Flow Efficiency - The most powerful improvement driver - Lean Kanban Central Europe 2018
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Flow efficiency refers to the percentage of time spent on valuable work versus waiting on a work item. It is an important metric because low flow efficiency means significant time is wasted waiting rather than working. Flow efficiency can be improved by reducing delays, limiting work-in-progress, automating manual work, and optimizing workflows globally rather than locally. Measuring flow efficiency involves tracking the lead time and touch time of work items to calculate the percentage.
Flow Efficiency - The most powerful improvement driver - Lean Kanban Central Europe 2018
- 1. Flow Efficiency The most powerful improvement driver Principal Consultant & Head of Technology Services marcio.sete@elabor8.com.au Marcio Sete @marciosete
- 2. What Flow Efficiency is and why to bother How you can improve itHow you can measure it @marciosete 1 2 3
- 3. #1 – WHAT FLOW EFFICIENCY IS AND WHY TO BOTHER
- 4. Given my bank account is in credit, and I made no withdrawals recently, When I attempt to withdraw an amount less than my card's limit, Then the withdrawal should complete without errors or warnings Given my bank account is in credit, and I made no withdrawals recently, When I attempt to withdraw an amount less than my card's limit, Then the withdrawal should complete without errors or warnings Given my bank account is in credit, and I made no withdrawals recently, When I attempt to withdraw an amount less than my card's limit, Then the withdrawal should complete without errors or warnings Given my bank account is in credit, and I made no withdrawals recently, When I attempt to withdraw an amount less than my card's limit, Then the withdrawal should complete without errors or warnings Lead time Commitment date Delivery date Waiting time Touch Time @marciosete
- 5. 40% 20% 100% 15% 40% 30% 75% 75% Work item 1 Work item 2 Work item 3 Work item 4 Work item 5 Work item 6 Work item 7 Work item 8
- 6. Touch time X 100% Lead time Touch time: 2 . Lead time: 20 10% Value added time 90% Waiting Time The flow efficiency formula @marciosete
- 7. @marciosete The shocking reality organisations face today
- 8. Why should I bother?
- 9. Flow Efficiency is a soundboard of your system of work
- 10. @marciosete Effectiveness of organisations’ working time
- 11. Characteristics of environments with high flow efficiency Throughput Predictability Visibility Stability Quality Learning cycles Effectiveness Business Responsiveness Happiness Sense of Purpose Professional Pride Cost of maintenance Disruptive variability Failure rate Time to recovery Lead time Queue time Time to learn Burnout / Turnover Rework@marciosete
- 12. @marciosete Effectiveness is the goal
- 13. Effectiveness from the outside in is presupposed whereas from the inside out is contextual and temporal
- 14. #2 - HOW YOU CAN MEASURE IT
- 15. You need just two things 1. Lead time a. Commitment date b. Delivery date 2. Touch time a. Dots on card b. Time spent in status c. Manual entry in a custom field @marciosete
- 16. Few things you need to consider 1. Nature of the work a. Work item type b. Class of service c. Size 2. Granularity a. Days, hours, minutes 3. Sophistication of your solution @marciosete
- 17. Utopian in knowledge/creative work 100% 0% 15% 40% 60% Normal (average system performance) Commonly observed (low system performance) Great (high system performance) @marciosete FLOW EFFICIENCY LEVELS
- 18. #3 – HOW YOU CAN IMPROVE IT
- 19. The big five sources of delay 1. Dependencies on shared services, other teams, specialists or vendors 2. Too much work-in-progress 3. Team liquidity 4. Manual and repetitive work 5. Blockers @marciosete
- 20. Principles and practices with great leverage that might be helpful in your unique context 1. Loosely Coupled Architecture 2. Test-Driven Development 3. Trunk-based development 4. Comprehensive test automation 5. Build, release and deploy automation 6. Feature toggling 7. Continuous Integration 8. Infrastructure as Code 9. Immutable Infrastructure 10. Dev/Prod environment parity @marciosete Technical PracticesWays of working 1. Autonomous teams 2. Limiting work-in-progress 3. Lightweight change approvals 4. Working in small batches 5. Managing flow 6. Making policies explicit 7. Visual management 8. Classes of service 9. Last Responsible Moment 10. Culture of continuous learning
- 21. Starting the journey... ■ Take a snapshot of your current flow efficiency ● Pay attention to different work item types and classes of service ■ Host a retrospective and commit to pursue evolutionary changes ● Identify sources of waiting time ● Discuss which are by design and which aren’t ● Brainstorm alternatives ● Formulate initiatives ● Prioritise the ones will give you the best bang for buck ■ Set a target to motivate change ● Focus on the Standard class of service to begin with ● Gamify the process and celebrate the small wins ● Hold the whole value stream accountable ■ Visualise flow, batch size, sources of delay and variability ● Make it brutally visible ■ Use dollars to communicate delays @marciosete
- 22. “The biggest leverage in improving delivery rate (often referred to as "productivity") is not to improve the motivation of the workers, or to improve the working practices to reduce the local cycle times in the activity columns, rather the biggest leverage is to focus on reducing delays.” David J. Anderson
- 23. what I want you to remember...
- 24. @marciosete Effectiveness from the outside in is presupposed whereas from the inside out is contextual and temporal Flow Efficiency is the most powerful improvement driver The only way of improving flow efficiency is via global optimisation Delays are your invisible killer The biggest leverage in improving productivity is to focus on reducing delays Flow Efficiency less than 15% is very common (and bad); between 15-40% is normal; above 40% is great! Effectiveness is the goal Flow Efficiency is a soundboard of your ways of working Flow efficiency is contextual to the nature of work
- 25. Principal Consultant & Head of Technology Services https://www.linkedin.com/in/marciosete https://twitter.com/elabor8 https://twitter.com/marciosete https://medium.com/@Elabor8 https://medium.com/@marciosete Thank you! Danke! www.elabor8.com.au marcio.sete@elabor8.com.au Marcio Sete