1. Could aggregation of
“marginal gains”
lead to
innovation?
Tathagat Varma
Knowledgepreneur
http://thoughtleadership.in

2. How does a project
get to be a year
late?
Fred Brooks,
The Mythical Man-Month, 1975
…One day at a time!

3. The Mythical Man-Month
“…When one hears of disastrous
schedule slippage in a project, he
imagines that a series of major
calamities must have befallen it.
Usually, however, the disaster is due
to termites, not tornadoes; and the
schedule has slipped imperceptibly
but inexorably.”

4. Her goal is not easy!
Needs
8,000
cals a
day!

5. …and neither was his!
Lost 108
kgs in
18
months!

6. So…
If a day-by-day delay can
eventually hurt a project that
bad, can we also reverse it?
…maybe build something by
day-to-day, or an
incremental progress?

7. Lorenz’s Butterfly Effect
1972: Does the
Flap of a
Butterfly’s Wings
in Brazil Set Off a
Tornado in
Texas?
Small changes
can lead to big
results!

8. Team GB
• No British had ever won Tour de France till 2010.
Dave Brailsford, GM and Performance Director for
Team Sky, was asked to change that.
• Dave’s plan was to win in five years by optimising
every aspect of performance. But they did in 2.5y!
• Sir Bradley Wiggins became the first British cyclist
to win Tour de France in 2012. Chris Froome won
Tour de France in 2013.
• British Cycling Team, also coached by Dave, won
70% of Gold Medals at 2012 London Olympics.

9. So, what did he do?
• “The whole principle came from the idea that if you
broke down everything you could think of that goes into
riding a bike, and then improved it by 1%, you will get a
significant increase when you put them all together”
• Started looking for “1% improvement”. In everything.
• Started with…nutrition of riders, weekly training program,
bike seat ergonomics, weight of tires, …and continued
with….pillows that offered best sleep, most effective
massage gels, even how best to wash hands to avoid
infection!
http://www.bbc.com/sport/olympics/19174302

10. Aggregation of Marginal
Gains
http://jamesclear.com/marginal-gains

11. The simple math behind it
that “compounds” it…
(0.99)^365 = 0.03
(1.01)^365= 37.8

12. 1%…same as Kaizen?
“…As an MBA, I had become fascinated
with Kaizen and other process-improvement
techniques. It struck me that we should think
small, not big, and adopt a philosophy of
continuous improvement through the
aggregation of marginal gains. Forget about
perfection; focus on progression, and
compound the improvements.”
https://hbr.org/2015/10/how-1-performance-improvements-led-to-olympic-gold

13. does it work outside
sports and fitness?
But…

14. Some famous examples…
• Toyota: 40 Years, 20 Million Ideas!
• Intuit’s SnapTax team iterated eight time in eight
weeks
• Dyson’s 5,127 Iterations over 5+ years
• Lexus LS400: 450 iterations and 900 engine
prototypes over 5+ years

15. MiG-15 vs. F-86s
• Colonel John Boyd was interested not just in any dogfights, but specifically in dogfights
between MiG-15s and F-86s. As an ex-pilot and accomplished aircraft designer, Boyd
knew both planes very well. He knew the MiG-15 was a better aircraft than the F-86.
The MiG-15 could climb faster than the F-86. The MiG-15 could turn faster than the
F-86. The MiG-15 had better distance visibility.
• The F-86 had two points in its favor. First, it had better side visibility. While the MiG-15
pilot could see further in front, the F-86 pilot could see slightly more on the sides.
Second, the F-86 had a hydraulic flight control. The MiG-15 had a manual flight control.
• The standing assumption on the part of airline designers was that maneuverability was
the key component of winning dogfights. Clearly, the MiG-15, with its faster turning and
climbing ability, could outmaneuver the F-86.
• There was just one problem with all this. Even though the MiG-15 was considered a
superior aircraft by aircraft designers, the F-86 was favored by pilots. The reason it was
favored was simple: in one-on-one dogfights with MiG-15s, the F-86 won nine times
out of ten.
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa479371.aspx

16. Boyd’s OODA Loop

17. Boyd’s Law of Iteration
Speed of iteration
beats
the quality of
iteration!

18. The agile way…
http://agilemanifesto.org/

19. Using Scrum as a problem-
solving framework…

20. Your scrum implementation should
be about “double-loop” of learning
http://www.selfleadership.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/AL-2.jpg

21. Some “marginal gains” to try
in each sprint…
• reduce CI build speeds by 5 mins
• improve code coverage by 2%
• increase test automation on legacy code by 2%
• reduce tech debt by 5%
• cross-skill team members
• improve NPS / market-facing metrics by 1%
• Increase employee happiness by 5% :)
• …etc.

22. Recap
• Innovation requires a mindset of continuous improvisation:
progress over perfection.
• Agile way, and Scrum framework in particular, facilitates
iterative thinking that could be used effectively to
progressively eliminate the pain points (and track the
results to ensure that efforts are aligned to results!)
• Over time, such “aggregation of marginal gains” could
lead to a significant innovation.
• Next time you want something big…try something small!

23. References
• http://jamesclear.com/marginal-gains
• Marginal Gains Interview with Dave Brailsford, https://
youtu.be/gBY3q8TqoXY
• http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/news/racing/olympics/
maginal-gains-british-cycling-didnt-think-275219
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Brailsford
• https://hbr.org/2015/10/how-1-performance-
improvements-led-to-olympic-gold