Have your improvements plateaued? Are Scrum Masters acting more like facilitators than active improvement drivers? Are your improvement efforts grounded in reactive problem solving and good intentions but failing to deliver true and measurable results? These questions indicate that there is a “missing link” between the improvement culture that so many Agilists want but rarely find they can execute. This presentation captures the last six years of experience working with Toyota Kata in an Agile setting, helping teams, departments, business units and organizations learn how to set ambitious and measurable improvement goals and work iteratively toward them. Discover more Lean Digital stories on www.lean-digital-summit.com

1. Your Potential Is Much Bigger Than You Think
– True Continuous Improvement with Toyota Kata
Lean Digital Summit, October 2019
Jesper Boeg

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7 years with Toyota Kata
From a single team in 2012 to a strategic organization wide initiative
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Improvement is not invited to the party
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Some Scrum Masters are reduced to facilitators
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Actions are planned but not executed

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Actions are carried out but not followed up

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Problem focus…
“Removing what your don’t want does not give you what you do want”
- Russell Ackoff
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8. Managers neither understand nor focus on improvement
“At Toyota, improving and managing
are one and the same.
Non-Toyota companies tend to see
managing as a unique and separate
activity. Improvement is something
extra, added on to managing”
Mike Rother
Toyota Kata (2010)
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WHAT IS TOYOTA KATA AND HOW IS IT DIFFERENT?
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Toyota and Kata
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Adapting Toyota Kata to another context
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Team
Team
Team
Team
Team
Team
Team
TeamTeam
Team
VALUE

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A “Starter Kata” for Agile organizations

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Mandatory cute animal slide
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Improvement Kata
Source: ”Level Up Agile with Toyota Kata”, 2019, Jesper Boeg

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First you need to know what you are aiming for
What does ”great” look like?
Visual flow, full transparency?
Stable end-to-end teams with 100% allocation?
Always Releasable, fully automated and on demand?
Small batches of customer recognized value?
Smooth flow of started work without blockers or interruptions?
Provide teams with a strategic direction and leave them to
execute at the tactical and operational level?
Involve users throughout the development cycle and get both
qualitative and quantitative feedback on results?
....
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17. Develop Test Launch
Customer
End-user
Legal
Security
Architecture
GRC
Compliance Security
Architectura
&
Monitoring
Legal
IT OPS
Business
case
Develop Validate Full launch
Dev
Team
Product
Owner Customer
End-user
Legal
GRC
Security
Design
GM
GM approval
Current State
Future state
Don’t improve here
Improve here
Design SW developers Testers IT OPS
Customer
End-user

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26 weeks – sequential, complex, output focus
4-5 weeks – iterative, simple, impact focus

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Reactive problem solving vs. desirable future state
”What problems do we have?”
vs.
”How do we want to work?”
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Then you need to truly understand where you are
Organizational level examples:
Average team allocation 27%
30% of teams are end-to-end
Average 1. release budget = 1 million
Average of 3 projects per employee
Team level examples:
60% of started work is blocked +1 days
20% of User Stories represent end-user
value
Average of 3,5 periods (2,5 hours) of
uninterrupted work per day
Average 15 User Stories in progress
0% of User Stories have impact metrics
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Then we set an ambitions and measurable goal
From 0% to 20% of User Stories has impact metrics
From 20% to 60% of User Stories represent end-user value
From 25 to 30 end-to-end teams
From 27% to 47% average team allocation
From 60% to 30% of started work blocked +1 days
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And acknowledge it is not a straight road
Source: ”Level Up Agile with Toyota Kata”, 2019, Jesper Boeg
Navigating through unclear territory

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Now we look at Obstacles (problems)
But ONLY in relation to our goals!
From 60% to 30% started work blocked +1 days
Obstacle: SME response-time is 2-3 days
From 20% to 40% of User Stories represent end-user value
Obstacle: We don’t know how to split vertically

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Focus!
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Running small Expriments to overcome Obstacles
Obstacle: SME response-time is 2-3 days
Experiment: Visualize on Trello-board and tag SME
When/who: March 3rd – 4th. Reponsible: John
What do you expect: 2 SME’s tagged on 2 questions -> response-time <1 day
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What happened: 2 SME’s tagged but no response
What did we learn: SME’s did not get Trello invitation email and did not see questions
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Toyota Kata is a culture of daily improvement…
• What will you do?
• What do you expect (and when)?
• What happened?
• What did we learn?
Which means taking small steps and teaching our brain to cope with “stress”

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Execute small Experiments (learning loops)!
Carl won’t be here tomorrow, can Henrik do it instead?
Can we call them now and ask instead of writing an email later?
What is keeping us all from trying out Pair Programming for 2 hours
tomorrow morning. Would we learn anything from that?
If we need a session with all 5 people it will not be until 10 days from now.
Could we learn anything from just doing it with 3 people in two days?
Do we need to install the tool to reach the first learning point or could we
simply check if somebody has ever used it on our legacy platform?
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Toyota Kata is measurable improvement
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Collecting and visualizing metrics requires effort!
But without keeping score there is no game
And no real basis for validation

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To succeed we need strong ”Process Leads”
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Moving beyond the role as facilitator and becoming an improvement driver!

31. Coaching Kata: Imagine an organization…
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Where you ask the following 5 process improvement questions at all
organizational levels, and get a clear response:
#1 What are you trying to achieve?
#2 Where are you now?
#3 What obstacle is in your way?
#4 What is your next step and what do you expect?
#5 When can you go and see what you have learned from taking that step?

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A simple, but powerful story

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Meet the team
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They are great, but stressed

35. The desirable future state
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• 1 place to see priorities
• 1 place to see WIP
• WIP limited, pull system

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The situation

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Results
Process:
From 7 to 1 place to identify priorities
From 5 to 1 place to track work
From 32 to 9 average WIP
Outcome
Average throughput: 6 -> 11 SP/week

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Imagine your organization when all managers…
Play an active role in measurable improvement goals like:
• Delegating responsibility to the team-level
• Increasing the number of end-to-end teams
• Ensuring strategic alignment
• Reducing cross-team platform dependencies
• Establishing outcome focus
• Minimizing changes of priorities on started work
• Reducing interruptions
• …..

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Available now
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