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Ben Linders Consulting
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Gold sponsor
Silver sponsor
Organiser
Melbourne - 15 February 2016 - 1stconf.com - @1stconf
Supporters
1st Conference1st Conference

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@BenLinders - benlinders.com 2
Ben Linders Consulting
The Need for Continuous
Improvement in Agile
Keynote 1stConf Melbourne
February 15, 2016
Ben Linders

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@BenLinders - benlinders.com 3
Ben Linders Consulting
Agile, Lean, Quality & Continuous Improvement
Retrospectives Facilitator
Agile Coach/Mentor/Trainer
CMMI & People-CMM Assessor
Freelance Editor for InfoQ.com
Ben Linders
Co-Author Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives
English Dutch French Japanese Spanish Italian Chinese
Russian Polish German Greek Turkish
Author: What Drives Quality & Continuous Improvement
eBook: Download from Amazon, InfoQ or Leanpub
Print: Buy on Amazon or Lulu

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@BenLinders - benlinders.com 4
Ben Linders Consulting
Continuous Improvement
Continuous Improvement is the
act of continuously doing
whatever helps to become better
and thus more valuable.
Ben Linders

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Ben Linders Consulting
Origins

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Ben Linders Consulting
Agile Manifesto
“We are uncovering better ways of developing
software by doing it and helping others do it”

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Ben Linders Consulting
Agile Principle
“At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to
become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its
behavior accordingly”

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Ben Linders Consulting
Why improve?
• No “one best way”
• No “first time right”
• Things will change
• Self organization,
empower your teams
Mindset: Continuously look for improvements

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@BenLinders - benlinders.com 9
Ben Linders Consulting
You need to improve!
Continuous Improvement is essential
if you want to really become agile!
The Impact and Value o
Agile Value Creation
Business Value of Agile

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@BenLinders - benlinders.com 10
Ben Linders Consulting
Embedded Improvement
Agile values, principles, practices, and methods
support continuous improvement
• Frequently Inspect and Adapt
• Scrum master, focus on process
• Stand-up, focus on impediments
• Agile Retrospectives, learn and improve
• Coaching to support your agile journey

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@BenLinders - benlinders.com 11
Ben Linders Consulting
Unfinished User Story
1 hr of work left, not finished
• Problem clearly visible
• Address in Stand-up, Review,
Retrospective or by Coaching?
Best thing coach can do
Agile has built-in improvement opportunities

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Ben Linders Consulting
How to Improve Continuously
You need:
• skilled people
• methods and tools
to do sustainable improvement
Soft Skills Matter
Listening to deal with resistance
Teamwork: Feelings matter

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Ben Linders Consulting
Agile Coaching
Help people to find and do improvements
 Give Feedback
 Provide Ideas
 Inspire People
 Establish Safety
Agile Needs Coaching
Develop Coaching Skills

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Ben Linders Consulting
Process Improvement
CMMI Roadmaps
Business Focused CMMI
Agile SPI
SPI, the Agile way
ITMPI Webinar
Better Improvement
Agile/Lean Improvement

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Ben Linders Consulting
People over Processes
People CMM Roadmap
 Work Environment
 Compensation
 Staffing
 Competency
Development
 Communication & Coord.
 Participatory Culture
Agile People (AC 2011)
Implementing Agile
SQP Paper Agile-PCMM

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Ben Linders Consulting
Golden Rules for Improvement
• Dare to share, early and frequently
• Result depends on team, not individuals
• The one who checks out a task is not necessarily
the one who has to finish it
• The one’s working on a task are the right people
• You may critique anything,
but never criticize anyone
BenLinders.com/GoldenRules

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Ben Linders Consulting
Measuring Improvement
Assessments Done SD Trend 12 months
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mrt
-15
-10
-5
0
5
10
15
Dep8
Dep7
Dep6
Dep5
Dep4
Dep3
Dep2
Dep1
Unit
SDfinished
Robust
Stretch
Commit
SDOpen
Improvements Done SD Trend
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mrt
-40
-30
-20
-10
0
10
20
30
40
Dep8
Dep7
Dep6
Dep5
Dep4
Dep3
Dep2
Dep1
Unit
Closed6Months
Robust
Stretch
Commit
OpenSD
Making Improvement Visible – ICSPI 2006

