Limiting WIP: Doing Less to Do More @ Big Apple Scrum Day_5.11.18
- 1. excella.com | @excellaco Limiting WIP: Doing Less to Do More Hunter Tammaro & Julie Wyman
- 2. excella.com | @excellaco Work in Progress (WIP) Any partly finished product or materials in an incomplete step of a process Completed work in one process may be WIP to a higher-order process WIP does not provide any value to a customer
- 3. excella.com | @excellaco First, some theory…
- 4. excella.com | @excellaco Improved quality Better problem solving Fewer errors Lower stress Increased productivity
- 5. excella.com | @excellaco Faster Delivery & Feedback Value Returned 4 Parallel Efforts WIP = 4 Time 1 Parallel Effort WIP = 1 Time Value Returned
- 6. excella.com | @excellaco Little’s Law • 𝐶𝑦𝑐𝑙𝑒 𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒 = +,- ./0123/425 • Hard to sustainably increase throughput • Not as hard to reduce WIP
- 7. excella.com | @excellaco Does your team determine its (Sprint) capacity based of on 8 hours a day? Less? More?
- 8. excella.com | @excellaco Utilization, WIP and flow
- 9. excella.com | @excellaco Too much WIP Fully utilized, but spend most of the time waiting Slow flow through the system Slow to respond to change
- 10. excella.com | @excellaco On a software team Total Active Time: Total Waiting Time: Analysis (2 days) Development (5 days) Testing (1 day) Deploy (1 day) Waiting for development (3 days) Waiting for testing (6 days) Waiting to deploy (4 days)
- 11. excella.com | @excellaco On a software team Total Active Time: 9 days Total Waiting Time: 13 days Analysis (2 days) Waiting for development (3 days) Development (5 days) Waiting for testing (6 days) Testing (1 day) Waiting to deploy (4 days) Deploy (1 day)
- 12. excella.com | @excellaco Just enough WIP Team members sometimes idle, but work almost always moving Rapid flow through the system Short response time reduces effect of impediments
- 13. excella.com | @excellaco Idle team members?! • Remove blockers • Help other team members • Process improvement • Address technical debt • Improve your craft • Take a walk to get some coffee
- 14. excella.com | @excellaco Slack time as a signal WIP limits help individuals find ways to improve the flow of the entire team Are there issues upstream in the process that can be resolved? Are there issues downstream in the process? Adjust WIP or team composition until flow is optimized
- 15. excella.com | @excellaco Setting WIP limits Requirements Ready Analysis Development Validate Done 3 5 34 Doing Done Doing Done Just start… Observe Adjust from there Cycle Time
- 16. excella.com | @excellaco Prove It! “Plane Game” https://growingagile.co.za/2015/02/aeroplane-game/
- 17. excella.com | @excellaco Practice Round Compete to make paper airplanes in teams of six One team member at each station One team member times the construction of the colored plane One team member times the entire round
- 18. excella.com | @excellaco Round 1 Work as fast as you can in a first-in-first-out basis After 10 planes are completed and tested, use the worksheet to record: The time to make all 10 planes The time to make the colored plane The number of incomplete planes in progress
- 19. excella.com | @excellaco Round 2 This time, work with a WIP limit of 1 per station E.g. Station 1 can’t start on the next plane until Station 2 takes their sheet After 10 planes are completed and tested, use the worksheet to record: • The time to make all 10 planes • The time to make the colored plane • The number of incomplete planes in progress
- 20. excella.com | @excellaco In which round did you complete all 10 planes faster? Which round took your team more time to make the colored plane? In which round was there more waste? Discussion In which round did you feel more stressed? Which round felt more like how you work in real life?
- 21. excella.com | @excellaco Key Takeaways Limiting WIP… • Creates a better-quality product faster • Leads to quicker realization of value and better feedback • Improves the functioning of the team by making bottlenecks visible Remember to… focus on flow, not utilization
- 22. excella.com | @excellaco Additional Resources
- 23. excella.com | @excellaco “Multitasking is Evil” https://agileconnection.com/article/multitasking-evil
- 24. excella.com | @excellaco Multitasking is Evil Round 1 You are assigned three projects, which you will work one at a time. Project 1: Write the numbers 1-15 in the 1st column. Project 2: Write the letters Z->N in the 2nd column. Project 3: Write the Roman numerals IV- XVII in the 3rd column. 1-15 Z-N IV-XVII 1 Z IV 2 Y 3 X Work column-by-column until you complete all 3 projects. Write down the time you finish.
- 25. excella.com | @excellaco Multitasking is Evil Round 2 You are assigned three projects, which you will work all at once. Project 1: Write the numbers 1-15 in the 1st column. Project 2: Write the letters Z->N in the 2nd column. Project 3: Write the Roman numerals IV- XVII in the 3rd column. 1-15 Z-N IV-XVII 1 Z IV 2 Y V 3 Work row-by-row until you complete all 3 projects. Write down the time you finish.
- 26. excella.com | @excellaco Discussion • In which round did you complete your first project faster? • Which round took you more time to complete all three projects? • In which round did you make more mistakes? • In which round did you feel more stressed? • Which round felt more like how you work in real life?
- 27. excella.com | @excellaco Links • Huffington Post article on multitasking with statistics • Blog posts: • How to set initial WIP limits • How Scrum and Kanban approach WIP differently • Constraints in Scrum and Kanban • Books: • Lean from the Trenches – Henrik Kniberg