Following a week of experimentation with the Stand-up Meeting by the team, we come to the second implementation workshop: a good opportunity to capitalize on the lessons learned and to carry out the next step. More than a simple progress chart describing the stages of a process, we will try to give more structure to Visual Management in order to obtain more information quickly.
I will describe in this article as usual the intentions behind the proposed framework, the process as well as the results obtained.
Related articles:
- Agile Rocket: Visual Management Module
- Workshop 1: Kick-off
- Workshop 2: On the Board
- Workshop 3: Implementation (Part 1)
- Workshop 4: Implementation (Part 2)
- Visual Management Module: Retrospective and closing
Organization of the workshop
The group being made up of about fifteen people, it seemed to me necessary to form sub-groups so that everyone could express themselves and take ownership of the results of the collective's reflections. So I decided to take inspiration from the World Café format to allow several themes to be dealt with at the same time.
It was therefore organized as follows:
- Sub-groups meet around a given theme
- At each defined timebox, everyone is free to turn on the other themes
- A referent is appointed per sub-group to share the fruit of the reflections with the others, he/she will therefore be required to stay in the same place during almost all of the activity
The 3 themes selected are:
- IMPROVE the existing
- EXTEND the process
- AREAS to expand visual management beyond simple work progression
For each topic, I gave some ideas that can be discussed by the group. This is a non-exhaustive list of course, but it still gave the tracks that seemed to me the most relevant to deal with first. The objective is not to do everything but to co-build together: let's remember that the process is just as important as the result! 😉
Improve
ticket template
Standardizing ticket writing has many benefits. First of all, in terms of process, this entails a reflection on the information strictly necessary in order to make a decision. The space is thus better used and this allows the group to know where to find what information: it directly accelerates access to information which can be one of the causes of non-decision and loss of time.
Granularity of items displayed
In the previous workshop, the important thing was to visualize the elements in order to be able to start working with them. I therefore voluntarily left the size of the subjects exposed on a Post-it note free to encourage action rather than the search for the best solution – which in the case of the choice of granularity, is often a source of debate.
Dealing with this topic now may be interesting as it comes after experimenting with Stand-up Meeting for a week. Indeed, the granularity of the elements has a direct impact on the movements observed on the board: the fact that it does not move often generates discussions.
The choice is obviously up to the team who, whatever happens, will learn by doing. Now, I often allow myself to say that:
Not everything that is implicit is explicit.
Thus, too high a granularity can lead to a misinterpretation of the information: an immobile block not specifying that it has been possible to complete a part of it. Too small a granularity generally requires considerable effort: the effort/value ratio may not be very interesting.
A happy medium must therefore be found so that the elements move regularly with just the right amount of information. A User Story size is usually adequate.
Swimming lines – here corresponding to categories
Following the previous workshop, I had the feeling that the number of swimming lines was perhaps too important compared to their real usefulness in the process of putting the group into action. After a week of experimentation, with clearer ideas, I thought it would be interesting to challenge the initial classification to find more relevant groupings.
Note: As most of the time during emergence workshops of this type, whether for the process or for the categorization, the participants tend to want to find "the right solution" and therefore often enter into a higher complexity than necessary. Depending on the time allotted, I prefer the simplification comes from the group rather than being imposed by the framework (so me!).
Colors
We had not discussed colors at the previous workshop. The participants had just taken the colors that came to hand (which was a voluntary act on my part). Indeed, questions about colors come naturally after a while and the distribution of colors on the board already gives an idea of the additional information that this could bring.
The main difficulty therefore comes from the choice of the notion represented by the color:
- Type of element (bug, evolution, …)?
- Size (number of days, size of T-Shirt, …)?
- class of service?
- Source of the request?
- Priority ?
- …
Specific visual signals
In addition to or independently of the color of the work items, it can be interesting to visualize information that requires timely attention:
- Emergency (“ it must be treated quickly because the longer we wait, the more it costs us!« ): To be treated as a priority
- Questioning (“ I have questions that prevent me from progressing properly on this subject.« ): To go up in Stand-up Meeting
- Risk (“ this element must be monitored because it risks generating the impact X » ): To be followed over time through the Stand-up Meeting
- Avatar (“ Who is working on what?« ): Allows quick identification of the distribution of work
Note: You will notice that the team did not wait for this workshop to set up avatars and danger signs on their board! Group initiative 😉
Dependencies between elements
Maybe it comes from the workshop To the blackboard or an inspiration from SAFE, but the notion of dependence is something that often has a great impact on the production of value. Reflecting on the question can also help the group, initially made up of a number of individuals not necessarily working on the same subjects, to take a collective look at the management of their work.
