Cynefin, Kanban&

Crash Test Dummies

Agile Richmond – May 2013

Guy Winterbotham Bio

FlowBottlenecks

WIP Limits, 5S, Kaizen

AgileUgly Agile

@guywinterbotham http://www.linkedin.com/pub/guy-winterbotham/1/2bb/516

The Agile Help Disclaimer

It depends …

Project Context

PeopleTeam, Stakeholders

MechanicsTools, Processes

ClientProduct, ServiceCulture

Organization,Market, Domain

Cynefin: A decision making framework

Pronounced - ku-nev-in

Licensed by Dave Snowden under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported

Marketing Site = Content Targeting

Use campaigns to promote products

Marketing sites:Electronic brochures that change to match the user

Customer’s choices direct them to a product. Analytics measures effectiveness.

A B C D

Project Time Line

STAGE 1: Basic Scrum

Slices of supporting architecture

Slices of pages aligned to business units

RANT #1 – I HATE SCRUMS!

Forming a Scrum

Rugby Union uses two more

• Pick up two cards• Write where you feel you are• Write where you feel the team is

Tuckman's Stages of Group Development

A quick and dirty team self assessment

To change we needed to look at:• Who we were – Roles and Responsibilities• How we work – Engineering Practices• How we function – Our Processes• Who we are working with – Our Client

Lewin's Change Model

Unfreeze – Change – Refreeze

Plan for Getting to Performing

Make the Team Aware of the Context

Cultural awareness came later

Counter the Hierarchy of Process

Counter the Hierarchy of Role

Client Fire

Engagement Manager

Project Manager

Architect/ Tech Lead

Testers

DesignersDevelopers BSAs

• Proximity ≠ Smarter or Better• Was an indicator of Cynefin Sweet spot

Counter the Hierarchy in Behavior

To engage when present

Respect for ideas no matter their source

A willingness to bring ideas or support the best current idea

To always seek help

To use teams for complex endeavors

Do now what can effectively be done now

“I will never do anything dumb on purpose”

McCarthy's Core Protocols

Focus away from differences ….

to common goals

“Continuous Integration is a software development practice where members of a team integrate their work frequently…”, blah blah, blah

-Martin Fowler

“Continuous Integration along with Developer TDD forms a competitive game framework. Coding is a competitive contact sport”

- Me

Pay attention to Build Metrics

Use Metrics to drive games

Pay attention to Build Metrics

Visible Metrics for Quality Focus

STAGE 2: Scrum + 1: Change and Scale

Late 2010 through Q3 2011

Slices of pages aligned to business units

Build a core framework to support pages

Context Changes• New Management• Co-locate on site• New Teams• Separation of concerns• Product Roadmap

Challenges• Scaling a team• Big team woes• That darn testing process

STAGE 2: The bad testing idea

Week 1Dev

Environment

• Tasking of stories• Story Development + Unit testing• Story Test Case Preparation• Functional Testing (if functionality allows)

Week 2Dev

Environment

• Story Development + Unit Testing• Story Test Case Preparation• Functional Testing

MUDA Week 3

QA Environment

• Sprint Code Build into QA• Formal Functional Testing – Input test cases and results into QC• Performance Baseline• Detailed Design for Next Sprint Stories• Sprint Code Review• Bug Fixes and Code Quality rework• Knowledge Transfer to QC staff• Retrospective• Sprint Planning• Maybe a demo

Muda (無駄 ) Wasteful, Unproductive

Challenge 1: Modeling a Big team

Needed tool that could….

• Use bad estimates to extrapolate a critical chain

• Be able to include inter-team dependencies

• Be able to model a ramp up period

• Handle “What If” scenarios

• Already available to everybody on the team

• Could communicate schedule and budget

RANT #2 – AGILE HATES PMI!

Individuals + Interactions

Processes + Tools

Tools, Tools and more Tools

Challenge 1: Modeling a Big team

Needed tool that could….

• Use bad estimates to extrapolate a critical chain

• Be able to include inter-team dependencies

• Be able to model a ramp up period

• Handle “What If” scenarios

• Already available to everybody on the team

• Could communicate schedule and budget

Microsoft Project is a Modeling Tool

…please keep this our little secret

• Use VB macro to load your backlog• Build out different roles as task• Play with resources as roles not individuals• Look at critical chain interactions of roles• Learn to love the Level Button

RANT #3 – BIG TEAMS = BAD NEWS

Big Teams and Social Loafing

“Tendency of certain members of a group to get by with less effort than what they would have put when working alone.”

• Retrospectives become ineffective• Transparency dims for stakeholders• Standups become amateur theater• Coach becomes disconnected• Coding practices diluted or skipped

Beyond team of 10, people get lost

Look Under the Hood: Burn Downs

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 200

100

200

300

400

500

600

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900

"The Hill Team" Team Burndown

Sprint Days

Ho

urs

Real data, with names changed

Personal Burn Down: Jill

Jill is doing fine

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 200.00

10.00

20.00

30.00

40.00

50.00

60.00

70.00

Ideal Burndown Upper Bound Lower Bound Actual Burndown

Personal Burn Down: Jack

Jack over estimates, what a hero

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 200.00

50.00

100.00

150.00

200.00

250.00

Ideal Burndown Upper Bound Lower Bound Actual Burndown

Personal Burn Down: “The Bucket”

“The Bucket” is hiding, getting carried

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 200.00

20.00

40.00

60.00

80.00

100.00

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Ideal Burndown Upper Bound Lower Bound Actual Burndown

Pay attention to Ergonomics

Use Big Monitors as dividers

Table

Agile Card Wall

Dev Table with Fast NetworkBuild

Monitor

Door and Information Radiators

STAGE 3: Backing into Kanban

Driver for changing to focus more on flow

• Page building became the date driver

• Needed a pull model to support the Page team

• Iterations a constraint to fluid response

• Reduce the lengthy standups

• Make assignments more visible

• Once and for all accept the testing model

Late 2011 through 2012

STAGE 3: Fluid Backlog

Dave Anderson Cost Model

Kanban brings focus to the “How”

Visualize the workflow Limit WIP Manage Flow Make Process Policies Explicit Improve Collaboratively

Ours was a shallow implementation

Dave Anderson – The Principles behind Kanban

Cynefin Learning Cycles

Licensed by Dave Snowden under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported

Standardize,Automate

Innovate,Explore

Disrupt,Scare

Step 1: Change up the Dev board

Dip into chaos to shake up the team

WIP limits on devs using avatars and on types of work

Posted Polies by Work Type

Magnetic Avatars

Supplies in Shoe Holder

Step 2: Man the Page Gates

• Enforce Quality of the Inputs

• Don’t start a page unless it can be finished

• Account for rework in WIP limits

• Create supporting tools

• Pull on development

• UAT pages as part of Page creation

• Resulted in 80% – 90% pass rate

Stop Starting, Start Finishing

Step 3: Reimaging Page Building

Bring them from Chaos/Complex

Kanban Overlay: What did we get?

Operating in the end state Quality end-to-end and built in Insight into how was done Incremental Improvement Flexibility and responsiveness High Performing Team!

Late 2010 through early 2011

The End?

The Evolution Continues…..

Cynefin: Chaos Cliff

Licensed by Dave Snowden under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported

That little Cynefin Cliff

Complacence

Simple

Chaos

The End

No Crash Test Dummies were hurt in the making of this presentation

“Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.”- Frank Zappa