Customer satisfaction is king

Customer satisfaction is king. Policies on cadence-based continuous flow delivery are a golden gift to the king.

Kanban actions when encountering a bottleneck.

What kind of actions should be considered to take care of a bottleneck?

- Are the people on the immediate upstream doing things right or rushing them?

- Do we need to add a buffer?

- Is this something temporary so doing nothing is the right thing to do?

- Is the root cause somewhere farther upstream?

- Do we change WIP?

- Do we reallocate human resources?

Note: this list is not exhaustive. 

In the need of scientific proof

I was reviewing the feedback sheets from a course I finished two days ago and one of them called my attention. There was a comment indicating I should've given scientific evidence to explain why lean and Kanban work. I understand how compelling it is to count with scientific proof; however, no having scientific proof of something is not sufficient to say something didn't work.

Most things that work are followed by a scientific explanation and not the other way around. Even when no scientific proof is available, should we stop doing something that works?

Lean and Kanban work because they tackle projects from a systems perspective and because they also pay attention to the human factor. That is, they go beyond just the project to find opportunities for improvement and do root-cause analysis. They see projects and people as complex adaptive systems better than other approaches.

The longer professionals demand solutions that are heavily rooted on scientific proof the longer it will take them to realize the huge potential they are missing and will continue to struggle with projects more than is necessary.

Btw, that same person gave me a low score on "being on time" even though I was there 30 minutes before start time every day of the course and kept the lunch break times as agreed. Oh!... wait, maybe my score would've been higher if I had allowed more time for lunch.

Lean-Agile Project Management Certification and Kanban training in Panama

I spent between May 26 and June 7 (with a break in between to go to Peru to give Kanban training) to give a Lean-Agile Project Management Certification course and a Kanban course in Panama to a small group from the telecom industry.

All participants loved the topics and the training. They also arranged for me to give a presentation at Telefónica in Panama and then a remote presentation at Telefónica Guatemala.

Look forward to the outcome...

Bringing Lean and Kanban to Peru

I spent June 1~3 bringing Lean and Kanban to Peru.

June 1 was a presentation on Lean and Kanban at the Universidad Peruana de Ciencias and June 2~3 was to give Kanban training to a group of highly motivated people from Agile Peru, Academia and industry.

Both activities were quite successful and I look forward to being back to Lima both for training and to do business.

3rd PMI Panama Project Management Congress

May 25-26 was of high-activity at the El Panama hotel, where the 3^rd PMI Panama Project Management Congress took place. Panama City is a very active place with a blooming economy. New business buildings are under construction and there are more jobs than people to take them. The boost in the economy is mainly due to the ongoing Panama Canal traffic plus its current expansion and the banking industry.

The congress had around 300 participants attending the congress days and then there was a workshops day on May 27.  There were 4 keynotes: on management by Jeff Hodgkinson; on the future of management in Panama by Eduardo Jaén; on the subway project for Panama by Roberto Roy; and on the project management effort to recue the 33 miners trapped in Chile by Hugo Constanzo. All keynotes were worthwhile but I want to give special mention to Constanzo’s for its incredible success regardless the high stakes and low odds it confronted—and Constanzo’s high humanity and humility which shows his quality as a great manager and an exceptional human being.

There were a total of 24 sessions on diverse topics from the very practical to the conceptual, techniques, experiences, government projects, and other. My presentation was on agile and lean as a means to better handle project cycles and implement an evolutionary approach to management.

The three workshops offered where on Authentic leadership for breakthrough results by Hawk Carpenter; A sixth sense for project management by Tres Roeder; and Practical lean-agile and innovation for managers by yours truly.  All workshops were successful and I was flattered by the fact that my workshop got the highest attendance and ranking of all.  I hope to get the opportunity to give this same workshop at the SFBAC soon.

LSSC11 Report

The Lean Software and Systems Consortium 2011 Conference took place last May 3-6 in Long Beach, California. This third conference was very impressive in more than one way. The conference grew 6 times since the 1^st conference for a total of over 800 attendees from all over the world, literally; it lasted 5 days (day one was for workshops and a day long Technical Advisory Board meeting);  21 sessions/panels per day; daily keynotes; topic-games room; Open Space; Intoductory talks; and tools showcase. Even more important were the countless conversations and discussions on aisles and halls. The event was organized by NetObjectives, led by Allan Shalloway, and by David J Anderson & Associates.

