Product Development can be viewed as a Complex Adaptive System. Different people, groups, organizations and systems collaborate in a complex network of relationships and dependencies to produce something of value - generally a product or service. Identifying waste in this value network is a critical step towards creating a truly lean organization. These slides are from an interactive, hands-on workshop that I ran at the Agile India 2012 conference in Bengaluru, India. There is a corresponding Blog entry here: http://wp.me/pSOIL-fE

1. Identifying and Managing
Waste in Complex Product
Development
Environments
Ken Power

2. Setting Expectations
! This is a Workshop.
! That means:
! I will spend less time lecturing
! We will talk with each other
! We will learn from each other
! We will work through some difficult problems
! We will share our experiences and stories
! If we talk too long we may not get all material covered in
details, but that’s OK
! I will give some concrete strategies and tools that have proved
helpful
! I will write a workshop report and share the findings with you

3. Learning Outcomes
! Understand the history and modern context of Lean Product
Development in Software Development Organizations
! Understand appropriate metaphors for Lean Product
Development, beyond the usual influence of the manufacturing or
automotive domain
! Understand the importance of identifying and managing Waste
! Be able to identify Waste in your own organizations
! Be able to apply the framework for managing Waste in your own
Product Development Organizations
! Concrete strategies and practices for eliminating waste in your
own organizations

4. General Flow
! Opening (20 minutes)
! Identifying Waste (30 minutes)
! Managing and Eliminating Waste (30)
! Closing (10 minutes)

5. I’m the Irish guy

6. OPENING

7. Lean Principles
! Section I: Long-Term Philosophy ! Section III: Add Value to the
! Principle 1. Base your management Organization by Developing Your People
decisions on a long-term philosophy, even ! Principle 9. Grow leaders who thoroughly
at the expense of short-term financial goals. understand the work, live the philosophy, and
teach it to others.
! Principle 10. Develop exceptional people and
! Section II: The Right Process Will teams who follow your company’s
Produce the Right Results philosophy.
! Principle 2. Create a continuous process ! Principle 11. Respect your extended
flow to bring problems to the surface. network of partners and suppliers by
! Principle 3. Use “pull” systems to avoid challenging them and helping them
overproduction. improve.
! Principle 4. Level out the workload
(heijunka). (Work like the tortoise, not the ! Section IV: Continuously Solving Root
hare.) Problems Drives Organizational Learning
! Principle 5. Build a culture of stopping to ! Principle 12. Go and see for yourself to
fix problems, to get quality right the first thoroughly understand the situation
time. (genchigenbutsu).
! Principle 6. Standardized tasks and ! Principle 13. Make decisions slowly by
processes are the foundation for consensus, thoroughly considering all
continuous improvement and employee options; implement decisions rapidly
empowerment. (nemawashi).
! Principle 7. Use visual control so no ! Principle 14. Become a learning
problems are hidden. organization through relentless reflection
! Principle 8. Use only reliable, thoroughly (hansei) and continuous improvement
tested technology that serves your people (kaizen).
and processes.

8. Optimize on the people who
add value
! Almost every organization claims it’s people are
important, but if they truly optimize their structures on
those who add value, they would be able to say:

9. 7 Principles of Lean Software
! Eliminate Waste
! Build Quality In
! Create Knowledge
! Defer Commitment
! Deliver Fast
! Respect People
! Optimize the Whole

10. Complex Adaptive Systems
! A dynamic network of interacting agents
! Stakeholders – people and groups
! Other systems
! Control is decentralized and dispersed throughout the
network
! Adapts to changing environment

11. Modern Lean
Product
Development

12. “Eliminating waste is the most
fundamental lean principle, the one
from which all the other principles
follow. Thus, the first step to
implementing lean development is
learning to see waste.”
(Poppendieck and Poppendieck 2003)

13. IDENTIFYING WASTE

14. Waste is considered to be anything
that either (a) does not directly add
value to the product, process,
customer or organization, or (b)
hinders or prevents the organization
from being as effective and efficient
as possible.

15. Deming
Waste is Loss
“In my experience, most troubles and most possibilities for
improvement add up to proportions something like this:
94% belong to the System (the responsibility of
management)
6% belong to Special Causes”

16. The Wastes of Product
Development
! Extra Features
! Delays
! Handoffs
! Extra Processes / Relearning
! Partially Done Work
! Task Switching
! Defects
! Unused Employee Creativity

17. Extra Features
These are features that are not required in the product, and that do
not have a current economically justified need.

