Without numerical measures we wouldn't know what to do. The problem is, when numerical measures are used as targets they cause people to think their sole purpose is to achieve them, usually to the detriment of everything else. When managers own the targets and use them to force performance they bring out the wrong behaviors. People cut corners to meet the targets. And targets are everywhere. We blinker ourselves to everything except our targets and forget about the real needs of users. In pursuit of our targets we make local optimizations that are suboptimal for the throughput of the whole system, the wider organization.
Measures should reflect the true purpose of the people doing the work, which is to improve service and quality and satisfy users, and should therefore measure the improvements directly experienced by users. These people are in the best position to decide how to improve quality and performance and they should own the measures and use them to understand their work as a system. As part of a plan-do-check-act cycle, they should study the actual results of changes aimed at improvement, comparing them to expectations, analyzing the differences to determine cause, and then identify further opportunities to improve the system.
Managers shouldn't use their measures as targets to control our performance. Instead, we should use our measures to continuously improve how we work so that our system performs better.
“I see agile process practiced with waterfall posture. By posture I mean the values, principles, and thinking processes with which you approach software development.”
I like this.
It's a simple way to explain many of the things I see.
'Posture'.
What's distinctive about Lean Thinking and where is it going
At the UK Lean Conference, my brother Marc Baker talked about Lean Thinking, how it has developed into a complete business system and where it's going. He also shares some insights from lean transformations he has been part of in Healthcare.
David Anderson invited us to speak at the first Lean Software and Systems Conference in Atlanta from April 21st to 23rd 2010. We'll be talking about our evolving 'system' for software product development, which David saw when he visited us at BSkyB, and more. That was nearly two years ago. Since then we've continued to develop the approach and techniques, applying it more recently on a project with a couple of consultants from the Womack and Jones crew at the Lean Enterprise Academy.
Creating and sustaining a 'system' for effective product development is neither easy nor commonplace. If we were to pull together the lessons we've learned from eXtreme Programming and Scrum with systems approaches such as Lean Thinking and the Theory of Constraints to build such a 'system' what would it look like? Where would we start? How would we organize ourselves? And what would be our approach?
The fact that so many information technology projects are still failing tells us that we should be doing something very different. This session will explore some of the things we've been doing beyond the agile comfort zone to improve the effectiveness and throughput of product development and realize business agility.
Since we won the Gordon Pask Award we've been wanting to get out and about to meet people, visit organizations or usergroups, see how people are working, understand the problems overcome and the problems still faced, and learn some new things.
We're happy to share our experiences through an informal 2-hour get-together, be it a brown-bag session, a meeting during office hours or an after-work gathering. We'd welcome the opportunity to answer questions, talk about a topic of your choosing, participate in a discussion, provide a sounding board, or offer advice. And we're more than happy to consider other suggestions.
This is without obligation on your part and free of charge if you're located in London. If you're outside London we'll probably ask you to cover our travel costs.
If you think this would be useful to you, your team or your organization please email simon at energizedwork dot com.
"Managing a company by means of a monthly report is like trying to drive a car by watching the yellow line in the rearview mirror."
Periodic progress reports are a symptom of hierarchical thinking. They make everybody 'look up' at managers rather than 'out' to users.
Progress reports don't tell you what's going on. They tell you what people want to tell you. And decisions based on such incomplete information are risky and likely to be poor. Producing reports is waste; it’s not adding value.
As John Seddon says "reports are substitutions for action". To really know what's going on you must go see the real thing for yourself. And do it regularly. Talk face-to-face with the people doing the work and observe the actual process at the actual place to obtain actual data. Learn from each visit and make your decisions on the facts you have gathered yourself.
"Instead of starting with technology start with people and culture. If human need is the place to start then design thinking rapidly moves on to learning by making. Instead of thinking about what to build - build in order to think. Prototypes speed up the process of innovation because it's only when we put ideas into the world that we really start to understand their strengths and weaknesses. And the faster we do that the faster our ideas evolve.
Instead of seeing the primary objective as consumption, design thinking is starting to explore the potential for participation. The shift from a passive relationship between consumer and producer to the active engagement of everyone in experiences that are meaningful, productive and profitable."
Frankly I'm tired of manifestos. It's not that any of them are bad. They are well intentioned and usually well formed but they're too open to interpretation. And I, like anyone else, have my own interpretations. That said I'm grateful to Alisatir Cockburn and those involved for writing down a manifesto for users.
UX has always interested me and, for the last year or so now, we've been working with an increasingly user-focused approach applying iterative development to grow better user experiences. I've wanted something simple that I could chant in my head to remind myself that we're here to 'please' users and the manifesto spurred me to action. So, here's my de-manifesto'ed user chant:
We've been invited by Jesper Boeg to speak again at QCon London. Here's the abstract for our session: Product Development in the Land of the Free The Test-driven Organization
Creating and sustaining a ‘system’ for effective product development is neither easy nor commonplace. If we were to pull together the lessons we’ve learned from eXtreme Programming and Scrum with systems approaches such as Lean Thinking and the Theory of Constraints to build such a ‘system’ what would it look like? Where would we start? How would we organize ourselves? And what would be our approach?
The fact that so many information technology projects are still failing tells us that we should be doing something very different. This session will explore some of the things we’ve been doing beyond the agile comfort zone to improve the effectiveness and throughput of product development and realize business agility.
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