In this session, you’ll learn about one team’s struggle to improve collaboration and how they sought to shorten cycle time by carefully crafting an experiment with an Andon Cord. The Andon Cord is a Toyota innovation designed to empower front-line employees to recognize issues, initiate a stoppage of work, and work together as a team to quickly identify a path forward. The emergency cable strung above assembly lines became a symbol of the Toyota Way, and has widely been copied throughout the auto industry and beyond. You’ll be introduced to metrics that show a surprising correlation between collaboration through Andon Cord pulls and Cycle Time!

1. Andon Cords within
Development Teams
Josh Cohen and Zack Ayers
excella.com | @excellaco

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Agenda
1. Project History
2. Andon Cord Overview
3. Our Andon Cord
4. Psychological Safety & Product-Wide Andon
5. Andon Cords Elsewhere
6. Gene Kim’s DevOps 3 Ways
7. Closing Thoughts

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Project History
Section 1 of 7

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Project History

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Project History

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Project History

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Project History

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Project History

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10+ times daily to
production
Deployments
20-30 minutes to
production
Code Commits
Acknowledgement in
~1 minute
Incidents
Golden Metrics

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management30.com

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We had a case of the almost
dones. But why?
Collaboration Struggles

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We were planning collaboration
instead of just collaborating.

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Andon Cord Overview
Section 2 of 7

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Andon Cord Overview

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Andon vs. Jidoka

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Toyota’s Andon Cord
1. Show Me
2. Safety Culture
3. Priority

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management30.com

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Our Andon Cord
Section 3 of 7

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Our Experiment
• All are empowered to ”pull the cord”
• When the cord is pulled, everyone stops work to identify a
path towards resolution
• The cord will be pulled whenever someone felt stuck or
needed help of the team

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Reduction in Cycle
Time
Cycle Time
Increase in team
collaboration
Collaboration
Learning about issues
as they arise
Timeliness
Measuring Our Success

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Our Implementation
The Andon Cord will be “pulled” whenever someone felt stuck,
or needed the team’s help

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Our Implementation
The Andon Cord will be “pulled” whenever someone felt stuck,
or needed the team’s help

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Our Implementation
The Andon Cord will be “pulled” whenever someone felt stuck,
or needed the team’s help

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Visualizing Our Data

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Inspection & Adaption
• The Andon Cord was helpful when used, but we weren’t
using it very often
• Fear of failure still existed – we were afraid to ask for help

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The team changed the verbiage of when to pull the Andon
Cord to be “whenever we need the opinion of the team”.
Inspection & Adaption

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From Experiment to
Practice
Improved Cycle Time
Greater Psychological Safety
with Collaboration
Continue to Inspect and
Adapt
Our
Takeaways

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Psychological Safety &
Product-Wide Andon
Section 4 of 7

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The Importance of Psychological Safety
• Greater comfort in speaking up, allowing us to address
issues more quickly
• No one is upset when you pull the cord
• Ripple effect across the team and project

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Product-Wide Andon: Code Red
• Reserved for major issues
• Allowed us to assess the issue more quickly
• Made it easy to get the key personnel
• Once assessed could go back to what you were doing if not
needed

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Andon Cords Elsewhere
Section 5 of 7

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Gene Kim’s DevOps 3 Ways
Section 6 of 7

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Credit: Gene Kim
Flow
Feedback
Continuous Learning &
Collaboration
DevOps 3 Ways

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Closing Thoughts
Section 7 of 7

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1. Coach
2. Teach
3. Ask, Don’t Tell
4. Provide Freedom
5. Have Fun!
Bring it Home

45. Andon Cords within
Development Teams
Josh Cohen and Zack Ayers
excella.com | @excellaco