Tag Archives: Lean
Inside the #lsmsf Lean Startup Machine
For the first time since snowboarding for a living, I once again love my job as an Agile coach. Sometimes I wonder if working with transforming large enterprises would be easier if I invested some time working with younger people attempting newer concepts in smaller companies. I got my first chance to test that theory the weekend of 16 Jan by joining The Lean Startup Machine in San Francisco. The picture to the left links to a book we were all given as homework to read for the event. While I did skim it, along with the Lean Startup Machine … Continue reading
Joining the community of thinkers
I am a member of a community of thinkers. I believe that communities exist as homes for professionals to learn, teach, and reflect on their work. I challenge each community in the software industry to: * reflect and honor the practitioners who make its existence possible; * provide an excellent experience for its members; * support the excellent experience its members provide for their clients and colleagues in all aspects of their professional interactions; * exemplify, as a body, the professional and humane behavior of its members; * engage and collaborate within and across communities through respectful exploration of diverse … Continue reading
Kanban is the Agile way of saying “Phase Gate”
So that we can easily find ways to constantly improve while collaborating effectively and sustainably, I like kanban as a tool which shows what constrains transforming concepts into cash. I believe it allows us to see the whole system and our part in what to do to help in the transformation of the system into a better one and our ideas in to innovation. It seems to me there would be greater benefits for all involved. For software a kanban tool must be highly visible, with a policy to strictly limit work in progress and a policy to only accept … Continue reading
Whole Team Incentives – Redeeming Features for Rewards
After VYC2.0 launched, I was asked who were the heroes in the group. The one or two people who deserved recognition for all of their hard work. I was hunting around for the email chain, but I’m pretty diligent about deleting emails. I wish sometimes I wasn’t so relentless at that, but I don’t have it. Essentially, I responded that calling out a couple of people creates competition, that everyone stepped up and deserves to be recognized. Management agreed, and everyone involved wound up with a Flip, and I was asked how we may be able to codify some whole … Continue reading
KFC Slides and Simulation Now Online
Available from Karl’s blog for download. The session went well, everybody returned for the second half from the first half. I really enjoyed the simulation at the end, although we ran out of time to fully go through it. If you happen to use it, would you contact us and let us know how it went?
Simulations for Throughput and Pull
All you need is a pack of cards… Ask people what kind of typical things happen to get a user story from the backlog to in the hands of users. Agree on the most common 3-5 things, such as: exemplify/design/build, or story/TDD/accept/deploy, or the typical todo/wip/done or the traditional analysis/build/validate/deploy Group people by this same number at a table. The grouping of will make more sense in next exercise. As prep for the next exercise, also count out 4 aces, three twos, two threes, one four and one five. Set aside from the 20 used here. Maximize what is done … Continue reading
Phrases to Say a Lot
When asked any question, just reply with something like the following. Or work it in to a conversation. The team says, “look what we’ve done” when there is a good leader. A typical manager says, “look what I’ve done with this team” QA is a platform Prioritize features by risk and known market needs. Group them by goals and technical similarity. What is the expected revenue from this feature? It is easier to automate 10 lines of code at a time than 10,000 for builds and tests Inspect and adapt requires looking at what’s going on before changing it Software … Continue reading
Limiting Work in Progress (WIP)
For me, it’s all about getting the backlogs together and putting strict limits on WIP. It is a mess to find a bottleneck, or get to done, when too many things are in flight. Remember: there is one expedite slot to override WIP, but only one. Two ways to limit WIP: With the value stream mapped, look at the resources within a certain step and ensure there are no more slots than people in that step. If there is an inability to get the value stream map, or while you’re going there, write a sticky for the name of each … Continue reading
Speaker Series
A lot of popular folks come to Yahoo! and hang out. There are experts, authors, musicians, luminaries, – giving talks, running workshops, attending conferences, performing, and being a presence on the campus. Our own group has had people in. I’m not sure who they all are. I hear there was Mary Poppendieck, who’s suggestion of eliminating waste may have been interpreted by a few as meaning some roles could be considered redundant. Seems a shame. Since I’ve been around, there has been two people we’ve brought in. The first was Jim Coplien, who shook things up a bit. People are … Continue reading
Anatomy of the Corbis Operations Review
Recently on the kanbandev Yahoo! group, there were some messages going back and forth between Corey and David on the differences between a retrospective and an operations review. I think it was decided that the decoupled Operations review is more of a presentation, where the retrospective is a focused discussion. Corey was relating the ops review as multi-team stand up in the large, and then it sounds as if the retrospective would be follow-up work for specific teams. At any rate, here’s David’s explanation: Anatomy of an Operations Review Operations Review Chapter 14 from Agile Management: Operations Review