Creating a Culture of Continuous Improvement in Your Company
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Kevin Goldsmith discusses building a culture of continuous improvement at Avvo, emphasizing adaptability, ownership, and empowerment among employees. He outlines a structured approach involving evaluation, setting clear objectives, and fostering data-driven decision-making to enhance agility and accountability. The document highlights the importance of retrospectives and iterative processes for ongoing improvement across the organization.
Creating a Culture of Continuous Improvement in Your Company
- 1. @GoAgileCamp #AgileCamp2017 2017 Creating a culture of continuous improvement in your company Kevin Goldsmith @KevinGoldsmith Chief Technology Officer, Avvo
- 2. @kevingoldsmith #avvoculture What does a culture of Continuous Improvement look like?
- 4. @kevingoldsmith #avvoculture No “that’s how we do it here”
- 5. @kevingoldsmith #avvoculture Continuously asking “can we do this better?”
- 6. @kevingoldsmith #avvoculture Continuous Improvement is the soul of Agile
- 7. @kevingoldsmith #avvoculture A culture where people are • Adaptable to change • Advocates for improvement • Owners of the company mission • Empowered to feel control over their work A culture of continuous improvement
- 8. @kevingoldsmith #avvoculture How to get there?
- 9. @kevingoldsmith #avvoculture My journey at Avvo
- 10. @kevingoldsmith #avvoculture • 10 year old company • Rapid growth over the last few years
- 12. @kevingoldsmith #avvoculture The “Oh Sh*t" moment
- 13. @kevingoldsmith #avvoculture • Good values • Clear mandate to improve from senior leadership • Agile already in practice Strengths
- 14. @kevingoldsmith #avvoculture Stage 1: evaluate
- 15. @kevingoldsmith #avvoculture • Easy to jump in and start “fixing” things • Need the complete picture • Spent the first several weeks with every team in the company in every area. Evaluate
- 16. @kevingoldsmith #avvoculture • What is going well? • What is not going well? • What can I do to help? Questions to ask
- 18. @kevingoldsmith #avvoculture • Poor information flows • Poor organization • Poor WIP management • Bad habits encoded into myth What I learned
- 19. @kevingoldsmith #avvoculture • So. Many. Silos. • So many cross-team dependencies • Transparency without clarity • A bad cycle had developed What I learned
- 20. @kevingoldsmith #avvoculture Lack of Velocity Lack of Accountability Forcing Function Failure to Achieve
- 21. @kevingoldsmith #avvoculture Stage 2: Set up the conditions
- 22. @kevingoldsmith #avvoculture • Transparency with clarity • Objective Measurement • Autonomy • Ownership of change Continuous improvement requires
- 23. @kevingoldsmith #avvoculture Transparency with Clarity Make priorities clear
- 25. @kevingoldsmith #avvoculture • From Covey’s Four Disciplines of Execution • Wildly Important Goals • Company-level Strategy • Set by SLT yearly • WIP-limited (currently 2) WIGs
- 26. @kevingoldsmith #avvoculture • sub-WIGs • Tactical cross-functional, cross-team projects • Scoped to 1-2 Quarters • Reviewed bi-quarterly • WIP-limited (currently 4) sWIGs
- 27. @kevingoldsmith #avvoculture Objective Measurement Replace dates with data
- 28. @kevingoldsmith #avvoculture Date-driven projects should have real business meaning and consequences. On dates
- 29. @kevingoldsmith #avvoculture • Track metrics, not dates • Not “are we making the date?”, but rather “are we learning?” Accountability without dates
- 30. @kevingoldsmith #avvoculture Created a data-driven decision-making framework and educated the company on its use. All project proposals and big decisions are now backed with the framework artifacts. Driving data-driven decision-making
- 32. @kevingoldsmith #avvoculture • Data • Understandings • Hypotheses • Bets • (Results) DUHB(R)s
- 33. @kevingoldsmith #avvoculture • Spotify DIBBs • Kaizen Cards • Toyota A3 Problem-solving sheets DUHB Influences
