The document discusses using quantitative analysis and data from tracking tools to systematically reduce waste and improve processes. It describes analyzing lead time data to identify opportunities to improve flow efficiency and reduce waiting times. Metrics like flow efficiency, work-in-progress limits, and process control charts can be used to spot variations and reduce imbalance. The key is making continuous improvement a regular process driven by data, not just perceptions, to maximize value and minimize waste.

1. @sudiptal
Quantitative analysis for
(systematic) waste reduction
SUDIPTA LAHIRI
HEAD OF ENGINEERING AND PRODUCTS, DIGITÉ.
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2. @sudiptal@sudiptal
About Digité
Digité, Inc. - Pioneer in Web-based Collaborative Products/ Solutions for Geographically
Distributed Teams
Headquartered in Cupertino, CA
Over 900,000 users in the Americas, Europe, Asia/ Pacific
Products that cover Lean/ Kanban, Agile ALM, Project/ Portfolio Management
SwiftKanban is our flagship Lean/ Kanban product
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3. @sudiptal@sudiptal
3 decades in the industry
Agile/Lean Practitioner
Head of Engineering and Products @ Digité
Development of SwiftKanban, SwiftALM, SwiftEASe products
Organize the LimitedWIP Societies in India
Sudipta Lahiri (Sudi)
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About myself

4. @sudiptal
Full disclosure: I will often use screen shots
from SwiftKanban tool to illustrate a point
YOU COULD TRACK SIMILAR DASHBOARDS IN EXCEL AS WELL…
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5. @sudiptal@sudiptal
What do we see…
Commonly
• Teams working in
time-boxes
• Teams using (Kanban)
Boards
• Teams doing Standups
• Teams doing
Retrospectives
Occasionally
• Scope frozen for the
time-box
• Boards that represent
the Value Stream
• Retrospectives =>
Actionable => Closure
Rarely
• Metric driven
Continuous
Improvement
• Flow and Pull
• Enforcing WIP =>
Collaboration
• Business driven by
execution metrics
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6. @sudiptal 6

7. @sudiptal@sudiptal
Scope of this talk
Analyse Data
Continuous
Improvement
Waste
Reduction
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8. @sudiptal@sudiptal
Understanding “waste”…
Mis-perceived that Labor/Material/Capacity as the primary source of
waste!
Need to focus on non-value add activity
◦ Focus should be on “inactivity”
◦ For e.g., when work is waiting for something on the critical path
◦ Focus on the value that you get from the activity (vs) the cost for it
◦ In other words, every product feature as envisaged by product management could
potentially be used by someone somewhere!
◦ Question is: does the cost (effort) justify that value?
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9. @sudiptal
Waste comes in 3 forms…
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• Imbalance
• Fluctuation
• Irregularity
• Deviation
• Overload
• Congestion
• Perversity
• Damage
• Loss
• Unwanted expense
• Unnecessary effort
https://www.mudamasters.com/en/lean-production-theory/toyota-3m-model-muda-mura-muri

10. @sudiptal
Are we working on the right thing “now”?
Should we work on something else “now”?
PREVENT MUDA (UNWANTED EXPENSE, UNNECESSARY EFFORT)
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11. @sudiptal@sudiptal
Ask the right question…
From
“When can I get it?”
To
“When do you need it”
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Most prioritisation methods
are very elementary… !

12. @sudiptal
Once you know when do you need it…
STATIC ALERTS
Tools can track Due Dates - have the Board
highlight it
… GET SMARTER WITH PREDICTIONS!
Determine the likely date of completion of a
specific card (Forecast Completion Date).
If this is later than the Due Date, then highlight
the RISK on the Board
Due Date
19-May-2019
Due Date
Forecast
Date
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13. @sudiptal
What is this based on?
LEAD TIME HISTOGRAMS
From Lean Kanban University curriculum…
Mode
LT Distribution is a Weibull Distribution
with a long tail
◦ Mode, Median and Mean are all different
◦ Mean > Median > Mode
◦ Using Mean as a basis for planning the
future is simply incorrect, unlike Gaussian
distributions
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14. @sudiptal
What can you do now?
From Lean Kanban University curriculum…
Work Items of different type OR different
CoS will have different distributions!
◦ Critical Issues < Defects <
Functionalities
◦ Expedite CoS < Fixed Date CoS <
Standard CoS < Intangible CoS
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Reclassify if Forecast is off Due
Date!

15. @sudiptal
Don’t “waste” working on the wrong things…
Demand > Supply, for most of us!
If your data shows that you will finish something
much sooner than when you need it, then delay it!
Don’t spend bandwidth now on this; work on
something else… maximize Opportunity potential!
Consider CoD/CoS when deciding how much risk you
are willing to take for the “deferring” card
15–Oct-2018
Due Date
Forecast
Date
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This decision making is part of the
Upstream/Discovery Kanban process –
not downstream!

