My slides from the talk I gave at the Targu Mures office of evoline Romania.

1. Measure and Manage Flow in Practice
by Zsolt Fabók
June 12th, 2012
@ZsoltFabok http://zsoltfabok.com

2. “Fast predictable deliveries and continuously
improving products are the basis of a good
client-customer relationship.”

3. There are several ways to do this...

4. ... and today I’m going to show you how
understanding the “flow” can help you do it.

5. Definition of the production flow:
“The movement of the products within the shop during
each stage of the parts manufacturing process.”
http://www.toolingu.com/definition-900130-12169-product-flow.html

6. A very simple software development flow:
Customer
Design
~
~ Test
~
~
Implementation
~ ~
Delivery
~ ~
~
~

7. Benefits of understanding the whole flow:
‣Decisions are based on facts and objective data
(no more guessing or assuming)
‣The improvements are serving the global vision
(no more local optimization)

8. Working with the whole flow is not easy...

9. ...but Kanban is a great method to do it.

10. Customer
Design
~
~ Test
~
~
Implementation
~ ~
Delivery
~ ~
~
~

11. 1 2 1 1
Queue Design Implementation Test Delivery Done
Customer
Design
~
~ Test
~
~
Implementation
~ ~
Delivery
~ ~
~
~

12. The five core principles of Kanban*
* based on David J. Anderson’s Kanban

13. The five core principles of Kanban*
Q D Visualize workflow
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
~ ~ ~ ~
~ ~ ~ ~
~ ~
~ ~
~
~
* based on David J. Anderson’s Kanban

14. The five core principles of Kanban*
Q 3 4 1 2 D Visualize workflow
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
Limit work in progress
~ ~ ~ ~
~ ~ ~ ~
~ ~
~ ~
~
~
* based on David J. Anderson’s Kanban

15. The five core principles of Kanban*
Q 3 4 1 2 D Visualize workflow
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
Limit work in progress
~ ~ ~ ~
Measure and manage flow
~ ~ ~ ~
~ ~
~ ~
~
~
lead time
* based on David J. Anderson’s Kanban

16. The five core principles of Kanban*
Q 3 4 1 2 D Visualize workflow
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
Limit work in progress
~ ~ ~ ~
Measure and manage flow
~ ~ ~ ~
~ ~
~ ~
~
~
cycle time
lead time
* based on David J. Anderson’s Kanban

17. The five core principles of Kanban*
Q 3 4 1 2 D Visualize workflow
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
Limit work in progress
~ ~ ~ ~
Measure and manage flow
~ ~ ~ ~
~ ~
~ ~
~
~
cycle time throughput
lead time
* based on David J. Anderson’s Kanban

18. The five core principles of Kanban*
Q 3 4 1 2 D Visualize workflow
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
Limit work in progress
~ ~ ~ ~
Measure and manage flow
~ ~ ~ ~
~ ~
~ ~
~
~ Make process policies explicit
Improve collaboratively
cycle time throughput
lead time
* based on David J. Anderson’s Kanban

19. Our former
Kanban board
The image is the courtesy of Digital Natives

20. That was the way we manage the whole flow,
and this is how we measure it:

21. The Cumulative Flow Diagram
Done
number of work items
Started
Queued
time

22. The Cumulative Flow Diagram
Done
number of work items
Started
Queued
lead time
time

23. The Cumulative Flow Diagram
Done
number of work items
Started
Queued
cycle time
lead time
time

24. The Cumulative Flow Diagram
Done
number of work items
Started
Queued
WIP
cycle time
lead time
time

25. The Cumulative Flow Diagram
Done
number of work items
Started
Queued backlog
WIP
cycle time
lead time
time

26. The simplest way of collecting data:
Q 3 4 1 2 D
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
~ ~ ~ ~
~ ~ ~ ~
~ ~
~ ~
~
~

27. Enough with the boring theoretical stuff!

28. The story of a real project
Done
Started
Queued
The collected data is the courtesy of Digital Natives

29. 4 short stories...

30. fast and predictable deliveries
#3 Still too many open items
#4 Being predictable
#2 It takes too much time
4 short stories...
#1 Too many open items

31. # 1 Too many open items

32. WIP
Work items were waiting for
somebody who could test them...

33. # 2 It takes too much time to deliver

34. CFD is not much help here...
lead time

36. Distribution of lead times
count
15
13
10
8
5
average 3
median*
0
days 1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 22 33
*Calculation of medians is a popular technique in summary statistics and summarizing
statistical data, since it is simple to understand and easy to calculate, while also giving a
measure that is more robust in the presence of outlier values than is the mean. Wikipedia

37. Some examples of work items with 8-day lead time
time spent on
time spent waiting
implementation ID description
# %
(hours)
(hours)
1 63 98
7 57 90
2 62 97
2 62 97
3 61 96

38. 95%
waste

39. Distribution of lead times
Before
count
15
13
10
8
5
3
0
days 1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 22 33
average
median

40. Distribution of lead times
Before After
count count
15 15
13 13
10 10
8 8
5 5
3 3
0 0
days 1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 22 33 days 1 3 5 7 9 11 13 22
average
median

41. # 3 Still too many open work items

42. How many times
the item has
been rejected

43. Number of rejected work items
count
15
11
8
4
0
week 31-32 33-34 35-36 37-38

44. Number of rejected work items
count
15
11
8
4
0
week 31-32 33-34 35-36 37-38 39-40 42-43 44-45

45. #4 Being predictable

46. Sales: “I want to know when the
new features can hit the market!”
Management: “I want to know how
much it will cost me!”

47. All the work items we had so far
(~20 work items)
v
~ v ~
~ ~ v ~
v ~
v
~
v v
~ ~
~ ~
~
v

48. Categorizing them into three groups
S
v
~
~
v
~
~
~
M
~ ~
~ v
v ~
~
v
v
L
~
v
~
v

49. The lead time distribution
count
4
3
3
~
~
~
2
M
~ ~
~ v
v ~
~
v
v
1
1
0
days 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 12 13 16

50. The lead time distribution
count
4
3
3
~
~
~
2
M
~ ~
~ v
v ~
~
v
v
1
1
0
days 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 12 13 16

51. The lead time distribution
count
4
3
3
~
~
~
2
M
~ ~
~ v
v ~
~
v
v
1
1
0
days 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 12 13 16
SLA

52. The spent time distribution
count
6
5
4
~
~
~
3
M
~ ~
~ v
v ~
~
v
v
2
1
0
hours 6 7 8 9 10

53. The spent time distribution
count
6
5
4
~
~
~
3
M
~ ~
~ v
v ~
~
v
v
2
1
0
hours 6 7 8 9 10
SLA

55. +1 Pressure won’t make a difference

56. #2 Nothing changed. Still the
same ratio
#1 We decided that we would
force ourselves to be faster

62. Thank you very much for your attention!
http://zsoltfabok.com/ me@zsoltfabok.com