18. Delays (Waiting)
Includes waiting for people to be available, or to deliver dependent
work.

19. Handoffs
Includes tacit knowledge lost when work is handed off between
people or groups.

20. Extra Processes / Relearning
Aspects of the process used by the team, or mandated by the organization,
that do not add value (Poppendieck 2003). Process that cause knowledge to
be lost, forcing relearning to occur (Poppendieck 2007).

21. Partially Done Work
Partially done work is analogous to inventory in software product
development.

22. Task Switching
Waste caused by working on multiple tasks at the same time and the
time lost in switching between them.

23. Defects
Mistakes, errors, flaws in the product that cause unexpected results
or behavior.

24. Unused Employee Creativity
Refers to underutilization of people and in particular their ideas and
creative input to improve the process.

25. Game: Identifying Waste
Using the “Speedboat” Innovation Game

26. Game Rules
! Draw a speedboat
! This speedboat represents your team(s)
! Draw anchors on the speedboat
! Anchors are slowing down the speedboat
! They prevent it from going as fast as it wants to go
! Each anchor has a theme: one of the 8 wastes
! For each anchor:
! What are the links on this anchor that are holding this speedboat back?
! Write examples on Sticky Notes
! Attach Sticky Notes to Anchors
! Be specific, give examples

27. Post-Game Analysis
! What examples of Waste did you discuss?
! How do these affect you? Your team? Your
organization?

28. MANAGE AND
ELIMINATE WASTE

29. Techniques, Practices
! Value Stream Maps
! Value Network Maps
! A3 Report
! Waste Matrix

31. ! Follows the steps of the Scientific
Method
! Plan: develop a hypothesis or
experiment
Act Plan
! Do: conduct the experiment
! Check: collect measurements
! Act: interpret the results and take
appropriate action
! Also known as
! The Demming Cycle
! The Shewart Cycle
Check Do

32. ! Element 1: Logical Thinking Process
! Element 2: Objectivity
! Element 3: Results and Process
! Element 4: Synthesis, Distillation, and Visualization
! Element 5: Alignment
! Element 6: Coherency Within and Consistency Across
! Element 7: Systems Viewpoint
See also Claudio Perrone’s A3 & Kaizen presentation:
http://www.slideshare.net/cperrone/a3-kaizen-heres-how

33. Different A3 Reports
Focus Problem Solving Proposal Writing Project Status Review
Thematic content or focus Improvements related to Policies, decisions, or Summary of changes and
quality, cost, delivery, safety, projects with significant results as an outcome of
productivity, etc. investment or either problem solving or
implementation proposal implementation
Tenure of person Novice, but continuing Experienced personnel; Both novice and more
conducting the work throughout career managers experienced managers
Analysis Strong root-cause emphasis; Improvement based on Less analysis and more
quantitative/analytical considering current state; focus on verification of
mix of quantitative and hypothesis and action items
qualitative
PDCA cycle Document full PDCA cycle Heavy focus on the Plan Heavy focus on the Check
involved in making an step, with Check and Act and Act steps, including
improvement and verifying steps embedded in the confirmation of results and
the result implementation plan follow-up to complete the
learning loop
From Table 5.1 from “Understanding A3 Thinking”

34. Owner: Ken Power
Report Theme: Describe the goal and quantify the improvement
Date: 08/01/2012
Background Countermeasures
Why are we talking about this? For each Actionable Root Cause, describe the action
What is the issue? and the benefit
What alternatives could be considered?
Current condition / Problem Situation How will our selected countermeasures impact the root
cause and change the current problem situation?
Describe Expectation, Discrepancy, Extent, Rationale
Where things are today - visualize
Effect confirmation / Plan
Goal / Target Track progress towards due date
Action Plan: Who will do what? By when? How?
What specifically are we going to do? By when? Quantify What are the indicators of progress? What milestones
the improvement. How will we measure success? should we track?
Look for the most critical measures
Root-Cause Analysis
Use 5-Whys, Fishbone, Force Field, Circle of Questions, Follow-up actions
or other analysis techniques
What constraints prevent us from reaching our target? What other issues can be anticipated? E.g., the
Get past symptoms countermeasure might make things worse, or uncover
Get to actionable root causes other problems
What failure modes should we look out for?

