Timeline for Prioritise continuous process improvement with customer work?
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11 events
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| Nov 2, 2020 at 17:04 | comment | added | Bart van Ingen Schenau | @kqr, maybe you can change that "one task per person per sprint" a bit to allow one person to work on multiple tasks in a single sprint, but not on multiple tasks at the same time. That way, you can also plan with more flexibility because the tasks don't need to be the same length as a sprint. | |
| Nov 1, 2020 at 12:05 | comment | added | kqr | A potential obstacle to that countermeasure is that the team is currently quite small, so a process improvement project would occupy a significant portion of our capacity, but we can probably figure out countermeasures against those problems too. | |
| Nov 1, 2020 at 12:03 | comment | added | kqr | In order to increase scheduling predictability, we try not to have one person on more than one project at a time. And issues that come up are handled by people currently not assigned to any project. This removes some of the waste involved in having people bounce between very different tasks -- one person during one sprint does generally only things related to a relatively narrow scope. As I write this the countermeasure sort of starts to crystallise for me: I guess the way to deal with that is to always assign people to process improvement projects in parallel with the other projects. | |
| Nov 1, 2020 at 11:50 | comment | added | Bogdan | I'm really confused. You do work to achieve something. Continuous improvement is about the initiative and the effort being continuous (i.e. ongoing, not just once), the work itself can mingle with other work you are doing. You have goals for customer work, and now goals for improvement. Why differentiate between the two? What do you mean by planning "strictly one thing at a time"? What kind of work are you doing? | |
| Nov 1, 2020 at 11:32 | comment | added | kqr | "It's then a matter of planning this effort just like you plan all your other work." this is our problem: the way we plan all other work is "strictly one thing at a time". If we want to plan these improvement efforts in parallel with the other work (because otherwise it's not continuous) we would have to relax that requirement and allow people to be on multiple initiatives at once. Maybe that's acceptable in the specific case of process improvement, but that's my dilemma anyway! | |
| Nov 1, 2020 at 11:07 | comment | added | Bogdan | I saw your edit on the question, and made some changes on my answer. Also, regarding this: It seems like a bad idea to put the same people on both a customer value creating sprint and a process improvement effort. No, it's not a bad idea as long as the people doing the work have a saying in this and are the ones proposing solutions. If you impose a way of working on them without their input, you might end up implementing a solution, but maybe it won't be the best solution. | |
| Nov 1, 2020 at 11:02 | history | edited | Bogdan | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Nov 1, 2020 at 10:54 | comment | added | Bogdan | Process improvement is not a distraction. And keeping resources at 100% utilization doesn't work with people. I suggest you also read about The Management Myth of 100% Utilization. The idea is to optimize for outcomes, not resource utilization. | |
| Nov 1, 2020 at 10:40 | comment | added | kqr | "And remember that you need some slack in your process to be able to inspect, reflect, and adapt." -- i think this is the key missing right now. Our current process is intentionally constructed without this slack in order to force us to focus on the single projects to which we are designed, and root out all distractions. Maybe process improvement shouldn't count as a distraction, even though it might share some characteristics. | |
| Nov 1, 2020 at 9:52 | history | edited | Bogdan | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Nov 1, 2020 at 9:47 | history | answered | Bogdan | CC BY-SA 4.0 |