Extend
Stream feeding process
To go further than simply visualizing the work to be done, it seemed interesting to study the upstream process of request processing. Indeed, I had understood that the team often felt overloaded with work. Thus, defining acceptance criteria is a good way to be able to say "No" to input in an informed way and limit the effect of overloading.
To do this, I suggest that they not only reflect on what they need to consider a request as being able to be accepted (supported), but also on the different sources of request. Indeed, it often happens that depending on the origin of the request, the criteria differ and this is an important subject to discuss as a group!
Recipients
Same idea as for the upstream process, it may be interesting to study the process downstream of the processing of requests. This is done less often in my experience but I think it can be valuable when you have different types of recipients because who says " different recipients "says" different needs or expectations ! 😉
Ownership of activities
Depending on the business, we do not always have control over all the activities related to our value stream. The intention of this subject on the ownership of activities is to re-examine the process defined during the previous workshop to see if indeed there would not be steps on which the team cannot directly act. Materializing this step can allow the team to report potential blockages more easily and visualize their impact on their productivity.
An example that I had come across in the context of a support team was that they did not "fix" the problems directly but were responsible for the "follow-up" from the beginning to the end of the correction process. It materialized a “Follow-up” stage – consisting mainly of relaunching the services concerned – which was an integral part of their value flow but in which the team was above all waiting. This allowed them to visualize all the subjects in progress and to make more relevant decisions afterwards.
frozen elements
It sometimes happens that a subject is put aside for a given period of time. Usually, we keep it in the process as being a blocked element in order to clearly materialize the fact that it has indeed generated an effort of realization. Now, when the board becomes a bit crowded, it is sometimes interesting to move the frozen elements to another part of the Visual Management. It's a bit like football when a player is injured, we are not going to leave him lying on the ground while the others are playing around, we take him out to deal with his case separately! 🙂
We could consider this as an additional area that we would pass through during the Stand-up Meeting so as not to forget them.
Column names
I remind you that we made the choice during the last workshop to keep 3 words for each step of the “In progress” process. The idea was simply to take a step back after using the board for a week on the terminology that would be the most meaningful for everyone. Once again, rather than being in a process of prediction in order to find "THE solution", the team is in a process of learning by experimentation. This allows him to make an informed decision at each adoption.
Areas
Team area
This area is intended to share information directly related to team members. This may include for example:
- The rules or team charter
- The different roles defined in the team
- Important dates (events, birthdays, etc.)
- Leaves, absences
- Skills (often represented as a matrix)
- …
Challenge area
This area is intended to share information related to the goal that the team needs to achieve. This may include for example:
- The expression of the strategic vision, the vision / mission of the team
- Progress against the overall objective
- Important figures
- Important milestones
- …
Performance area
This area is intended to share information related to the team's production system. Above all, it allows the team to obtain feedback through metrics to learn and generate improvement actions. This may include for example:
- Number of items completed (over a given period of time)
- Number of current items (over a given period of time)
- Number of blockers (over a given period of time)
- …
Information area
This area is intended to share information related to processes or knowledge needed by the team to perform their work more efficiently. This may include for example:
- Process diagrams
- The contact details of privileged interlocutors
- …
Debriefing
Here is the result from the workshop:
The changes made to the previous version of Visual Management are therefore as follows:
- A selection of a single term for process steps
- A simplification of stroke lines, initial categorization
- A color system based on the sources (origins) of requests
- Applying a ticket template
Reflection on the acceptance criteria and the upstream process also took place but space constraints (cupboards) made its implementation difficult as shown in the photo below:
Note: The photo exhibited above was taken later in the day. It does not visibly show all the planned changes because they require an overhaul of the tickets in their entirety. However, we can see on the right that the rules of Visual Management have been displayed, with the famous template! 😉
We will meet again in a month, during which the team will experiment independently. The following workshop is free, that is to say without predefined content, to discuss their current issues.
Conclusion
Workshop 4 of the Visual Management module aims to iterate on the current version of the team by capitalizing on their experience of a week of use.
It turns out that this team was particularly pro-active, already during the week of experimentation and had therefore already made significant changes such as the implementation of avatars and specific indicators. We therefore continued in the same spirit as before by implementing a process allowing the exchange and collaboration of the participants to build this tool which is theirs.
The next article will describe the results obtained during the closing retrospective of the Visual Management module! 🙂
Note: workshop 5 being free, it will therefore not be covered in the series of articles.