- 34. @kevingoldsmith #avvoculture • Incontrovertible • Internal product or external industry data DUHB(R): Data
- 35. @kevingoldsmith #avvoculture • Interpretation of the data • Must follow from the data • Semi-incontrovertible DUHB(R): Understandings
- 36. @kevingoldsmith #avvoculture • Based on the Understandings • Strategic interpretation of how to address the situation/problem outlined by the Data and Understandings • Debatable DUHB(R): Hypotheses
- 37. @kevingoldsmith #avvoculture • Tactics to validate the strategic hypotheses • Can be sequential or parallel • Reasonably small scope • Debatable DUHB(R): Bets
- 38. @kevingoldsmith #avvoculture • Documentation of the bets and their outcome • Used for future reference and to inform future DUHBs DUHB(R): Results
- 39. @kevingoldsmith #avvoculture Autonomy Give teams ability to own their improvements
- 41. @kevingoldsmith #avvoculture • Focused on an external (or internal) customer journey • Fully cross-functional, autonomous organization • Can drive reasonably large efforts independently Journey Teams
- 42. @kevingoldsmith #avvoculture • Accountable to unique business metrics • Primary unit of organizational execution Journey Teams
- 43. @kevingoldsmith #avvoculture • Minimize execution bottlenecks • Minimize coordination bottlenecks • Minimize decision-making bottlenecks • Maximize execution velocity Journey Team Goals
- 44. @kevingoldsmith #avvoculture Ownership of Change RFC Process
- 45. @kevingoldsmith #avvoculture • Organization leadership identifies an issue • Organization leadership creates a DUHB outlining the problem and proposed bets to mitigate • Cross-functional working group assembled • Working group puts together a document outlining mitigation of organizational issue Organizational Change via RFC
- 46. @kevingoldsmith #avvoculture • Working group presents plan and document to the larger organization as an RFC • Organization adds comments / questions / request for clarifications to the document • Working group iterates on the document and repeats with larger organization until reasonable consensus around plan is reached Organizational Change via RFC
- 47. @kevingoldsmith #avvoculture • Working group owns rollout of change • Long-term support for the change is part of the RFC Organizational Change via RFC
- 48. @kevingoldsmith #avvoculture Stage 5: Continuous Improvement
- 49. @kevingoldsmith #avvoculture Building a practice of having retrospectives beyond the agile ceremony cycle and focus. Retrospectives everywhere
- 50. @kevingoldsmith #avvoculture “When is the retrospective?”
- 51. @kevingoldsmith #avvoculture • What went well? • What didn’t go well? • What will we do again? • What will we do differently? • What concrete actions will we take from this for future projects? Ask
- 52. @kevingoldsmith #avvoculture • What went well? • What didn’t go well? • What will we do again? • What will we do differently? • What concrete actions will we take from this for future projects? Ask
- 53. @kevingoldsmith #avvoculture Central repository for retrospective notes. Make it easy to find the lessons. Collect the learnings
- 54. @kevingoldsmith #avvoculture So, how did it really work?
- 57. @kevingoldsmith #avvoculture WIG ITERATION #1 4 WIGS (7 MONTHS) WIG ITERATION #2 2 WIGS (12 MONTHS) SWIG ITERATION #1 7 SWIGS CREATED BY SLT 7 MONTHS 4 COMPLETE SWIG ITERATION #2 4 SWIGS CREATED BY DUHBS 6 MONTHS 4 COMPLETE SWIG ITERATION #3 2 SWIGS CREATED BY DUHB/SLT 3 MONTHS 1.5 COMPLETE
- 60. @kevingoldsmith #avvoculture • Clear priorities • Removal of artificial cadences • Metrics-driven, autonomous, teams • Data-driven decision making • Organizational ownership of organizational change • A practice of retrospectives • An archive of learnings With
- 61. @kevingoldsmith #avvoculture Lack of Velocity Lack of Accountability Forcing Function Failure to Achieve
- 65. @kevingoldsmith #avvoculture I would love your feedback! http://bit.ly/avvoculture