The Brickel Key awards banquet was quite an event, with six world-class candidates. In alphabetical order Siddharta Govindaraj (India) for his toolsForAgile software, Russell Healy (New Zealand) for his GetKanban game, Chris Hefley (USA) for his LeanKitKanban tool, Richard Hensley (USA) for his work on Kanban with CMMI, Mattias Skarin (Iceland) for his work and publications promoting Lean and Kanban, and Yuval Yeret (Israel) for his contribution bringing Lean and Kanban to Israel. The awards went to Russell Healy and Richard Hensley. The diversity of origin from the candidates is proof of the worldwide impact of Lan and Kanban.

Presentations covered familiar topics such as adoption and improvements as well as new topics such as lessons from the military, psychology, chaos, innovation, and risk. I myself had the opportunity to present Lean Value Innovation. All sessions were recorded and will be made available by mid June at http://www.leanssc.org/membership/ were some content will be available for the general public on a rotating basis and all content will be available to members.

To many attendees this was the best conference ever, and I agree with that opinion.

Lean Kanbann Jazz and Origami

Proposal session sent to Lean Kanban Central Europe 2011 conference.
http://www.lean-kanban-conference.de/


Abstract:


What do Lean, Kanban, Jazz and Origami have in common... and where do they differ? In this presentation I will talk about important aspects of Lean and Kanban that I consider to be key to their success and to be what sets them apart form other approaches and methodologies such as Agile and Scrum, yet could be easily ignored. This is very important because ignoring them as Lean and Kanban gain popularity will result in failed adoption at organizations. I use Jazz and Origami as metaphors because they greatly facilitate the understanding of those key aspects. I will also be introducing the term Understanding Worker and the phrase Think Outside The Kanban Board .

Nota breve sobre Scrum, Lean y Kanban

Este blog es para personas que desean aclarar su entendimiento sobre Scrum, Kanban y Lean.

Lean no es una metodología; es un fundamento basado en pensamiento en sistemas y en el sistema de conocimiento profundo a partir del cual se han generado prácticas y métodos tales como Kanban. La primer premisa fundamental es el mejorar todos los aspectos de la organización y no tan solo el buscar resolver problemas identificados. Esto es muy poderoso porque con mucha frecuencia el origen de un problema no está donde el problema se expresa sino en algún otro lugar; y porque una mejora que no toma en cuenta el contexto completo puede generar desbalance en otras áreas de la organización. La segunda premisa es el eliminar todo aquello que no agrega valor; resultando en mejoras en aspectos tales como productividad, calidad y satisfacción de clientes. Lean va más allá del contexto de desarrollo de software y considera a todos los stakeholders involucrados en la organización o el proyecto, por lo que no tan solo el proyecto es beneficiado.

Agile es un subconjunto de Lean y consiste es un una serie de valores y principios seguidos por una serie de metodologías de las cuales Scrum es la más popular.

Scrum se enfoca en la entrega de valor al cliente en intervalos fijos y logra esto mediante el aislamiento del grupo técnico para asegurar que se mantengan enfocados en completar las tareas a tiempo. La relación con el cliente es mediante un punto de contacto singular. La estructura de Scrum es fija y no toma en cuenta las necesidades particulares de cada proyecto. El ímpetu de hacer los intervalos auto-contenidos dificulta la implementación de ciertas tareas. Scrum no considera situaciones de la vida real que requieren de tratamiento especial tales como trabajos urgentes. Así mismo, Scrum no escala fácilmente por lo que es adecuado solamente para proyectos pequeños. La manera en que Scrum trata la escalabilidad es ya sea llevando a cabo lo que se conoce como Scrum de Scrums, o bien mediante la necesidad de contar con múltiples product owners; y en ambos casos el monto de tiempo de juntas de Scrum es incrementado y el monto de conocimiento sobre el proyecto entre stakeholders se reduce. Scrum no provee visibilidad sobre el proceso y tampoco sobre el estado actual del proyecto, por lo que es difícil identificar oportunidades de mejora. Esto quiere decir que Scrum es estático y no provee mejoras mas allá de lo logrado cuando fue implementado por primera vez. Scrum confronta alta resistencia al cambio en parte porque requiere el abandonar las prácticas actuales de la organización para implementar algo nuevo y distinto, lo cual tiene mayor riesgo y costo que una transición suave. La resistencia al cambio también tiene que ver con la introducción de nuevos roles y responsabilidades, lo cual hace que personas en la organización se puedan sentir retadas o amenazadas de alguna forma debido a la incertidumbre de la manera en la que tal cambio afecta sus carreras profesionales.

