Visual ManagementThe Goal:

• The best Whiteboard standard structures to support your Risk management

• from Waterfall to Agile

• How can you manage something you don’t see?

• Visualize your Activities & your Risks, whatever

you are in Agile or Waterfall mode

• A few ideas for your WhiteBoard design

Why, What & How?The Goal:

• Why do we need to visualise? To see the process, to communicate, to federate

• What do we need to visualise? Goal, problem & risk not to achieve the goal

the key points: Project Management = Risk Management

What & How?

What are my main activities?

What is the key period to monitor?

Are we on track?

What structure for my WhiteBoard(s)?

Why?

visualise an abstract process

federate & coordinate all the team towards the

common goals

highlight the problems & solve the ‘tunnel effect’

guide the team toward a self-management in a

frame defined by the management

How man records information?The Goal:

• Use an Interactive WhiteBoard

• Mixing vision, hearing & interaction

the key points: man records the most information through active listening

20% by what he hears

30% by what he sees

50% by what he hears and sees

70% when he talks about it

90% when he interacts with it

Man records 90% of his information through

Vision: share the same screen with remote attendees (video conference)

Hearing: open an audio conference call with them

Interaction: increase remote attendees’ focus with live annotation/movement

How man records information?

What do you want to monitor?The Goal:

• List your main activities & qualify them regarding importance, risk

• Use capacity bandwidth (SLA) for urgent, non urgent, predictable, non predictable

the key points: a project manager is a Risk manager, what is important? what is urgent?

A standard problem is to not succeed to manage at the same time• a predictable activity • and an unpredictable one, mostly defined by an urgency criteria

Following this IT example what are your main activities & what criteria is important

Production support

Level 1: Production team

Level 2: Business support (BA)

Level 3: IT support (Dev)

Development

project

maintenance

CTB

RTB standard

complex

Standard IT activities

Predictible

Unpredictible

urgent

Non urgent

Standard criteria

What do you want to monitor? On Development activityThe Goal:

• Which classification for more visibility?

• Visualise your flow to manage it (limit the WIP, manage your bottlenecks, …)

the key points: manage dynamicaly your Risk through short Agile iterations, don’t follow

blindly an original roadmap

key project criteria• Q1: Quality• Q2: Time• Q3: Cost• Q4: Risk

Team Iteration (main) objectives

key questions about monitoringQ1: what is my period of monitoring? (iteration)Q2: On this iteration, is the team on track on its different activities?Q3: On this iteration, on each activity, what are the main objectives of the team?Q4: On this iteration, on each activity, on each main objectives is the team on track?

Status Workflow steps

Try this structure and adapt to your context

development project

maintenance

User story P1

User story Pn

…

User story M1

User story Mn

…

Version

Sub-project

Urgent

Ohter criteria of classification/visualisation Organise the user story list in the most efficient way for you

To Do In Progress Done

test … Prod delivery

By project?

By version?

By client?

…

By urgency?

study spec dev

Example 1

Example 2

What do you want to monitor? On Production activityThe Goal:

• Which classification for more visibility?

• Implement your SLA (find unassigned Urgent ticket, free people to be assigned)

the key points: manage efficiently your Risk through short Agile iterations

key project criteria• Q1: Quality• Q2: Time• Q3: Cost• Q4: Risk

Team Iteration (main) objectives

key questions about monitoringQ1: what is my period of monitoring? Mainly daily, sometimes moreQ2: On this iteration, is the team on track on its different activities?Q3: On this iteration, on each activity, what are the main objectives of the team?Q4: On this iteration, on each activity, on each main objectives is the team on track?

Status Workflow steps

Try this structure and adapt to your context

production Level 1

Ticket 1.1

Ticket 1.n

…

priorityassignee

Ohter criteria of classification/visualisation

To Do In Progress DoneExample 1

Level 2

Ticket 2.1

Ticket 3.n

…

Level 3

Organise the ticket list in the most efficient way for you

By project?

By version?

By client?

…

By urgency?

‘intellectual’ vs ‘manual’ activitiesThe Goal:

• Which timescale? Which subjects to focus on?

• Which structure is more adapted for which activity?

the key points: Challenge ‘unpredictability’, ‘urgency’. Use capacity bandwidth to separate

‘predictable’ & ‘unpredictable’ activity when needed

Main standard Whiteboard structures are focusing on: • The process steps: How do we do?• The calendar: When do we do?• The Project/Sub project, release: Which subject?• The people: Who does What?

‘manual’ activity

e.g. Production support‘intellectual’ activity

e.g. Development

PredictabilityMostly unpredictable

Macro steps

Manage the flow

Calendar

Day plan with hours & people

Projects, Releases, …

Which subject?People

When do we do?

Specially urgent ticket

Who does What?

Day to WeekWeek to monthTimescale

Mostly predictable

Project Maintenance

Month to year

Main focus

Standard

WB tructure

Goals & process steps

Production support

‘Pros’ & ‘Cons’ of the main standardsThe Goal:

• Which columns, which lines?

• Benefits & Warnings

the key points: try & test several structures through short Agile iterations.

By default, we’re used to Calendar but it’s the less efficient, the less dynamic

Main standard Whiteboard structures are focusing on: • The process steps: How do we do?• The calendar: When do we do?• The Project/Sub project, release: Which subject?• The people: Who does What?

Macro steps: How do we do? Calendar: When do we do?

Projects, Releases, …

Which subject?

People

Who does What?

