The Agile Journeyby Ryan Dorrell, AgileThought CTO and Co-Founder

A bad system beats a good person every time.

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You don’t need to change. Survival is optional.

- W. Edwards Deming

A Case Study in Agile

Rapidly Shifting Market – a company founded in analog technology with the rest of the world moving to

digital.

Complex Organizational Structures – no clear flow for products and services to be delivered to customers.

Products often took months to deliver.

Heavyweight Delivery Methodology – new products and services often missed the mark because they were

late, resulting in revenue struggles.

Low Morale – low morale and excitement about the work.

Internal Cultural Divide Between Teams – “Us” versus “Them” between business and IT.

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(re)Defining Agile – Beyond Software

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Customer collaboration

Prioritization by business value

Incrementally create and deliver working products

Respond to change faster

Higher quality, faster, at lower cost and lower risk

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Production_System

Lean – A History Lesson

Toyota Production System (TPS) developed over 50 years ago

Core thinking is around using less to do more

Best practices are observed and adapted in the workplace, not in theory

Relentless focus on creating brilliant processes

Ask yourself: How often do you stop to improve how you work?

Continual Improvement + Engaged People = Amazing Results

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Lean Principles

Identify what creates value for the customer

Identify the steps in the value stream, then remove what is non-value adding

Make the value adding activities flowin a tight sequence

Make only what the customer “pulls” from you

Seek perfection (through waste removal)

http://www.lean.org/WhatsLean/Principles.cfm6

Kanban Principles

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Map the Value Stream

Agree to a team capacity

Limit Work in Process (WIP) to that capacity

Pull value through the Value Stream

Make both work and workflow visible

TO DO DOING DONE

Value Stream Mapping

How much time is spent on value add vs non value add?

Recurring Value Stream Mapping to re-assess the whole value stream.

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Capacity and Limits

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Agree and establish

Work Capacity: what is a fair and reasonable expectation for workload for a team?

Plus work policies that are clearly understood and can be consented to by all involved.

Work Visibility

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7 Types of Waste

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Partially Done Work

Extra Features

Lost Knowledge

Handoffs

Task Switching

Delays

Defects

Metrics

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Wield metrics as a tool for continuous improvement

Manage quantitatively and objectively using only a few simple metrics

Quality

Cost of Delay

Lead / Cycle time

Waste / Efficiency

Throughput

Rev

enu

e $

Time

EOL

Delays take sales away from max sales

Cost of Delay

Graphic inspired by @johannarothman

The Path to Lean and Agile

The Kanban Method rejects the traditional approach to change

Avoid resistance, not push against it

Don’t reorganize

Don’t install new processes

Rely on evolutionary change

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Improvements driven through visual Kanban boards and Kanban systems

Using the Kanban Method

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Start with your existing work flow

Everyone agrees to pursue evolutionary change

Respect existing roles, responsibilities and job titles

initially – but agree that they may change

Encourage leadership

Learn to view what you do as a set of services (that

can be improved)

Map, understand and track the workflow to improve

Using Agile/Lean Everywhere!

15Graphic courtesy of @iamagile

A Case Study in Agile, revisited

Pragmatically implemented Scrum/Kanban

Philosophy of servant leadership

Executive engagement Entire business project portfolio is visualized with Kanban

Aggressive attitude towards eliminating non-value add activities

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Doing more with less –producing more value, more often, with fewer staff

A Case Study in Agile: Results

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Through elimination of non-value add work, streamlining of flow of work40%

More Efficient

95%Approval Rating

Through pre and post employee surveys

Are you ready?

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1. Is my organization ready for cultural change?

2. Am I prepared to have an engaged workforce?

3. Am I ready to make necessary, but possibly difficult, changes?

4. Am I willing to adapt my leadership style if necessary?

5. Am I willing to empower and trust my teams?

Visit our library of free webinar videos!

Previous Webinars:

• Azure + Visual Studio Online: How to build, test, deploy and monitor seamlessly

• 6 Steps To Achieving Predictable Release Management With Visual Studio 2013

• How To Create High Value Development Teams

• 5 TFS Features That Will Dramatically Improve Your Team's Performance

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With 20 years of professional software development experience, Ryan has been deeply involved in

building a wide range of applications. He has extensive experience building web-based transactional

systems, as well as cloud data management applications. Recently, Ryan has led AgileThought into

many new areas of technical capability, such as mobile and cloud development.

About Ryan

Thank You

@ryan_dorrell

Looking for ALM Solutions for Your Business? Email me at ryan.dorrell@agilethought.com20

linkedin.com/in/ryandorrell