While I haven't been blogging much over the winter, I wasn't entirely idle. I co-authored two important papers. The second of which is the forthcoming Technical Note from the SEI entitled "CMMI and Agile: Why not embrace both?" with Mike Konrad, Hillel Glazer and Jeff Dalton [More on this when the SEI publishes it.] The first is an academic paper that appeared in the Journal of Software Process: Improvement and Practice, co-authored with Merwan Mehta and David Raffo "Providing Value to Customers in Software Development Through Lean Principles." [Unfortunately, this paper though available online is a download from Wiley, both the journal subscription and the paper re-print are very expensive. If you have an interest in this paper, send me an email.]

I'm very pleased with both of these papers. The co-authoring experience in both cases was very enjoyable and rewarding. The outcomes were superior to anything I might have written on my own.

There are many lessons in the Lean paper, but perhaps the most important is this message...

Value first, then flow, then waste reduction/elimination

Too often I see Lean being taught as "the elimination of waste" when in fact waste reduction is a tertiary concern. While waste elimination is important, waste should not be reduced in detriment to flow, and smooth flow can be sacrificed to improve value delivery.

So for example, a queue in a kanban system can be considered as waste (probably necessary waste). As queues are a type of waste, it makes sense to reduce or eliminate queues. I see this advice coming from others who talk about Lean in software development.

However, it is important to understand why the queue is there. It is there to absorb variation in size and complexity of work items or in the availability of someone to process those work items. If you reduce the size of the queue or eliminate it altogether, it may impeded the smooth flow of the system, causing a stop-go effect, lowering the overall throughput of the process.

For example, (and I talk about this when I present kanban at conferences) at Corbis we had a non-instant availability bottleneck in build engineering, due to the time-slicing (multi-tasking) required of the build engineers. As a result, we increased the size of the queue in front of build engineering in order to smooth the flow through the whole system. In this example, the variability comes from the availability (or lack thereof) of the resource, not from the sizing of the work items. So we increased the amount of "waste" in the system to smooth flow and increase throughput.

It is also known that expediting is bad. Expediting impedes flow and causes WIP to increase and lead times to lengthen. We have demonstrated this empirically with the kanban implementations we've done so far. If we are to focus on smooth flow we would never expedite.

However, this general rule would be wrong. Occasionally there will be times where an expedite request carries a very high monetary value. The impact on flow and WIP and lead times to other items in progress is outweighed by the monetary benefit of accepting the expedite request. Hence, it makes sense to pursue the value in the expedite request despite its impact on flow and its introduction of waste in the system.

Hence, value trumps flow and flow trumps waste elimination in all process operation and process improvement decisions. Technorati tag: Agile, David+Anderson, Software+Engineering, Management, Lean, Kanban, David+Raffo, Merwan+Mehta

I'm sure more than a few of my readers will be interested in this. Martin Hinshelwood has started a project to deliver an open source Kanban UI for Team Foundation Server, similar to the one that Darren Davis created at Corbis. I'd like to give Martin every encouragement with this effort. Why not leave him an encouraging comment?...

Related Posts: Digital Whiteboard Experiment, Return of the Sticky Buddy, Do you have your Sticky Buddy? Technorati tag: Agile, Lean, Kanban, Software+Engineering, David+Anderson

It's more than 4 years since I posted one of the most popular entries at AgileManagement.Net, Personal Hedgehog Concept. I was challenged by a reader comment to give my own take on the Personal Hedgehog idea and how I was working on it. I've given a full reply over at our new corporate blog at Modus Cooperandi. It's appropriate because it is indeed the formation of Modus Cooperandi that represents the realization of my own Personal Hedgehog Concept.

I'll be posting at the Modus Cooperandi blog on a regular basis, so you might like to add it to your RSS reader. Technorati tag: Management+Science, Jim+Collins, Modus+Cooperandi

The Great Britain cycling team has just won an unprecedented 9 gold medals at the World Track Championships, held this year in Manchester, England. While home advantage might count for something, this article on BBC News is telling. Director of Performance, David Brailsford is clearly a leader who understand the importance of the W. Edwards Deming principle of first you drive out fear (point 8 of his 14 Points of Management). Brailsford puts his failure tolerant attitude at the top of his importance list when it comes to the secret of the team's success.

"You cobble them all [athletes and staff] together, give them a good environment, you push them, make them not scared to fail," said Brailsford.

 

"And you say 'Let's end up all over the track having tried to win rather than play safe and get a silver or bronze'. You remove that fear from the athletes and off we go."

Time and again, I find it difficult to find better management and leadership advice than Deming. I find that creating a failure tolerant, fear free, innovative culture is the key to creating continuous improvement and ultimately achieving world class performance. It's remarkable how well this advice holds up across so many walks of life: manufacturing; sports; and knowledge workers professions. Technorati tag: Management+Science

Recently, I've come to realize that I don't make enough out of my contribution to the APLN and the community contribution I make through it and this blog. I've added my APLN Board Membership to my resume and my LinkedIn Profile. I've also decided to dedicate every Friday, when I'm not working with clients, that is, every Friday that I'm in my office in Seattle, to APLN related work.

Currently, that means planning the forthcoming APLN Leadership Summit in Seattle.

I'm also going to be redesigning my blog and starting a fresh Channel APLN with a separate RSS feed. Look out for that soon.

I'm really happy with how the APLN is developing and the new focus we've brought to the organization this year. The APLN (note: we've more or less completely dropped the full name, Agile Project Leadership Network, in favor of a rebranding around the initials) knows what it wants to be now, a not-for-profit dedicated to bringing better leadership and management to knowledge worker industries with an initial focus on the IT sector and software development.

The APLN now has a clear focus around 3 main activities: Leadership Summits - these regional conferences provide learning opportunities for attendees and bring much needed funding to the APLN to support the other two activities; learning through a Wiki of Knowledge (LWOK) - if you like, a crowd-sourced alternative to other bodies of knowledge around project management; and a social networking and social media program designed to bring the community of leaders and managers closer together and provide transparency in to their achievements, learning, recognition and skills.

You'll be hearing a lot more about these APLN activities as the year unfolds. I'm proud to be part of the APLN and find the challenge of bootstrapping and developing a nascent, startup, non-profit organization, fun and engaging. Technorati tag: Agile, APLN, David+Anderson

26 years ago I started my first business working with 3 school friends developing and selling computer games for the Sinclair ZX81 computer. It's amazing to think that it is almost 20 years since I ran my own business and could call myself an entrepreneur. Well I'm finally getting back to my roots. And again it is with 3 friends whom I've known and worked with for several years, Jim Benson, Corey Ladas and Daniel Vacanti. Together we have just started Modus Cooperandi, a consulting firm dedicated to improving leadership and management in knowledge worker industries. A firm that will pride itself in helping clients deliver superior results and become more competitive.

We've occupied the offices of Jim's old business Gray Hill Solutions on Seattle's Lake Union and we've opened up shop offering consulting on agile and lean enterprise transitions and training classes in Agile Management and Kanban. We intend to be leading the move to a more collaborative, higher trust, more open, more networked, more socially connected way of working in the 21st Century.

If you've been reading this blog for a while and wished, "if only we could hire David to come and help us..." or "I wish David taught classes in this stuff..." then your wishes have been granted. If you'd like to talk to me about helping you and your business be more successful, click the Hire David link on LHS navigation bar or drop me an email.