Scrum master

Review agreed upon timelines with vendor, what recourse do we have when things are late or broken? - Product owner

Work with operations team to setup a new CI environment - Dev lead

Retrospectives

04/01/16 Retrospective NotesInsights:

Standups are better. Still taking 30 minutes due to disagreements about story acceptance criteria. (scrum master)

Vendor shipping rates engine delivered on time, but services did not match the documentation so we’ve had a big increase in bugs the past few sprints. (QA lead)

Development team still waiting on new CI environment. (DEV lead)

The team’s had an increasing number of defects overall, many due to misunderstood requirements. The tests QA writes are based on original requirements, but they aren’t notified when requirements change (QA lead)

The team still carrying 50% of committed stories over into the next sprint, many items are rejected during sprint review

due to requirements not being fully met (product owner)


Make sure more time is spent discussing AC during backlog grooming - Scrum master

Meet with vendor to discuss our standing SLA. What recourse do we have for missed milestones? - Product owner

Work with operations team to setup a new CI environment - Dev lead

Retrospectives

04/15/16 Retrospective NotesInsights:

Standups are on track, team doing a great job of focusing on WIP

CI environment is up and running as of late last night!

Developers encountered no issues with vendor code, but still needs to go through QA to be sure (dev lead)

Team moving from Skype to Slack for day-to-day communication (dev lead)

BA team is very waterfall and is still struggling with user story development (dev lead)

Not enough user stories on the backlog for next sprint, never seem ready for approval (Product Owner)

Over 50% of features being rejected in Sprint Review due to defects (Product Owner)

Manual testing required for regression has outgrown available team capacity, we may be missing bugs! (QA lead)


Work with BAs and product owner on agile user story development techniques – scrum master

Focus on reviewing features with PO as soon as complete, don’t wait for Sprint Review – dev team

Recruit sales and marketing folks to assist with manual testing – QA lead

Retrospectives





Kaizen





Kaizan

Identify an opportunity

Analyze the process

Develop an optimal solution

Implement the solution

Study the results

Standardize the solution

Plan for the future


Kaizan


Kaizan


Analyze the

process

Develop an

optimal solution

Act on the

solution

Study the

results

Share the

solution

Plan for the

future

How is the Kaizen process different than what a team does in a

retrospective?

Where do the two methods overlap?


Kaizan

A Kaizen burst, also known as a Kaizen blitz, refers to a short burst of activity that solves a problem with intensity and urgency.

The goal of a Kaizen burst is to identify and quickly remove waste

Kaizen bursts are focused activity on a particular process or activity


04/18/16 Retrospective Themes

Recurring issues:


Analyze the

process

Develop an

optimal solution

Act on the

solution

Study the

results

Share the

solution

Plan for the

future

1. Break into teams of ~5 people

2. Review the Acme case study and retro notes

3. Identify ~3 recurring themes in the retrospective notes

4. Prioritize those items in order of ROI



Analyze the

process

Develop an

optimal solution

Act on the

solution

Study the

results

Share the

solution

Plan for the

future

1. What recurring themes did the teams identify in the

retrospective notes?

2. Which theme had the highest ROI on your team?



Recurring issues:

Too much rework due to incomplete or misunderstood requirements

Operations team is a bottleneck

Quality issues due to lack of automated tests adding risk


Analyze the

process

Develop an

optimal solution

Act on the

solution

Study the

results

Share the

solution

Plan for the

future




Kaizen





Value Streams

Visualizes process and problems

Qualitative tool for identifying and eliminating waste

Aligns organizations and promotes teamwork

Spans entire value chain from requirements to delivery

Results in model of current state, future state, and an

implementation plan


Value Streams

1. Define Customer Value

2. Create and Analyze the Current State VSM

3. Create and Analyze the Future (Ideal) State VSM

4. Create an Action Plan


Value Streams

Define Customer Value

Create and Analyze the

Current State VSM

Create and Analyze the Future

State VSM

Create an Action Plan

The Acme software team strives to deliver all features that they commit to at the end of each and every sprint, with high quality, to the Product Owner.




Current State VSM


State VSM


Identify the product or process

Define the scope of the mapping project.

Map the process steps

Include information flow

Collect process data.