Kanban se enfoca en la entrega continua de valor tanto para con el cliente como para con la empresa. Es altamente visual y transparente por lo que todos los stakeholders tienen acceso al estado real del proyecto, facilitando la toma de decisiones a todo nivel. La alta visualización facilita la identificación de oportunidades de mejora por lo que tanto el proceso como los grupos involucrados pueden operar a nivel optimo en todo momento y el proceso evoluciona gradualmente conforme el proyecto progresa.  Kanban mantiene una disciplina sobre el monto de trabajo en progreso que mejora significativamente el valor generado y entregado gracias a su alto enfoque en calidad, resultando en mayor trabajo terminado en el mismo monto de tiempo. El flujo de trabajo puede ser medido, analizado, y gestionado tal que las características de mayor valor son entregadas primero.  Kanban cuenta con políticas de proceso explicitas tal que la comunicación y colaboración se hacen mucho más suaves y fáciles, reduciendo significativamente la posibilidad de error humano.  Kanban trata de manera distinta los distintos tipos de tareas que contienen los proyectos por lo que, por ejemplo, tareas urgentes pueden ser tratadas adecuadamente sin la necesidad de salirse de la metodología o generar excepciones, evitando así el desbalance y la pérdida de disciplina. Métricas cuantitativas facilitan el análisis de comportamiento para la identificación de causa raíz, y la implementación de soluciones es fácil y rápida. Debido a que los cambios son continuos, pequeños y graduales, el sistema completo evoluciona (stakeholders, proceso, y organización). De hecho existen casos en los que organizaciones han madurado el equivalente a dos niveles de CMMI en menos de un año. Kanban no confronta resistencia al cambio porque no hay cambios de roles y porque el punto de partida es el proceso actual. Kanban escala fácilmente porque la junta diaria (el equivalente a la junta de Scrum) no requiere ser multiplicada y su duración no requiere ser incrementada para mantener su eficiencia. Por último, Kanban considera aspectos económicos de la actividad relacionada con el proyecto, tales comos costos de retraso, de transacción, de operación y riesgo.

Un malentendido sobre Kanban es la creencia de que se aplica solamente en proyectos de mantenimiento. Kanban es un método para la gestión de cambios necesarios para madurar la organización. De hecho, es tan efectivo que también ha sido utilizado en áreas fuera de desarrollo de software, tales como recursos humanos, administración, salud, educación y hasta en oficinas de abogados.

Otro aspecto importante a considerar es el hecho de que lean y Kanban son sistemas abiertos que permiten la utilización de una variedad incremental de herramientas para mejorar organizaciones, independientemente de si son ágiles o no.

En septiembre de 2010 llevé a cabo un estudio sobre adopción de Kanban a nivel mundial por medio del Cutter Consortium. Los resultados muestran que a pesar de ser relativamente joven, Kanban está siendo adoptado ya en todas las regiones del mundo y que esta generando mejoras en satisfacción de usuarios, calidad, y productividad fueron reportadas por un 59%, 63.6%, y 71.1% comparado con Scrum.

Kanban está siendo adoptado por empresas de todo tamaño: desde menos de una docena hasta de mas de 100,000 empleados (este último número reportado en la conferencia LSSC11 a principios de Mayo de 2011).

Es posible adoptar lean sin Kanban y viceversa, pero la combinación de ambos tiene mucho mejor resultado.

Scum y kanban no son mutuamente exclusivos. Ambos pueden ser implementados en la organización y ser compatibles. A fin de cuentas todo depende de las necesidades de la empresa.

LSSC11 -- the day before.

Awesome weather here at Long Beach the day before the start of LSSC11.

It was great to meet with friends again and to get to meet in person some people I knew only remotely, such as Olav Maassen who wrote an article for the special issue on Kanban of Cutter's IT Journal I had the pleasure of being the guest editor for.


I also had the pleasure of meeting Donald Reinertsen and spent one-on-one time talking about cost, WIP, and lean.


Tomorrow the LSSC11 begins with tutorials and with a Technical Advisory Board.

One week to LSSC11 -- Register now!

We are only one week away from the LSSC11 Conference.

This is the place to go to to get up to speed on Lean and Kanban.

