NAYIMA
Jul
13

Why bother with bottlenecks?

Why?

Bottleneck Game at XP Days London 2005

Portia writes about a participant of our Bottleneck session asking her about the relevance of a session on (industrial or manufacturing) process improvement techniques at an IT conference. Portia already told me she had the same reaction when she attended this session at XP Days London in 2005. If you look carefully, you can see Portia at the right, a bit bored as she’s waiting for the bottleneck.

Moreover, with terms like ‘exploit’ and ‘subordinate’, the 5 focusing steps don’t sound very friendly. Is this just another management fad ‘to squeeze the workers’? Can we apply manufacturing ideas to IT? Isn’t the manufacturing metaphor (or the house building metaphor) responsible for some of the worst ideas in IT?

That participant took the first step in understanding: they asked “Why?”

What is it about?

The session (and the Theory of Constraints) is about creating meaning and value by really understanding systems.

To do this, you need to:

  • Design systems that fulfill a meaningful goal.
  • Take a step-by-step approach to diagnose problems.
  • Find real cures by going beyond your area of responsibility, beyond your comfort zone and considering the system as a whole.
  • Involve everybody, to continuously challenge assumptions and long-standing traditions to create lasting improvements.

These are things I use every day in my life and my work. Are these things you could use in your work, in your life, every day?

Thank you to Portia for excellent writing advice and helping to edit this entry.

July 13th, 2008 | Category: agile, lean, systems thinking, theory of constraints, xpday
Jun
17

A l’aide! Mon processus m’étrangle!

Another visit to Paris!

My third visit to Paris this year. Two months ago I was at the excellent XP Days France. The first week of July I’ll be back to host the “A l’aide! Mon processus m’étrangle” (the French name of the “I’m not a bottleneck! I’m a free man!” session) at the Université du SI conference, organized by Octo Technology.

Portia and I host this simulation session, where participants learn about the Theory of Constraints, Lean and Agile by playing. Come and play with us on July 2nd and 3rd!

We will run a tryout of this session on June 30th, for the XP France group. Register on the wiki if you want to attend and experiment with the game. Thanks to our hosts Octo Technology and Patrice Petit for organizing this evening session.

We are busy writing up this session, so that you’ll be able to play this game at work and at home. More about that later.

See you there!

June 17th, 2008 | Category: agile, lean, presentations, theory of constraints, xpday
May
25

XP Days Benelux 2008 – Call for sessions

The call for sessions for this year’s XP Days Benelux is out.

We don’t just talk agile, we DO agile. The session proposal process is collaborative and iterative: when you submit a proposal, you get feedback from the program committee and fellow session organisers. You can use the feedback to improve your session and your proposal. In return, we expect you to provide feedback to the other sessions organizers.

Collaboration makes us all better.

So, if you want to talk about agile at XP Days Benelux don’t submit your session proposal 5 minutes before the deadline.

That’s so waterfall.

May 25th, 2008 | Category: agile, xpday
May
11

XP Days France 2008 part 3 – Space Game

Real Options, l’ultime frontière

The last session of the day was our first run of the Real Options Space Game in French. The little skit Portia and I did at the day’s opening must have worked because a lot of people came to the session. This time we had a larger room than the previous session, but still not enough room to seat everybody comfortably. At the previous session at Agile North, we had 28 participants. This time we had about double that number.

Real Options session packed with people

We started off with a brief presentation on Real Options. We then explained the rules to the participants, grouped in about 7 teams. Participants first had to plan their route across the game galaxy, using very limited funds. Then, in several rounds, they made their moves from planet to planet. To keep the game manageable, one representative of each team came to sit at the game table. This way, we didn’t have to deal with the whole audience, but only one participant per group. Unfortunately, keeping this large an audience to the game timeboxes proved to be too difficult. Switching between game and reflection was also very difficult. You try to quieten 50-60 players engrossed in the game, trying to win.

After the Agile North session, Portia and I held a retrospective and improved the game. With the changes, we were confident that we could host the game for +/- 30 people. Unfortunately, the changes were not enough to comfortably deal with double that number. Waiting for my train home, drinking a beer at the Gare du Nord I thought of some ways to deal with this large a group. Too late. L’esprit de l’escalier is alive and well.

We will write up the session and publish the game materials, like for the XP Game, so that you can play this game at home and at work.

Despite the noisy and crowded session, the participants did get the message of the session. The groups did a short retrospective at the end, with generally favourable feedback and some ideas for improvement.

The space Game board before the start

Closing drinks

The conference closed. The turnout was a success: participants got good value for their money, lots of contacts were made. Dealing with unexpectedly large numbers of participants proved difficult. The organizers of XP Days France and Benelux will collaborate on ideas to scale sessions.

Portia and I bought a round of drinks and had a bit of time to chat with some participants. My Swiss friends had a bit of interesting news that you’ll hear more about. All too soon we had to leave to catch our trains back to London and Brussels.

XP Days Paris, je t’aime! I had a great time and hope to be back next year. Hope to see you there!

May 11th, 2008 | Category: agile, Real Options, xpday
May
10

XP Days France 2008 part 2 – Interviews

Les neuf cases

Portia, Bernard and I ran the “Neuf cases pour bien comprendre son client“. In this session we use the “9 boxes” interview model from Solution Selling to gather the information to write User Stories. As you can see from the pictures, there were a lot of participants at the session. It seems that the Belgian chocolates convinced people to come.

Some people played the game outside, in the hall. Despite the heat and noise, everybody was really concentrated on the session, on interviewing their “customer”. When we saw how many people turned up, we moved the tables to the sides and let the participants sit in groups of 3 (customer-client-observer/referee). It would have been even better to move all the tables outside of the room, to have a bit more space and air.

Really getting to the problem at the heart of a project or co-creating a vision of the future is not easy. Doing it well, selling well, sets up a project for success. Doing it badly sets up the project for failure. If we didn’t understand wat the real problem was, or we forgot some impacted people we might deliver what’s asked, but not what’s needed. The most dangerous step is the co-creating of the future vision. It’s easy to get carried away and promise the customer something that can’t be delivered. That’s the way bad salespeople get bonuses and set up the implementation team for failure. It’s easy to remedy this problem: pay sales bonuses for succesfully delivered projects.

It is important to explore the “ideal” future with the customer. Don’t hold back too much, don’t think too quickly “that can’t work”. That’s an “idea killer“. In the “envisioning the future” column we should explore scary, innovative ideas. Let the customer (and yourself) be creative!

Portia and I will run this session again at Agile 2008 in August, on the “Chansons Françaises” stage. See you there! I’ll write more about the “9 boxes” after we’ve done the session retrospective.

Drinks and dinner

After the session we quickly cleared away our stuff to go for drinks. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough time to meet and talk to many people before dinner. I did meet some interesting new people, met a fellow jazz fan, met an agilist from Wallonia (we don’t get many at Belgian XP meetings and conferences) and had some brief chats with acquaintances from previous conferences. At the dinner table, most of the people knew each other, having worked together at several companies previously. We got some history behind the “minitel” system.

After dinner, a walk in the area to get some fresh air and relax, because tomorrow there’s another session: the first time we do “Real Options” in French. More about that later.

Neuf cases 1 Neuf cases 2Neuf cases 3

May 10th, 2008 | Category: agile, xpday
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