Migrating from Waterfall to Lean

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Migrating from Waterfall to Lean

• Sterling Mortensen
• President, Business Productivity Consulting
• sterling_at_howtoproductivity.com
• Bret Dodd
• Process Strategist, Hewlett Packard
• bret.dodd_at_hp.com

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The Current State

• Me (The Change Agent)
• I feel like I am lying about status
• Projects are always out of control
• There are always late surprises

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HP Results w/Lean
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HP Results w/Lean (cont)

• Corporate Value
• 70 million program cost avoidance in 20 months
  on Edgeline
• 27 million in annual savings (FW lab budget
  reduction) going forward
• Program TTM reduced by 1 year
• 7.4x productivity improvements sustained during
  staff budget reductions

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The Field Guide To Lean Development
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Why is status often wrong?
Reqd scope
75 of work remaining
EVM 50 of tasks complete
Only 25 of work is done
Spec
Imp
Des
Test
ReSpec
ReDes
ReImp
ReTest
Demo
Rework Again
Unplanned Work
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Unplanned Work Work Discovered Through Learning

• SW Development IS Learning
• Learning doesnt happen in nice, phased steps
• Risk reduction requires accelerating learning in
  high risk areas early in a project
• Rate of learning f(1/time to feedback)

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What Do You Do?The Basic Outline

• The goal is to enable work to move through your
  system quickly
• Organize people around cohesive work chunks
  (features or requirements)
• Prioritize work chunks based on value, risk, and
  operating order
• Have dedicated people to staff all areas of the
  work chunk
• Only start work chunks that can be fully staffed
• Drive each work chunk to DONE
• Learning is complete
• Tested Demo
• Defects fixed
• Once a work chunk is DONE
• Identify highest priority work chunk that can be
  staffed
• Make a choice
• Start identified work chunk, OR
• Utilize available staff to complete a work chunk
  that is in process

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Iterative Development Life Cycle
24 Hrs
Daily Standup Meeting
1 month
Iteration
Demonstrate Functionality
Iteration features
Product Backlog features
Select
Get Feedback
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Test Strategy

• A feature or feature chunk is not done until it
  has passed ALL tests
• This means that tests have been run, defects
  fixed, and tests rerun passing
• Learning is complete once ALL tests pass! (see
  speaker notes)
• You should consider a test framework such as
  FURPS when creating your test strategy
• Functionality
• Use this as an opportunity to layer your testing
  to include unit testing, subsystem testing,
  system testing, exploratory testing, etc.
• Usability
• Use this as an opportunity to get actual customer
  feedback
• Reliability
• Performance
• Supportability
• Use this as an opportunity to get feedback on
  customer experience, service technician
  experience, and TCO (Total Cost of Ownership)

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Test Strategy (cont)

• Test strategy has a very significant impact on
  the economics of your development system
• Timing of test execution
• time to feedback is the single most important
  metric to understand
• It drives human behavior
• It affects the time to fix a defect
• Frequency of testing
• automated vs. manual, scripted vs. exploratory
• Quality of testing
• Requirements-based coverage analysis vs. code
  coverage analysis
• We want to emphasize that lean and associated
  test strategy is as much or more about
  organizational culture and discipline as it is
  about technical knowledge and skill
• The success of nearly any test approache will be
  determined by the culture of testing often and
  fixing defects as they are found (see notes)

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Why This Works - Economics
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Why This Works Focus on Closure

• Small batch low WIP
• high productivity
• Predictability
• Linear vs. non-linear closure
• Manager satisfaction
• Employee satisfaction
• Get done sooner
• Continuous quality reduces rework
• Better economics

50 of customer value measurable
Reqd scope
50 of customer value measurable
Less than 50 of the waterfall calendar time has
been used
80 of the waterfall calendar time has been used
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Why It Works Risk Management

• Uncertainty Risk Areas the learning is needed
• Focusing early iterations on high risk areas
  enables learning, reduces uncertainty risk

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Metrics Guiding Proper Execution

• Closure Rate of Features
• Time to Feedback for features
• WIP Arrival Rate
• Variability of Closure Rate of Features
• Variability of Cycle Time of Features

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Cumulative Flow Diagram
Eventual convergence indicates that backlog can
be worked off.
Avg Backlog arrival rate
Avg WIP Arrival Rate
Backlog
Average Closure Rate
Avg rates can be computed using run charts and,
later, SPC charts. Variance can be accounted for
to yield predictability
WIP
Amount of WIP queue size. Queue size has a
direct correlation to quality and cycle time
Done
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Managing Variance
Features
Cycle Time
I2
I3
I4
I5
F2
F3
F4
F5
I1
F1
Iteration
Feature

• Planning becomes much simpler when you understand
  the average delivery rate of your system
• Confidence in your planning grows tremendously
  when you understand the variance present in your
  system
• Decomposition of large features into chunks helps
  to reduce variance and enables time to feedback
  to be short

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WIP gt 900
WIP gt 500
WIP
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(No Transcript)
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Previous two graphs covered this
timespan 3/2004-3/2005
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Common Barriers To Success

• Managerial
• Driving the wrong behaviors
• Migrating to a new lifecycle (from Waterfall to
  Lean)
• Org Charts Architecture
• Decomposing features into chunks and then not
  driving all chunks of a feature to completion
  before moving to the next feature
• The roles titles assigned to people cause
  artificial boundaries to crop up.
• Testing organization separated from the
  development organization

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Field Guide FAQ

• Measure only Items Done
• Features or feature chunks that are in process at
  the end of an iteration continue on into the next
  iteration, until it is
• Variability is natural.

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The New Current State

• Me (The Change Agent)
• Leading Successful Change
• Creating a better place to work
• Making my boss look good
• Future Career Opportunities

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QA