Help teams improve continuously by having a desired operating pattern for their next improvement goal. Then, experiment to reach this operating pattern while collecting data needed to acquire new knowledge.

1. A checklist as the
"desired operating-pattern"
By: Sameh Zeid
sameh.zeid@gmail.com
Wednesday Sep 29, 2021

2. Agenda
1. Creating checklist in a complex system
2. Checklist as an operating-pattern
3. Experiment to deliver, have a system view

3. 9-10 %
Cost of disengaged
employees globally is:
$7 trillion.
Gallup
Global GDP

4. References
1. Toyota Kata Practice Guide, by Mike Rother
2. The Checklist Manifesto, by Atul Gawande
3. It’s the Manager, by Jim Clifton and Jim Harter
4. The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization, by Peter Senge
5. The High-Velocity Edge, by Steven Spear

5. Aspects of a complex system
Each
requirement
is unique
Technology
is ever-
changing
Volatile
requirements
Things can
easily go
wrong
Value delivery
needs multiple
teams
People are
non-fungible Customer
cannot
specify
requirements
Business
conditions
are rapidly
changing
Customer’s
needs evolve
daily

6. A checklist
changes
behaviors
Discipline
Admit our
fallibility
Teamwork

7. The cycle of a checklist
Do the work for ‘n’
requests based on
the checklist
Analyze data and
measure
outcomes
Redesign
Checklist,
processes, org
change, and may
be strategic change
Reflection and
Learning
Collect data
Analysis of
existing data and
process, science,
and expert advice
Modified
operating-pattern
Starting
checklist

8. Challenge: How Might We reduce customer reported
issues per quarter to only 10% of the current level
Design
Accept &
Deploy
Build &
Test
Production
Issues
Production
Support
Team 1
Team 2
Team 3
Info 1
I
n
f
o
2
Info
3
Info 4
Info 1-4 are not just information from the respective
teams to give us. Driving info 1-4 needs study of the
request at hand, understand how it relates to various
systems, whether these systems can support this
request, what modification they might need to do,
what decisions affect our team, how data will flow, ….
New Customer
Request
The current value stream:

9. A target-condition
“A target condition is a description of a goal point on the
way to the more distant challenge. It describes in some
detail where you want to be next, but not how to get there.”
Mike Rother
1. Outcome performance metric and value
2. Achieve-by-date
3. Desired operating-pattern with a process metric

10. The overarching goal, or challenge, comes from the manager. But
the series of target conditions for getting there are designed by
teams and proposed to their manager.
This ensures goal alignment while simultaneously enabling team
self organization.

11. Process Analysis
Root Cause Analysis of 100 production issues showed that
80% of the problems are related to design phase. Our
team depends on team-1, team-2 and team-3 for
figuring-out information that the design needs. Frequently
our team could not glean this information and had to make
assumptions in-order to complete Design phase. These
assumptions fail the live test by the end customer causing
excessive production issues.

12. Desired
operating pattern
Design
New Customer
Request
Team 1
Team 2
Team 3
Info 1
Info 2
Info 3
Info 4
Decisions to continue or
stop
“The fear people have about the idea of adherence to protocol is rigidity. They imagine mindless automatons,
heads down in a checklist, incapable of looking out their windshield and coping with the real world in front of
them. But what you find, when a checklist is well made, is exactly the opposite.” Atul Gawande

13. Checklist Design
Condition: Customer reported issues caused by missing information
required to complete the Design
Objective: Reduce Design flaws due to missed requirements

14. Issue Severity ======> Medium Medium Medium
Information the team needs to
create better design
Root
Cause 1
Root
Cause 2
Root
Cause 3
Future
Capability 1
Info 1
Info 2
Info 3
Info 4
Checklist
Categories
of root
causes
We should not
allow having
critical
production
issues

15. Actual Requests
Req 1 Req 2 Req 3 Req 4 Req 5 Req 6 Req 7 Req 8 Req 9 Req 10
Info 1
Info 2
Info 3
Info 4

16. Info 2 and Info 3 are simultaneously needed to
proceed with a new customer request.
We need to establish a modified work relationship
with team 2 and team 3 that would allow our team to
drive info 2 and info 3.

17. Options to change how we work with
team-2 and team-3
1. Merge team-2 and team-3 with our team.
2. Keep team-2 and team-3 separate from us, but have a
predefined capacity allocated to our team.
3. Other

18. Actual Requests
Req 1 Req 2 Req 3 Req 4 Req 5 Req 6 Req 7 Req 8 Req 9 Req 10
Info 1
Info 2
Info 3
Info 4
The team chose option-2

19. Actual Requests
Req 1 Req 2 Req 3 Req 4 Req 5 Req 6 Req 7 Req 8 Req 9 Req 10
Info 1
Info 2
Info 3
Info 4
Implementing Req 1 and Req 7 require significant changes in team-2 and team-3 systems. The
investment in this effort was postponed.

20. This was the team's first target condition.
The story will be continuing for a while.

21. Based on the new working model with team-2 and
team-3, our team established next target-condition
to maintain the checklist for three more weeks. It is
estimated to have 10 requests received by the
achieve-by-date of the target-condition. The
outcome-metric is the percentage of ‘Go’ requests.
The team collects data to track progress of applying
the checklist to various requests, this data is used
for the process-metric.

22. Actual Requests
Req 11 Req 12 Req 13 Req 14 Req 15 Req 16 Req 17 Req 18 Req 19 Req 20
Info 1
Info 2
Info 3
Info 4
What caused this apparent setback?

23. Our customer has outgrown us
Now, our customers can
do advanced functions
Advancing their business
practices created the
need for new classes of
requirements
Our product capabilities
are not designed for
such new classes of
requirements
Our ability to satisfy
customer requests
+
+
+
-

24. Threshold
of
Knowledge
Conduct Experiments
to get there
Grasp the
Current
Condition
Establish
your Next
Target
Condition
Get the
Direction or
Challenge
1
2
3
4
Coach
Learning Zone
Daily Coaching Cycles
Learner
Story-board
5 Coaching
Questions
Vision
Obstacles
Focus
Process
“If leaders were to
prioritize one action,
Gallup recommends
that they equip their
managers to become
coaches.”

25. High-Velocity vs Low-Velocity Organizations
1. Cope with complexity by constantly
experimenting and learning about the
work they do
2. Understand and solve problems, not put
up with them. Getting rid of a problem
once and for all.
3. Try to find problems and areas to
improve in each activity they do.
4. Realize that solving a problem will often
reveal another that had been masked
by the first one.
5. Functional Integration is at the core of
work at all levels of management
everyday.
1. Lock into an approach that seems good
at the time, and – even when it proves
inadequate – stick with it and muddle
through.
2. Siloization- You do your part, I do mine.
3. Endless workarounds and firefighting
4. Rather than continual improvement,
“This will do for now”
High Velocity Low Velocity
The High-Velocity Edge, by Steven Spear

26. Plan
Do
Check
Act
● What will you try?
● What do you expect
to happen?
● When can we see the
results?
● Try it
● What actually
happened?
● What did you learn?
● Get yourself to
plan the next
step
Rapid Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) Cycles

27. What we discussed
“I hope you learn about using a checklist as the desired
operating pattern. Then, by experimenting with this
operating pattern, we can generate new knowledge to
improve our system and products.”
This can happen when teams experiment daily while coached by their manager-
using Kata Thinking as a fractal process at various levels.

28. Thank you!