1.
Optimizing efficiency of Value
Delivery vs keeping people
busy: how it is connected?
ARTEM BYKOVETS
AGILE COACH & ORG CONSULTANT @ SIMPLESENSE.
28 / 01 / 2023

2.
About me:
• CEO / Agile Coach & Org Consultant в
• we are helping companies and teams to work more efficiently by
coaching and consulting them.
• Best QA specialist of Ukraine by IT Awards 2015
• CEO and coach/mentor at "StartIT”
• we train and develop software testers & QA’s
• Guest lecturer at KMBS (MBA programs)
• I love to share experience & knowledges
• Co-Founder of volunteering initiative #AgileWithUkraine
• Happy husband and proud father
• Supporter of Dynamo Kyiv. Experimenting in StandUp Comedy J

3.
Clients & self development:

4.
Efficient
Oxford Dictionary: “achieving maximum productivity with
minimum wasted effort or expense.”
Merriam-Webster: “is capable of producing desired results without
wasting materials, time, or energy.”

5.
Optimizing efficiency of Value Delivery

6.
Optimizing efficiency of Value Delivery
@actineo_xyz
@jose_casal
To generate customer value, these individual
team systems usually have to cooperate in
some way - "no team is an island".
If you ignore this and focus your optimisation
efforts locally on individual teams, you
run the risk of global system sub-
optimization!

7.
Yes, you get a high-performing team. However,
the overall performance of the organisation - i.e.
the performance of all teams taken together - will
remain the same in the best case.

8.
Welcome to the world of systems thinking!
Local optimisation usually leads to global sub-optimisation. The
reason is …? :)

9.
CYNEFIN (Dave Snowden)

10.
Dependencies… And Complexity:
• Teams acting as silos
• Each team has its own backlog
• Conflicts between teams that depend on each other
• Lack of coordination (or extra efforts needed)
• No visibility of impact on business outcomes
• Trying to scale (for better efficiency?) before the organisation is ready

11.
Three Stages of Change
Guess where we are usually tend to start from ;)

12.
VISUALISE

13.
visualise

14.
How effective is their Value Stream?
Calculate your flow efficiency
Flow efficiency = active time /
total elapsed time*
*total elapsed time = active time +
waiting time

15.
Fast experiment :)
Lead Time: Sum(V) + Sum(W) – 30 days
Case: to validate Feature A on Focus Group
1. Request from Stakeholders
2. Marketing gives criteria's to PO
3. Backend Dev Ready
4. Integration with Clients side
5. QA Smoke check
6. Backoffice Team creates new Role
7. Config’s are updated and deployed
8. Acceptance by PO on Stage
9. Quick fixes
10. Deployed to Prod…
How many days of waiting?

16.
Typical “New Project” / “Big Epic” lifecycle:
What about the efficiency of flow here?

17.
Where all that time gone?
Waiting in queues and / or Waiting for Schedule

18.
visualise

19.
Visualise End-to-End
How many WAITING columns do you have on your boards?

20.
Visualise your business WaitFlow
(not only WorkFlow)

21.
Why it is so?
Local optimisations (of processes & resource efficiency)

22.
Resource efficiency
Resource efficiency (from classic
management theory) – is about utilization
of working hours of resources.
With People – is about keep people
busy…
©Dan North
Timesheets J
how to fill 40 hours if you are often blocked?
If you get stuck on one thing – just content-
switch onto the next …
… or create / join a meeting!

23.
Resource efficiency – performance evaluation
In Value Flow we have 3 people:
1) Doing her tasks fast and pass to second
2) Overloaded, blocked, context-switch…
3) Waiting for a task ready to start (DoR?)
©Dan North
What would be the feedback to Dev 1?
What would be the feedback to Dev 2?
What would be the feedback to Dev 3?

24.
Local optimisation – destabilises Flow

25.
Lead Time vs Cycle Time

26.
Looks like asymptote ... With 100% utilization…
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
Cycle
Time
(Hours)
% Utilization

27.
UTILISATION IS THE ENEMY OF FLOW
It increases Cycle Time and destroys Throughput!

28.
CONCLUSIONS
1. Local optimisation usually leads to global sub-optimisation
2. UTILISATION IS THE ENEMY OF FLOW
3. Real efficiency comes from optimising flow
4. To do this:
• Visualise. End-to-End System (including the Waitflow);
• Stabilise (f.e.: by limiting Work In Progress);
• Optimise (f.e.: by Removing Waiting steps) (and repeat)
5. Map how work arrives & departs your board
6. Capture flow metrics across the end-to-end (Lead Time, Cycle Time, Throughput, WIP..)
7. Use aging metrics to manage your end-to-end flow (Stop Starting & Start Finishing!)

29.
During optimization – some people in system
might be under-utilized!!! And it’s awesome! (time
for learning… For helping others… better
adaptiveness…)

30.
So what are you planning to do with your calendars and To Do lists?
My site: www.abykovets.com
Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/abykovets/
Facebook: https://facebook.com/ABykovets
Mail: artem@simplesense.com.ua
Telegram (UA): https://t.me/agile_bykovets_smpl