Without standards there can be no kaizen, Taiichi Ohno. Kaizen is a Japanese word that we can translate as “change for the better”. It’s widely interpreted as meaning “continuous improvement” when referring to process or flow. As Taiichi Ohno (father of the Toyota Production System or TPS) highlights, to improve, you first need to have a baseline standard. From the TPS perspective, standards and the improvement of said standards, relate to two aspects: Process – the work carried out at a particular step on the production line. Flow – the overall flow through the production line from end-to-end. So, if we’re to translate this to cross-functional product teams, our team can determine…
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The ScrumMum – an agile adoption anti-pattern
Whichever way you look at it, if you’ve ever heard yourself talking to your team and uttering the words “I’m not your mother”, it’s probably not a good thing. Even if you’re actually a Mum and have the healthy intention of creating independent and highly-functioning people – ready and equiped to face the world on their own two feet – having to tell someone who isn’t your progeny that you’re not their Mother means: 1. There is a clear case of mistaken identity and 2. The aforementioned person(s) clearly aren’t in a place of independence or higher functioning yet. If you’re their ScrumMaster and you’re saying these words, then you may…
Portals and other tools for distributed working.
We’re a team distributed between different cities who collaborate and work closely together. We’re a distributed team, but shy away from using the term “remote workers”, because one thing we definitely aim not to do is act remotely from each other. We are a highly collaborative, cross-functional team who like to maintain fast feedback loops. Here are some of the ways that help maintain a close working relationship. Technologies that help us collaborate Firstly, we work on high spec laptops, this means we’re very mobile. We also operate Activity Based Working in our offices, i.e. we don’t have fixed desks, we do have neighbourhoods, but can work at any desk we…
Retrospective – Dish the Dirt
I recently started working with a team who have been together for 18 months. A few discussions with the team revealed that there were a few issues that had been raised time and time again in their Sprint Retrospectives that they felt were beyond their control. They had now given up trying to remove these impediments to their progress. I devised this retrospective in an attempt to help the team create different perspectives on these problems to see if this would help them find solutions. What you’ll need: Paper and pens Dots to vote with A microphone or other form of talking stick A recording device Step 1: Setting the stage Explain…