Register now and see you there :-)

Masa recognized by the Lean-Kanban Univeristy

Masa is listed as part of the services offered by the Lean-Kanban Univeristy

http://www.leankanbanuniversity.com/masa-maeda

SFBALWS invited speaker Siddharta Govindaraj

The May meetup of the San Francisco Bay Area Limited WIP Society is having Siddharta Govindaraj as invited speaker.

Topic: Using Class of Service for Managing Risk in Innovative New Product Development

Date: May 12

Time: 7:30 PM

Location: Thoughtworks

                  315 Montgomery San Francisco, CA

Make sure to RSVP indicating your name and affiliation. Security will be given a list to grant access to the building. 

Improving People and Processes

Improving People and Processes: Lean-Agile, Systems Thinking, and the System of Profound Knowledge

by Masa K. Maeda, Senior Consultant, Cutter Consortium

Click here for the full executive summary

Click here for the full executive report 

Organizations deal with pressure on a daily basis. Executive and managerial pressure frequently comes in the form of on-time delivery, cost cuts, and scope coverage; customer pressure usually comes in the form of feature requests and better quality; employee pressure continually asks for more time to finish tasks, fewer work hours, and better guidance.
Some organizations consider those kinds of pressures to be part of the daily corporate life and end up just bearing with them. Most of those organizations eventually collapse because lack of improvement puts them further behind over time. Other organizations take a proactive approach to better the organization. Some of those actions could be localized to focusing on ailing areas or could be of global scope and higher impact, such as replacing the organization's governance standard or model or adopting one if the organization didn't come with it already. Or it might mean replacing entire teams or migrating entire operations to other countries. In the accompanying Executive Report, I present, in detail, a better means to improve your organization through the improvement of people and processes, taking into account excellence, quality, and value through the application of lean-agile thinking, systems thinking, and the system of profound knowledge (SOPK).

The term "improving the whole" is not an if-you-only-have-a-hammer approach but rather the acknowledgement that we can acquire a way of thinking that broadens our perspective to look at our organization, processes, and people. It allows us to understand the kind of tools we need to continually better them.

Analytical thinking focuses on knowledge of the parts, properties, and behaviors of an object. Systems thinking focuses on the understanding of the properties and behaviors of an object, its parts, and the system under which it operates. This means that analytical thinking takes us levels inward with respect to the object, whereas systems thinking takes us levels outward with respect to the object because explanations always lie outside and not inside the system being studied. Systems thinking is very effective in solving even very difficult challenges and problems because the understanding acquired makes it easier to determine the root cause or causes of issues we encounter.
The SOPK is a management framework that has four parts: (1) willingness to change the management style, (2) transforming the individual, (3) fully applying its principles to all interaction with other people and decision making, and (4) transforming the organization.

Ponencia y taller en la Semana de la Cultura Laboral en Tlaxcala

Tuve el honor de ser invitado a dar la Presentación Magistral de Clausura de la Semana de la Cultura Laboral que se llevo a cabo en Tlaxcala, así como de dar un taller sobre Innovación de Valor el día 13 de Abril de 2011. Ambas tuvieron lugar en el auditorio del IMSS.


La presentación la atendió un auditorio lleno (con alrededor de 30 gentes de pie en los pasillos) consitente de industriales y oficiales de gobiernos de la region; maestros de enseñanza media y superior; y estudiantes de esos mismos niveles. El tema titulado "Entregando mayor valor a cliente y a la empresa mediante un enfoque moderno de calidad" lo presente bajo colaboración con la UNAM y con Esprial (empresa Española). La audiencia lo recibió con entusiasmo y parece ser que si logré tener impacto con toda la audiencia a pesar del reto que confronté debido a su diversidad. El tema incluyó innovación de valor, lean-agile, y Kanban.

Después de la ceremonia oficial de clausura se llevó a cabo el taller titulado "Mejorando la calidad mediante innovación colaborativa". La efectuamos el Mtro. Jorge Polo Contreras, el Mtro. Luis A. Nava, y yo. Efectuamos varias dinámicas para demostrar:

• El beneficio de trabajar en equipo
• El beneficio de la diversidad para llevar a cabo proyectos de manera mas exitosa
• El beneficio de limitar el monto de trabajo en progreso
• Las desventajas de efectuar múltiples tareas simultaneamente
• La importancia de darle el valor adecuado al factor humano para el éxito de la realización de productos y de la prestación de servicios.
• La ventaja de combinar pensamiento innovador con un ambiente que fomenta innovación y el contar con herramientas innovadoras que facilitan innovación.