35. John Clifford, Construx
http://forums.construx.com/blogs/johnclif/archive/2009/09/30/if-you-want-to-improve-stop-managing-your-problems.aspx

36. Waste Example Waste Description Relative # Stakeholders Value Trigger Date, Relative value Relative value
Category Importance affected by which the for managing for managing
waste must be this waste vs. this waste vs.
eliminated other wastes other Project
work
Compile and Waiting It can take We are losing 42 Devs, 12 50+ people will Release 4.5.1 in This will help This will
Build times 15-30 minutes nearly 20 QA (directly have less August 2012 reduce ultimately help
take too long to run a full person-hours affected – frustration feedback loops us go faster
build, per day across others are waiting for long and encourage with other
depending on the entire team. indirectly build cycles; more use of project work
the machine affected) Shorter build TDD, leading
cycles to higher
encourage quality, fewer
more frequent integration
integration and errors, fewer
testing, and defects
hence more
reliable product
Team spends Partially Done Engineers, We are not 8 Devs, 3 QA, The entire team
time working Work designers and doing sufficient 2 Eng Mgr, 2 can spend more
on features that others are due diligence Product Mgr time focusing
get dropped putting on some on delivering
significant features. We features we will
effort into need to get ship with.
features that get better at
dropped later. defining our
Minimal Viable
Offer.
Duplication of Extra Processes Functional Duplicated 4 Eng. Mgr, 1
status and lines are effort and Program Mgr, 3
progress managing own danger of Team Leads
reporting reporting mixed message
Resolving Defects
defects in
complex
product
dependency
chains

37. Exercise: Manage Waste
! Pick a Technique
! Waste Matrix
! A3 Report
! Choose one of the Wastes identified earlier
! Think about how to remove or manage it
! Start to create an A3 Problem Solving Report or a
Waste Matrix chart

38. Post-Game Analysis
! What Wastes did you choose to solve? Why?
! Describe how you used the Waste Matrix.
! Describe how you used the A3 Problem Solving
Report.

39. CLOSING

40. Remember…
! Your organization is a Complex Adaptive System
! There is waste in every system
! Find it
! Eliminate it (or at least get it under control)
! Use these techniques as part of your Continuous
Improvement (Kaizen) efforts
! Release or Iteration Retrospectives are a great forum
! Dedicated Problem Solving Sessions
! Strategy Sessions
! Portfolio Management Sessions
! Keep it Visible

41. And finally …
! Develop people to be Problem Solvers
! You can have fun finding and eliminating waste
! – use serious games at work

42. References

43. References
Deming, W. E. (1994). The New Economics for Industry, Poppendieck, M., and Poppendieck, T. (2007).
Government, Education, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Implementing lean software development : from
concept to cash, London: Addison-Wesley.
Gray, D., Brown, S., and Macanufo, J. (2010).
Gamestorming : a playbook for innovators, rulebreakers, and Poppendieck, M., and Poppendieck, T. (2010). Leading
changemakers, Beijing ; Cambridge: O'Reilly. lean software development : results are not the point,
Upper Saddle River, NJ. ; London: Addison-Wesley.
Hohmann, L. (2006). Innovation Games: Creating
Breakthrough Products Through Collaborative Play, Upper Reinertsen, D. G. (2009). The principles of product
Saddle River, NJ: Addison-Wesley. development flow : second generation lean product
development, Redondo Beach, Calif.: Celeritas.
Liker, J. K. (2004). The Toyota way : 14 management
principles from the world's greatest manufacturer, New York: Rothman, J. (2009). Manage your project portfolio :
McGraw-Hill. increase your capacity and finish more projects, Raleigh,
N.C.: Pragmatic Bookshelf.
Ohno, T. (1988). Toyota production system : beyond large-
scale production, Cambridge, Mass.: Productivity Press. Shingo, S. (2007). Kaizen and the art of creative
thinking : the scientific thinking mechanism,
Poppendieck, M., and Poppendieck, T. (2003). Lean Bellingham, WA: Enna Products Corporation and PCS
Software Development: An Agile Toolkit, Boston: Addison- Inc.
Wesley.
Sobek, D. K., and Smalley, A. (2008). Understanding
A3 thinking : a critical component of Toyota's PDCA
management system, Boca Raton: CRC Press.

44. THANK YOU
http://SystemAgility.com/
http://twitter.com/ken_power