Create a time line




Current State VSM


State VSM





Current State VSM


State VSM


Customer value/Opportunity: all committed features are

delivered in line with requirements with high quality

Reviewing Acme’s Current State VSM answer the following:

1. What activities are wasteful (not value added)?

2. Where are there bottlenecks?

3. In your experience, what steps/activities seem to be missing?


Value Streams


Analyze the

process

Develop an

optimal solution

Act on the

solution

Study the

results

Share the

solution

Plan for the

future




Kaizen







Analyze the

process

Develop an

optimal solution

Act on the

solution

Study the

results

Share the

solution

Plan for the

future

Identify Scope of Value Stream Map

Create & Analyze the Current State

Create & Analyze Future State

Refine Retrospective Action Items

Set the stageGather Data

Generate Insights

Decide What to Do

Close the Retro


Recurring issues:

Too much rework due to incomplete or misunderstood requirements

Operations team is a bottleneck

Quality issues due to lack of automated tests adding risk


Analyze the

process

Develop an

optimal solution

Act on the

solution

Study the

results

Share the

solution

Plan for the

future

1. Return to teams

2. Discuss the chosen recurring theme/opportunity

3. Map out a process Current State VSM for that theme

• Identify who is doing what

• Identify value add activities

• Identify wasteful (non-value add) activities

• Always consider customer value


1. Choose a team representative

2. Presents the team’s identified critical issue(s)

3. Walk through current state map around the identified issue(s)


The current state map is a starting point for applying lean principles to

improving your process

This involves one or more of the following:

Improving cycle time

Reducing downtime

Improving quality/reducing errors

Focusing on delivering what the customer wants when they want it



1. Return to teams

2. Analyze current state map

a) Determine what processes, activities, and deliverables to keep

b) Determine what processes, activities, and deliverables to replace

c) Collaborate to add new processes or activities to replace waste (if

needed)


1. Choose a team representative

2. Present future state map and point out where:

a. You identified wasteful activities

b. Where you added additional activities


Action Steps: What Will Be Done?

Responsibilities: Who Will Do It?

Timeline: By When? (Day/Month)

Resources: Resources Available, Resources Needed (financial, human, political & other)

Potential Barriers: What individuals or organizations might resist? How?

Communications Plan: Who is involved? What methods? How often?


04/05/16 Action Plan


Analyze the

process

Develop an

optimal solution

Act on the

solution

Study the

results

Share the

solution

Plan for the

future

Action Steps: Start holding proper grooming meetings with the whole team!

Accountability: Product owner and scrum master

Timeline: Next sprint’s Grooming meeting on April 15th

Resources: need to secure the larger conference room

Potential Barriers: sales team meets in that room, can they shift to afternoon?

Communications Plan: SM and PO to send email explaining need for proper grooming meetings. PO will also have f2f conversations to make sure we have “buy-in” from business folks

1. Return to teams

2. Create an action plan to move from your current state to your ideal state

a) Action Steps

b) Responsibilities

c) Timeline

d) Resources

e) Potential Barriers

f) Communications Plan


Study the results

Share the solution

Plan for the future


Make sure the right people attend

Make sure that leadership is aware of your efforts and “has your

back”

Allocate enough time to analyze the important issues

Keep future state and action plan documents someplace visible

to everyone





Kaizen




Agile Kaizen: http://agilekaizen.net/

Agile Retrospectives: https://pragprog.com/book/dlret/agile-retrospectives

Lean Change Management: Amazon has a great price!

Kim Scott’s Radical Candor: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-surprising-secret-to-being-a-good-boss-2015-12

Value Stream Mapping: How to Visualize Work and Align Leadership for Organizational Transformation (95% off kindle version on Amazon)


http://agilekaizen.net/

https://pragprog.com/book/dlret/agile-retrospectives

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-surprising-secret-to-being-a-good-boss-2015-12

Email: [email protected]

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andugan

Slideshare.NET: http://www.slideshare.net/angelabinkowski

Twitter: @OakParkGirl, @ChicagoALM, @TeamPolaris

Blog - http://www.tfswhisperer.com/

Chicago Visual Studio ALM User Group - http://www.chicagoalmug.org/

Polaris Solutions website - http://www.polarissolutions.com/


mailto:[email protected]

https://www.linkedin.com/in/andugan

http://www.slideshare.net/angelabinkowski

http://www.tfswhisperer.com/

http://www.chicagoalmug.org/

http://www.polarissolutions.com/

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Value stream mapping and kaizen in agile retrospectives