STOP STARTING. START FINISHING.

David Hawks

CEO of Agile Velocity

Agile Trainer and Coach

Agile Austin Education Chair

CSM, CSP, PSM, PMI-ACP

Twitter - @austinagile

Copyright © 2013 Agile Velocity, LLC.  All Rights Reserved. AGILE VELOCITY PROPRIETARY

Transforming Technology Organizations

Austin, TX

Website – AgileVelocity.comBlog – AustinAgile.com

Agile Velocity enables companies to achieve a greater value in their technology investment through

Agile Training, Coaching & Product Development Services

Most Companies are Drowning in a Sea of

Opportunity

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Is our target goal 100% utilization?

Another example of sub-optimizing measurements is the focus in some companies on making sure that everyone is busy all of the time; and generally this is done by assigning people to work on several things at the same time. However, this strategy causes enormous waste because trying to drive utilization high creates the equivalent of traffic jams and slows everything down, while time spent thrashing between assignments mounts.http://www.scrum-breakfast.com/2011/04/interview-mary-poppendieck-on-lean.html

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What is the Impact of Change?

Working on many items in parallel

Working on items in value order

Hig

hest

Valu

e

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Let’s Play a Game

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Multi-tasking7

Form groups of 4-6

In each group 1 person will do the work and the rest are customers

The customers need to have a stopwatch (i.e. phone, watch) – it is possible share

The worker is going to write each person’s last name 1 letter at a time

The worker will write each name in parallel – 1 letter at a time

The worker will start with the customer on their left, ask for a letter, write it down, then move to the next customer

The customer’s will time from the beginning (all at the same time) to the point in which their name is fully written

Record your time

Average across all customers on your team

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Focus!8

The worker will write each name in serial

The worker will start with the customer on their left, ask for a letter, write it down, and keep writing until their name is fully written before moving on to the next customer

The customers will time from the beginning (all at the same time) to the point in which their name is fully written

Record the second time

Average across all customers

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Debrief9

How did the times compare?

As a worker, which method did you prefer? Why?

As a customer, which method did you prefer? Why?

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Why do we work on too many projects at one

time?Copyright © 2013 Agile Velocity, LLC.  All Rights Reserved. AGILE VELOCITY PROPRIETARY

Examples of Costs Resulting from Long Cycle Time

Analyst Developer Tester

ProjectManager

Can you take a look at this? I

think it’s a defect.

?

But I worked on that three weeks ago! I’ll have to read through

the code again.

x

Yes, it’s a defect, and I’ve built all this other

stuff on top of it!

xxx

I need to know if this estimate you gave me

last month is still accurate.

I don’t have time to fix it all properly now. I’ll do a quick fix and

tidy it up later.

OK. I’ll get it to you by Monday, I’m in on the

weekend anyway.

I don’t think this requirement is valid

any more, is it?

I’ll check with Jim when he get’s back. He’s away for a few

days.

?

Knowledge decay+ increase in the cost of fixing defects+ reduced quality+ information becomes stale and needs rework+ delays accumulate

= reduced customer valuegetKanban.com

Little’s Law

WIP

Throughput= Avg. Cycle

Time

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If we focus on fewer items at a time, we can:

1. Increase productivity and deliver more2. Get our customers more engaged3. Have agility to adjust when changes occur

5. Lower our cycle times

4. Limit the costs of delay

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So What Do We Do?Copyright © 2013 Agile Velocity, LLC.  All Rights Reserved. AGILE VELOCITY PROPRIETARY

Feature

Feature

Feature

Feature

Feature

Feature

?

Focus on improving both the ability to deliver and the predictability of delivery.

Why waste effort trying to order the input when there is no dependability in the order of delivery?

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Kanban, David J. Anderson, 2010

Balance Demand Against ThroughputCopyright © 2013 Agile Velocity, LLC.  All Rights Reserved. AGILE VELOCITY PROPRIETARY

By throttling the input (demand) into the system

This will limit the Work In Progress and Level Flow

Which will expose the bottlenecks

And enable improvement

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Slack capacity gives the team time to try improvements

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Frequent Delivery Builds Trust

20

40

60

80

Time

Sc

op

e D

eliv

ered

Team 1

Team 2

Which data is more defendable?

Agile PrincipleWorking Software is the

Primary Measure of Progress

Which Team do you have more confidence in?

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Once we have Factual Data we can have Factual Conversations

Team Historical Velocity = 10 Points/ Sprint (2 weeks)

The business wants to know what will be delivered in 12 weeks?

Feature

Points

Cumulative Total

Story A 2 2

Story B 5 7

Story C 3 10

Story D 1 11

Story E 3 14

Story F 2 16

Story G 5 21

Story H 2 23

Story I 2 25

Story J 3 28

Story K 5 33

Story L 2 35

Story M 8

43

Story N 2 45

Story O 5 50

Story P 2 52

Story Q 8 60

90% Confidence

50% Confidence

10% Confidence

Allows for Change

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Get Competing Stakeholders to Prioritize TogetherCopyright © 2013 Agile Velocity, LLC.  All Rights Reserved. AGILE VELOCITY

PROPRIETARY

It can be counterproductive to improve individual steps in our process

We need to Optimize the Whole!

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How long will it take to process 10 items?

5 5 A10 items/ min

B5 items/ min

5 5

A B

5

5A B

A B 5 5

Starting State

1 Minute

2 Minutes

3 Minutes

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How long will it take to process the 10th batch of 10 items?

5 5 A10 items/ min

B5 items/ min

Batch 10

5 5

5 5

5 5

5 5

5 5

12 Minutes!

5 5

5 5

5 5

5 5

5 5

5 5

5 5

5 5

5 5

5 5

5 5

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How can we address the bottleneck?

5 5 A10 items/ min

B5 items/ min

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If you have level Flow

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Kanban, David J. Anderson, 2010

Prioritization is no longer about ordering all the Work

But picking the next one as work finishes

27

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Throttle demand to meet throughput in order to gain leveled flow

Shortening cycles and increasing the rate of delivery

will build trustIdentify the constraint in your system and focus on optimizing the whole

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Stop Starting.

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Start Finishing.

Upcoming Workshops

3/20 – Agile and Scrum Foundations

3/21 – Advanced Agile Leadership

4/24 – Kanban Foundations

5/14 – Advanced Product Planning

Agilevelocity.eventbrite.com

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$495 Base Price (ea)

40% off the first five

20% off code - AustinPMI