16. @sudiptal
How do we increase forecast accuracy?
It is one thing to have a number… but
what’s your predictability of that
number?
For better business outcomes, REDUCE
MURA:
◦ “Shift Left” the distribution curve =>
reduce LT
◦ Reduce outliers so that the long tail is
minimised – control the spread!
Mode
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17. @sudiptal
Visualize Card Aging in the Value Stream
Set thresholds to the Modal and Mean
value
◦ Encourage team that all things equal, pull
cards that are aging
◦ Ideally, finish the card within Modal value;
worst case, within the Mean value
◦ Increase in the number of cards that go past
the mean value will increase the spread and
“shift-right” the Lead Time
Select tools that help you to visualize
cards are about to cross these
thresholds
Mode
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18. @sudiptal@sudiptal
What did we cover so far?
Proper use of a Kanban system allows you to Forecast when that
card would be done (with an associated probability)
Use that as the basis that you want to work on next
◦ Factor in the CoS and the CoD
You have to focus continuously to improve the quality of your data –
the spread, the outliers!
Moving on…
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19. @sudiptal
How much time do spend on “Estimation”?
What is the ROI of highly accurate Estimation
(with greater effort)?
Understanding Flow Efficiency
PREVENT MUDA (UNWANTED EXPENSE, UNNECESSARY EFFORT)
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20. @sudiptal
Flow efficiency measures
the percentage of total
lead time is spent
actually adding value (or
knowledge) versus
waiting
Flow efficiency % = Work Time x 100%
Lead Time
Flow efficiencies of 1-
5% are commonly
reported. > 40% is
very good!
Low Flow Efficiency does not
mean people are idle; they are
doing other things
Often, they have high WIP
because they are working on
multiple things in parallel
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21. @sudiptal@sudiptal
Flow efficiency trend
SwiftKanban Flow efficiency trend chart
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Realistically, the number is this
number/User WIP on average

22. @sudiptal@sudiptal
Low Flow Efficiency (vs) Estimation
If your FE = 25% and your LT = 100 days, it means Working time = 25 days!
If the card Working Time = 25 days and Waiting Time = 75 days, then…
◦ Spending more effort to get greater accuracy in Estimation and
conclude that Working Time “could be” 20 days or 30 days, is counter-
productive
◦ Instead, spend time to identify how you could reduce the 75 days
Waiting Time by 50%. That is far more productive!
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23. @sudiptal
Reduce MUDA from Aborted cards
Do a Pareto Analysis of key
causes that lead to Aborted
cards
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24. @sudiptal@sudiptal
What we covered so far…
Reduce MUDA by working on the right thing – not
something that can be deferred for now
Reduce MUDA by spending lesser and lesser time on
Estimation
Make sure that you Abort cards where you have started
work in Exceptional circumstances!
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25. @sudiptal
Limiting WIP = Reducing MURI
REDUCE OVERLOAD, OVERBURDEN, CONGESTION
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26. @sudiptal
Data tracking at multiple levels
1. USER WIP
2. CAP(Capacity)WIP / CON (Constant)WIP 3. VS STAGE WIP LIMIT
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27. @sudiptal@sudiptal
1. Analyse past Data to reveal when overburdening
2. Use TOC
Notice the bottleneck building in the Validation lane between Oct 4th and Oct 10th.
Notice the Person2 (Rahul) is the most constrained person throughout this process.
Also, Person3 (Priyank) becomes the second most overburdened person by Oct 10th.
Play this Clip
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28. @sudiptal
Metrics improving
Process Control
REDUCE MURA: UNEVENNESS, IMBALANCE, FLUCTUATION,
IRREGULARITY, DEVIATION
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29. @sudiptal
1.Identify process variations
2.Reduce variations
◦ Use Control Charts
◦ Identify cards that were
out of process control
◦ Analyse what happened
to each of those cards
◦ Do RCA to implement
Corrective Action
◦ Unfortunately, Control
Charts often hide the
detail…
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30. @sudiptal@sudiptal
1.Identify process variations
2.Reduce
Analyse LT across the Value
Stream across different time
buckets!
`Notice the sudden
spike in this stage in
the Aug Sprint!
Notice the increase (improvement) in the CT of the pre-Development VS Stages:
1. Team is increasingly spending time in Design and TC development now, compared to earlier
2. There is still a lack of LT in the NFR Analysis (2nd blue lane) ! 30

31. @sudiptal@sudiptal
1. Identify high Wait Time
2. Reduce
Reduce Muda by focussing on Wait Time
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32. @sudiptal@sudiptal
What did we cover…
In summary, its not just important to have a number!
◦ There has to be some level of predictability that gives you confidence on the
number to take a business decision!
Control Charts are the traditional way to understanding outliers…
However, aggregate number hide details… use the VS stage data to
understand the finer details!
◦ See if you can playback on past data to understand what is happening
◦ RCA your outcome variations/outliers
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33. @sudiptal@sudiptal
In closing…
Use data from your tracking tools to continuously improvement
◦ Make this a regular process; not just at time of Retrospectives
Make such data/dashboard a part of your management reporting
◦ It will make them look at the right data and ask the right questions!
◦ You will see greater interest from them in how to improve your execution
Remember… the objective why we started this journey: Continuous
Improvement; drive it on data – not just perceptions!
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34. @sudiptal
Reach me at:
◦ @sudiptal
◦ slahiri@digite.com
◦ lahiri.sudipta@gmail.com
THANK
YOU!
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“Absorb what is useful, discard
what is useless and add what is
specifically your own”
Bruce Lee