Column

Line

Well adapted to … Monitor one team’s activity Coordinate several teams contribution (rendez vous)

CONs Hide replaning from one week to the next one

PROs See where are the bottlenecks in the process Well adapted to manage synchonisation problems

From Waterfall to AgileThe Goal:

• Predictable vs unpredictable activity

• Which structure for Waterfall & Agile

the key points: setup Daily meetings together with ‘management’ meetings like SteerCo to

ensure the sprint goals are a translation of TOP management vision (hoshin kanri)

• The whiteboard visualise the team activity on a shifting time window• A whiteboard can help whatever is the project management methodology (Waterfall, Agile, …)• The frequency of the morning meeting should be adapted to the release cycle leadtime

Tip: the whiteboard has to live (i.e. updated regularly)

Waterfall release cycle

Important lead time

e.g. 11 months

4 releases in parallel

Agile release cycle

Short to medium leadtime

e.g. 6 weeks

2 Releases in parallel prioritisation

By iteration

e.g. SCRUM

‘On the flow’

e.g. Kanban

Mosty predictable (e.g. development)

-> management with roadmap/planning

activity

Mostly unpredictable (e.g. production support)

-> management ‘on the flow’

Appendix

The Goal:

• Examples of WhiteBoard structures

the key points: before using electronic WhiteBoard like JIRA, try & test several structures

with a physical whiteboard through short Agile iterations

‘Intellectual’ activity as IT development

• Waterfall

• Agile/Scrum

• Agile/Kanban

• Program coordination i.e. manage ‘Rendez-Vous’ between

projects, User Stories, teams

‘Manual’ activity as IT production support

• Monitor your SLA:

• Do you have an urgent ticket not assigned?

• Who could be assigned?

Waterfall whiteboardContext:

• 3 Releases in parallel, average Release leadtime 11 months

• A mini roadmap attached to each Release step at the hand of the team members

the key points: what are the sprint goals? Is the team on track? Why? What is the team

mitigation plan?

• Visualise the status of each Release 2.9 in UAT, 2.10 in DEV & 2.11 in STUDY• Support the team members in their respective assignment• Dedicated part to

• production support activity (should be limited to level 3)• Project KPI mainly discussed during weekly or SteerCo

Agile/Scrum whiteboardContext:

• Sub-team 1 on application 1, sub-team 2 on application 2 & 3

• Team in Scrum with the following Release Cycle (see above)

the key points: build all your Release Cycles. Manage dynamically your Release cycles

with the WhiteBoard

• Visualise the team goals on the iteration (sprint backlog shorted by priority)• Visualise the problem & risk not to achieve the goal (potential bottleneck on Test & UAT)• Dedicated part to

• production support activity (should be limited to level 3)• Project KPI (BurnDown, …) mainly discussed during weekly or SteerCo

Agile/Kanban whiteboardContext:

• One of the main goal of Kanban is to ‘Pull the Flow’ instead of Pushing it

• To do so, we apply the principle of ‘Limit the WIP (Work In Progress)

the key points: limit the WIP = finish what you have started before starting something else.

Short and stabilize the leadtime of User Story families. Required for SLA

• 2 bottlenecks on SPEC & on TEST• Dev is Over capacity: 2 developers are free• What can the team do to fluidify the process i.e. solve the current bottleneck?

• Better work on the Test bottleneck: move the 2 free developers to help on TEST• If you solve the Spec one, you’ll potentially make worse the situation on Test not limiting the WIP

Validated

&

prioritised

SPEC

doing done

DEV

doing done

TEST

doing done

Deployed

Ticket 13

Ticket 14

Ticket 15

Ticket 16

WIP = 6 WIP = 3 WIP = 6 WIP = 3

Ticket 17

Ticket 18

Ticket 10

Ticket 11

Ticket 12

Ticket 8 Ticket 4

Ticket 5

Ticket 6

Ticket 2

Ticket 1

Ticket 3

Ticket 7

expedite expedite expediteexpedite expedite expedite expedite expedite

Calendar whiteboardContext:

• For teams whose job is mainly to coordinate large project

• Like Product Owner in ‘Scrum of Scrum’

the key points: use day, week, month as appropriate

• People are not doing themselves the project but are coordinating programs• Their focus is to manage ‘Rendez-Vous’ i.e. deadlines synchronizing several teams• Dedicated part to

• production support activity (should be limited to level 3)• Project KPI (BurnDown, …) mainly discussed during weekly or SteerCo

Production Support whiteboard: week basisContext:

• Production team with a problem of capacity to do all the tickets

• A SLA has been defined with clients to focus on urgent ones and ‘delay’ less urgents ones

the key points: define the key questions regarding your activity. The WhiteBoard should help

you to answer them

key questions about monitoringQ1: find any urgent tiket not yet assigned:

• 83 urgent for 2 hours of workload• 46 standard for 7 jours of workload

Q2: find someone free to be assigned on 83 & 39• TM 5 has 3 hours today (assigned for 5 hours of workload)• TM 2 is free• 83 is assigned to TM 5• 39 is assigned to TM 2

current date: J status (Plusieurs éléments)

ticket Backlog

ID urgency status assigned description deadline workload created Somme de workload Étiquettes de colonnes

31 1 open not assigned x J 6J Étiquettes de lignes J J+2 J+5 Total général

9 1 in progress TM 1 y J 4J-1 not assigned 5 2 7

7 1 in progress TM 3 z J 7J-1 1 5 5

55 2 open not assigned a J+2 3J 2 2 2

66 2 in progress TM 1 b J+2 3J TM 1 5 7 12

47 2 in progress TM 3 c J+2 7J 1 5 5

7 3 in progress TM 3 e J+5 1J 2 7 7

75 3 in progress TM 4 f J+5 6J TM 3 3 8 8 19

11 1 closed TM 1 g y 5x 1 3 3

34 1 closed TM 2 h y 7x 2 8 83 8 8

TM 4 1 13 1 1

Total general 13 17 9 39