Making sense of organization impediments

What prevents work from flowing smoothly?

Ken Power Principal Engineer, Cisco Systems Tuesday September 15, 2015

@ken_power

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“Expectation is the root of all

heartache”

- William Shakespeare

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Start with two questions

How does work flow through your

entire organization?

What impedes the flow of work through your organization?

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Impediment Description

Extra Features Features added without a proven need or valid hypothesis

Delays Situations in which something happens later than it should, and implies a holding back, usually by interference, from completion or arrival.

Handovers Incomplete work must be handed over from one person or group to another

Failure Demand The “demand caused by a failure to do something or do something right for the customer”

Work In Progress Work that is not yet complete, and, therefore, does not yet provide any value to the business or the customer

Context Switching When people or teams divide their attention between more than one activity at a time

Unnecessary Motion Any movement of people, work or knowledge that is avoidable, impedes the smooth flow of work, or creates additional inefficiencies

Extra Processes Extra work that consumes time and effort without adding value

Unmet Human Potential Not using or fostering people’s skills and abilities to their full potential

Impediments to Flow

Power, K., and Conboy, K., "Impediments to Flow: Rethinking the Lean Concept of ‘Waste’ in Modern Software Development", Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming, 15th International Conference (XP2014) May 26-30, MMXIV, 2014

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9 © 2015 Ken Power. All rights reserved. Three factors shape patterns and form the conditions

for self-organization in human systems

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Enabling flow through the organization

probe sense respond

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Failure Demand

Value Demand

Planned' Ready' In'Progress' Done' Accepted'

Exit'Policy:'Meets'Defini:on'

of'Ready'

(5)'

Exit'Policy:'Meets'Defini:on'

of'Done'

Exit'Policy:'Item'meets'

Acceptance'Criteria'

Exit'Policy:'Ready'to'be'deployed'

Exit'Policy:'Priori:zed'for'grooming'

(3)'(10)'

T1 T2

Power, K., "Metrics for Understanding Flow", Agile Software Development Conference (Agile 2014), 2014

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Ancona, D., "Framing and Acting in the Unknown", in (Snook, S.A., Nohria, N.N., and Khurana, R., 'eds.'): The Handbook for Teaching Leadership: Knowing, Doing, and Being, SAGE Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA, 2012

Sensemaking should be a core capability for individuals, teams and organizations “so that we can break through our fears of the unknown and lead in the face of complexity and uncertainty”

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77%

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77%

~70%

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77%

~30%

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•  Understand the nature of the problem. The Cynefin framework helps here.

•  Solve actual problems and causes, not just symptoms. A3 helps with this.

•  Create the conditions for self-organization. CDE helps with this.

•  Focus on the end-to-end flow of value through your organization, and on actively removing anything that impedes the flow of work. Lean thinking helps with this.

•  Understand what success and failure could look like before running your experiments. This will help you pay be selective about the patterns you pay attention to.

•  Reveal impediments to flow and understand their meaning. Sensemaking helps with this.

Lessons learned for solving organization impediments

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Ken is a Principal Engineer and internal coach and consultant with Cisco Systems, Inc. He lives in Galway, Ireland and works with teams and organizations around the world. His responsibilities include leading the agile transformation for Cisco’s largest software group. He also works with universities and research groups in agile, lean and software engineering research. He is currently completing a PhD in Lean Flow and understanding impediments in teams and organizations. He is a frequent speaker at the major international agile, lean and software engineering conferences, and has published numerous papers on agile and lean development. Ken is a Fellow of the Lean Systems Society, a certified Human Systems Dynamics Professional, and a trained Co-Active Coach and Organization & Relationship System Coach.

Biography: Ken Power

@ken_power

http://www.linkedin.com/in/kenpower

ken.power@gmail.com

http://kenpower.ie/

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