This is an excerpt from the book "Five Minute Lean", by David McLachlan - a wonderful book that blends teaching of the tools, culture and philosophy of traditional Lean with a modern-day Lean parable. You can get the whole book on Amazon here and enjoy your own copy.
Implement With Agile for Fast Iterations and Feedback
Agile is another methodology that can be used in conjunction with Lean to great effect, especially during implementation. It is primarily based on releasing things in short, quick “iterations”, (implementations or experiments) to get feedback as quickly as possible. Iterations usually last from a few days to a few weeks before feedback is gathered, changes are made and the next iteration begins.
Additionally, we also want to release the changes we make in a controlled environment as a “pilot”, where possible. For example, making changes on one machine instead of 50 machines, or with a small group of call centre consultants instead of the full floor.
Implementing in this way has many benefits. With no large rollout the risk is minimised. With faster feedback we are also getting rid of opinions and cutting through to the hard data – we can see if something is working or not. We don’t have to put a lot of time and money into it to know if it works, and it also becomes easy to see if we have affected a downstream or upstream process adversely.
In Lean terminology this method of experimenting iteratively and gathering feedback is also called “Improvement Kata”, and again relates to the “Plan, Do, Check, Act & Adjust” cycle. Using Agile simply gives that cycle a solid framework.
Step 1: Prioritising a Backlog
The first step for the team, before an iteration begins, is to prioritise and display the work that must be completed during that iteration.
For example, team-mates would meet and write down all known and upcoming work (the “backlog”), put it in order of priority and place it on a card in the first lane of their Kanban board (below), giving them a “prioritised backlog”. Doing this, team-mates can see what needs to be done for them to succeed. This backlog of work may evolve as new ideas or problems come to light.
Cards for a Kanban board are usually written as a story, for example: “As a _____, I want to _____,” but they can also be in any format that is agreed within the team. In Steve’s business, when he was improving it and making changes, he might write, “As a car cleaner, I want to have all my cleaning tools in one easy to reach location,” for one particular change.
Step 2: Using a Kanban Board
A Kanban board is used to show us at a glance the pieces of work and who they are assigned to as they move from “To Do”, “In Progress”, though to “Done”. Remember Kanban literally means “signboard”, and a Kanban board on a wall that is easy to see is also good Visual Management (4.1).
Figure 29: An example of a Kanban Board, also good Visual Management. This style of Kanban is often used in software development, but can also be used in implementing a Lean project or anywhere there are multiple tasks to complete.
You can have more columns if you need them, and name them to suit the phases of work or departments within your own business. The possibilities are up to you.
Step 3: Using Stand-Ups
A “stand-up” in Agile terms is a short meeting of 5 to 15 minutes where the participants stand up, usually around a Kanban Board. Cards on the board are updated or moved as each person speaks about the ones assigned to them and they have the opportunity to raise any issues or “blockers” that might be stopping them from completing the work. If a blocker cannot be resolved within the short timeframe of the stand-up, then the decision is made to “take it offline”, or discuss the issue afterward and make steps to solve it.
Standing up helps keep people focused and the meetings short, and meeting regularly allows us to call out blockers close to when they first occur, so we can fix them close to the source. This is one of the principles behind Jidoka (4.2) and also one of the capabilities of outstanding leaders, which we saw in the introduction of this book.
At the Shoe Emporium, Lisa might catch up quickly, once a day with her team-mates who are trialling new methods, to see if they are working or if they need help.
Because we are releasing in short iterations, we don’t have time for long meetings that happen once a month. Instead, we have short meetings daily, or weekly, and we can see all the information we need at a glance using the principle of Visual Management via the Kanban Board.
Step 4: Using Retrospectives
A “retrospective” in Agile happens when we have completed an iteration. This is where our team asks the following four questions to gain feedback on our experiment.
- What went well?
- What didn’t go well?
- What have we learned?
- What still puzzles us?
You might have many short iterations, named and numbered from one upwards, and it is great practice to stop and gather feedback during and after each one.
Knowing When it’s Time to Pivot
One of the main themes from The Lean Startup by Eric Ries is knowing when to “pivot”, or stop going down the path you are going during an implementation and pivot into a new direction, a new fix, experiment or even product. In other words, “Adjust”-ing our course in the Plan, Do, Check, Act and Adjust cycle.
How do we know if it is not working? If it’s not immediately obvious in the experiment we are performing then we should measure the metrics or outputs (1.2) associated with the process or the product we are changing. As you can see, this brings us full circle as we go back to chapter one and gather feedback on whether we are meeting value as defined from our customer’s point of view.
We can also ask the retrospective questions above for feedback on our internal process, or the Net Promoter Score (1.3) questions for our external customer.
When we are satisfied with our changes in a small area, we can release it to the wider business. And what do we do when we’ve improved our process and implemented successfully? We can monitor it and then go through the improvement process again as we strive continually for perfection.
This is an excerpt from the book "Five Minute Lean", by David McLachlan - a wonderful book that blends teaching of the tools, culture and philosophy of traditional Lean with a modern-day Lean parable. You can get the whole book on Amazon here and enjoy your own copy.
Selected chapters from the story within Five minute Lean:
- Lean Parable – Where Lisa Makes a Change
- Lean Parable – Where Lisa Discovers a New Way
- Lean Parable – Where Lisa Performs a Balancing Act
- Lean Parable – Where Lisa Pulls the Trigger
- Lean Parable – Where Lisa Sets a New Standard
- Lean Parable – Where Lisa Becomes a Leader
Check out these selected chapters from the teachings within Five Minute Lean:
- Five Minute Lean – Create a Future State Value Stream Map
- Five Minute Lean Summary
- Five Minute Lean – The Power of Incentives – What is Measured and Rewarded Improves
- Five Minute Lean – Help Your Process Flow with Line Balancing
- Five Minute Lean – Use Pareto to Find Where to Start
- Five Minute Lean – Gather Direct Feedback and Indirect Feedback
- Five Minute Lean – Introduction
- Five Minute Lean – Work Towards One-Piece-Flow (and Reducing Silos or Batching)
- Five Minute Lean: Glossary
- Five Minute Lean – Create a Pull System with FIFO, Kanban Triggers and Visual Management
- Five Minute Lean – Heijunka: Level the Workload when Demand Fluctuates
- Five Minute Lean – Put it Together With Design for Ease of Use
- Five Minute Lean – Create a New Standard Procedure and Checklist for Quality Control
- Five Minute Lean – Eliminate the Eight Wastes to Improve Flow
- Five Minute Lean – Map the Value Stream to Reveal Opportunities
- Five Minute Lean – Make Feedback Meaningful with Kano Analysis
- Five Minute Lean – Get Your Map Started with a SIPOC
- Five Minute Lean – Collect and Measure Feedback With the Net Promoter Score
- Five Minute Lean – Go to the Gemba
- Five Minute Lean – Implement With Agile for Fast Iterations and Feedback