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Ben Linders Consulting
Root Cause Analysis
Analyze major and repeating problems
Find Root Causes
Preventive Actions
 Problem Selection
 Knowledge & Skills
 Action Visibility
Keynote QA&Test 2011
Key Success Factors
Business Value RCA

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Ben Linders Consulting
Agile Retrospectives
amazon.com/dp/B00SWJO1DI benlinders.com/exercises/

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Ben Linders Consulting
Kanban
 Start where you are
 Pull based change
 Experiment
Short Cycled Improvement
Learning from Mistakes

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Ben Linders Consulting
Agile & Improvement
 Continuous Improvement is essential if you want
to increase your agility
 Agile values, principles, practices, and methods
support continuous improvement
 You need skilled people with methods and tools
to get sustainable effective improvement done

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Ben Linders Consulting
Start Today
 Keep your eyes and ears open,
 pick one improvement idea,
 think of a practical way to do it,
 start doing it!
Continuous improvement journey starts today!

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@BenLinders - benlinders.com 23
Ben Linders Consulting
Continuous Improvement
Become aware of importance of
continuous improvement,
Explore how it’s engrained in agile
software development
Suggestions that you can use in your
daily work to improve continuously
Increase your organization's agility!
Leanpub.com/continuousimprovement
“Continuous Improvement is the act of continuously doing
whatever helps to become better and thus more valuable”

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@BenLinders - benlinders.com 24
Ben Linders Consulting
Questions?Questions?
Ben Linders
Independent Consultant Agile, Lean,
Quality & Continuous Improvement
info@BenLinders.cominfo@BenLinders.com
@BenLinders
www.linkedin.com/in/benlinderswww.linkedin.com/in/benlinders
www.facebook.com/BenLindersAdvieswww.facebook.com/BenLindersAdvies
www.benlinders.comwww.benlinders.com

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@BenLinders - benlinders.com 25
Ben Linders Consulting
Background Information

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@BenLinders - benlinders.com 26
Ben Linders Consulting
Retrospectives Book
Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives
By Luis Gonçalves & Ben Linders
Download from InfoQ or Leanpub
Buy on Amazon or Lulu
amazon.com/dp/B00SWJO1DI
leanpub.com/gettingvalueoutofagileretrospectives
Mailinglist: eepurl.com/Mem7H

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Ben Linders Consulting
Retrospectives Book Bundle
Six successful retrospectives books
• Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives
• Fun Retrospectives
• Fifty Quick Ideas to Improve Your Retrospectives
• The Retrospective Handbook
• Retrospectives for Organizational Change
• The Retrospectives Kickstarter
These books will make your agile retrospectives rock!
Teams will love to do them :-).
leanpub.com/b/agileretrospectives
Discounted price: $30,48 (excl. VAT)

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@BenLinders - benlinders.com 28
Ben Linders Consulting
Getting More out of Agile & Lean
Practices for teams and stakeholders to develop the right
products, deliver faster, increase quality, and create
happy high performing teams.
Full Day Workshop:
Deploying practices effectively
Improve Collaboration
Tips & Trick for Agile & Lean
Improve Continuously
Increase your organization's agility!
BenLinders.com/agilelean

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@BenLinders - benlinders.com 29
Ben Linders Consulting
Assessing your Agility
Over 40 tools:
• Self-Assessment checklists
• Readyness checks
• Maturity assessments
• Agile health checks
• Measurements
• And much more!
Agile Self-Assessments

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Ben Linders Consulting
Measure & Control Quality
Project Defect Model:
• Inserted & detected defects
• Improve reviews,
inspections & testing
• Prevent defects
 Design & Test Collaborate
 Visible Improvement
 Business case support
PDM (SEPG Europe 2003)
Project Performance (PQS
Monte Carlo (SEPG 2009)

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@BenLinders - benlinders.com 31
Ben Linders Consulting
Articles on Effective Agile
• Self-assessing how Agile you are
• Sustainable Improvement through Agile Retrospectives
• Working in a Sustainable Pace
• Becoming Agile and Lean
• Succes Factors for Using Scrum and Getting Benefits
• Process Improvement: The Agile Way
• Golden Rules for Agile Process Improvement
• How to deal with Resistance when Implementing Agile
• Managing Projects with Agile Teams
• Agile Project Management
• Establishing and Maintaining Stable Teams
• Getting Business Value out of Agile Retrospectives
• Sharing Knowledge is Power
• Are your Professionals Empowered?