Flow - the secret sauce for business agility
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We discuss how Flow is essential to improving an organization's ability to improve its Agility. We discuss two dimensions of flow - flow of work and people experiencing flow. We discuss some of the impediments for both these dimensions and how one could work through them.
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Flow - the secret sauce for business agility
- 1. @sudiptal FLOW:THE SECRET SAUCE FOR BUSINESS AGILITY Sudipta Lahiri Head of Engineering and Products Digite Inc.
- 2. @sudiptal BusinessAgility ■ Ability of a business system to rapidly respond to change by adapting its initial stable configuration (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_agility) 2
- 3. @sudiptal At management/strategic level… ■ Understand that plans are meant to change ■ When prior plans/commitments have to change, it is not a failure; it is not a setback but an experience to learn from ■ Be data driven At an execution level… ■ Have a execution model that can quickly change without being able to come out of what it is doing, midway! ■ Build systems that generate and track user acceptability ■ Design systems that generate data What characteristics facilitate that?
- 4. @sudiptal The “work” dimension ■ If people are deeply immersed in a big chunk of work, it’s hard to drop the ball and jump to something new ■ Things must be brought to a logical point so that it can be restarted later ■ Working in shorter buckets of time will cause lesser disturbance for the team; reduce the wait time for the “change! – 1wk better than 2wks better than 1mth… The “people” dimension ■ People need to understand that this is the new “norm” ■ Change does not mean bad planning OR incomplete pre-requisites ■ However, “Change” does mean shifting gears; its disruptive and people have to be educated to be patient – Explain theWhy and the Impact “Execution” readiness for Business Agility… 4
- 5. @sudiptal Therefore, if you need Business Agility… ■ Your unit of work must be INDEPENDENT – Cannot be dependent on many other requirements to get deployed to production ■ Your unit of work must be SMALL ■ Your unit of work must deliverVALUE – So.. that the small independent unit of work is of some value to the user ■ Your unit of work must beTESTABLE – You can only “ship” what you can test! – Therefore, your unit of work should be vertically sliceable ■ Your unit of work must be MEASURABLE – Remember, we want to collect data! 5
- 6. @sudiptal What next… ■ “Small”, “Independent”, “Value Accretive”, “Measurable”, “Testable” unit of work! ■ When this unit of work comes, the team should take it, one at a time and finish it as fast as possible! – Remember, Business Agility is: “Ability of a business system to “rapidly” respond to change” ■ Goldratt said : – People should “sit on their hands” and not silently become a bottleneck;When work comes, they should do it as fast as they can and then again get back “sitting on their hands”
- 7. @sudiptal Flow is…. ■ Continuous movement of work like a water stream…. ■ ….. value accretion happens as this unit of work moves from upstream to downstream…. ■ …. through impediments, though removing them improves flow…. ■ …. at a sustainable pace so there is a uniform flow of water
- 8. @sudiptal Defining flow… ■ Flow is how work progresses through a system. ■ When a system is working well, or having “good” flow, it tends to move steadily and predictably – “Bad” flow means work starts and stops. ■ Every time there is a breakdown in the flow, chances of accumulating waste increase. ■ The goal: Strive for consistent flow which generates more reliable delivery, and greater value to customers, teams, and stakeholders. … the 5 principles ■ Understand value from the customer perspective ■ Understand theValue Stream ■ Make theValue Stream Flow ■ Create Pull ■ Continuously Improve Flow of work…
- 9. @sudiptal Manufacturing versus Knowledge Services
- 10. @sudiptal Flow of Work People experiencing Flow Flow of Outcome High awareness Weak Implementation Low awareness Implementation
- 11. @sudiptal Flow:The Psychology of Optimal Experience - By Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
- 12. @sudiptal Each person has a “Contribution” cycle… ■ You have to keep taking people through this cycle… – In a planned manner – Before its too late! ■ In our space, this cycle will keep moving faster! ■ Our own F4P survey feedback shows that
- 13. @sudiptal Many theories… ■ We know it… ■ We discuss it… ■ … but action is almost always reactive – Employee situation – Customer situation
- 15. @sudiptal Impediments to Flow ofWork… @Team level ■ Understand theValue Stream – Majority still looking atTask Boards! – Focus on theTask; not on the outcome – Outcome focus means identifying a Card Owner; make them own the outcome ■ Many still plan for the team and then allocate tasks for someone else to execute – Seeing tasks on a Kanban Board does not change much anything ■ Make theValue Stream Flow – Pull based execution is rare! – WIP implementations are FYI only ■ Silos causing Local optimization (vs System Optimization)
- 16. @sudiptal Impediments to Flow ofWork… @Management level ■ Utilization: ClassicVanity metric – Utilization focus is counter-productive; takes focus from outcome ■ “Classic” Planning error: If Capability = 100 phrs/mth and EPIC_X = 100 phrs (if you can determine it), plan duration != 1 month ■ High Demand/CapabilityVolatility systems will need low Utilization ■ DemandVolatility may force you to do other things ■ CapabilityVolatility may force you away from this work
- 17. @sudiptal Low Planned Utilization != Idle time ■ The concept that “do nothing” is difficult to accept – Yet, doing something when you are not ready causes rework; that is waste – Your current investment in people or machines is sunk cost ■ If your DNA does not take you away from Utilization, then use a lower than “commensurate” Utilization factor to plan Demand – For the rest, you can use them for: ■ Demand ■ Technical debt ■ Intangibles (as theThe Kanban Method calls) ■ Non-bottleneck people do work that simplifies the work of the bottleneck OR rework their ideas to increase the stability of those ideas
- 18. @sudiptal Impact to “Flow Debt” ■ What does it mean: – Given a finite capacity to service demand, when we prioritise working on one work item over another, we adversely impact the CycleTime of the latter ■ Why do you care: – Flow Debt means delivering more quickly now at the cost of slower delivery times later – You disappoint one Customer for another… at an increasing frequency Higher Flow Debt Demand Volatility High Utilization 18
- 19. @sudiptal Impediments to Flow ofWork… @Management level ■ Asking the right question ■ From Fixed Scope/Cost/Time… to… FixedTime/Cost From “When can I get it?” To “When do you need it”
- 20. @sudiptal Retrospectives ■ Most teams do the easy part… ■ The difficult part is: – Identify impediments in your circle of influence ■ Outside your circle of influence is a “constraint” – Prioritization – Doing 5Why on a few items ■ Takes a lot time when done collaboratively – (Few) Actionables with a clear owner, with a commitment to close in a (short) defined time
- 21. @sudiptal Impediments to People experiencing Flow… ■ All the good stuff can happen when there is some breathing space! – If you are continuously fire fighting, you will not get the bandwidth to do some of the “other” things – How do you incentivize people a “Delivery” person to think in this direction?
- 22. @sudiptal “Helical” structures ■ Balance between Flexibility and Agility, between centralization and decentralization ■ Reduce complexity; embrace agility ■ These managers are neither “primary” nor “secondary,” 22
- 23. @sudiptal Questions ■ How to best absorb inevitable variability (by customers in service industries, for innovations in development, ...) to protect flow efficiency? ■ This will probably be addressed as part of the presentation but how does Flow Debt differ fromTechnical Debt? Is is a function of time (Flow) vs. functionality (Technical)? ■ Tips on enabling e2e flow system – upstream to downstream and embeded feedback loops
- 24. @sudiptal Digite’s Product Development E2E flow…
- 25. @sudiptal ■ Reach me at: – @sudiptal – slahiri@digite.com – sudiptalahiri.wordpress.com “Absorb what is useful, discard what is useless and add what is specifically your own” Bruce Lee Sep 22, 2018 25