Lean Strategies for IT Support Organizations

1. LEAN STRATEGIES FOR IT SUPPORT ORGANIZATIONS Scrum Gathering 2011 Seattle Roger Brown CSC, CST Moonrise Consulting, San Jose, CA Peter Green Agile Coach and Trainer, Adobe Systems, Inc. With assistance from Jonathan Snyder, Adobe Systems, Inc.

2. CAN IT SERVICES BE AGILE? 2

3. LEAN PRINCIPLES 3 Minimize the time from order to cash 2. Map the Value Stream 3. Create Flow 4. Establish Pull 5. Seek Perfectio n 1. Identify Value The five-step thought process for guiding the implementation of lean techniques is easy to remember, but not always easy to achieve - lean.org

4. IDENTIFY VALUE Specify value from the standpoint of the end customer by product family. 2. Map the Value Stream 3. Create Flow 4. Establish Pull 5. Seek Perfectio n 1. Identify Value

5. SOURCES OF VALUE FOR ENTERPRISE SYSTEMS $ Useful functionality $ High system reliability $ Quick system response $ High quality $ Ease of use $ Good support

6. MAP THE VALUE STREAM Identify all the steps in the value stream for each product family, eliminating whenever possible those steps that do not create value. 2. Map the Value Stream 3. Create Flow 4. Establish Pull 5. Seek Perfectio n 1. Identify Value

7. Product Definition Product Development Product Delivery THE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT VALUE STREAM Scrum practitioners have focused on these activities Product Backlog Creation and Release Planning Development and Testing during Sprints Frequent Releases to Production Sprints ? ?

8. EXPANDING THE VALUE STREAM Where does the Product Vision come from? Scrum Where does the Product go after delivery? Product Discovery Product Definition Product Development Product Delivery Product Operation Innovation Games Pragmatic Marketing Customer Development DevOps Who is missing? Leading edge Agile approaches Mainstream

9. DEVOPS Done, done, done Development Operations Release and Deploy

10. COMPLETING THE VALUE STREAM Product Discovery Product Definition Product Development Product Delivery Product Operation Support Support is the interface to the customer Now we can start thinking about optimizing the entire value stream Bleeding edge for Agile Enterprises What Lean/Agile opportunities an we find?

11. Product WHAT IS SUPPORT? What is a Service?  Activities, not tangibles  Produced and consumed at the same time  Customer is a co-producer  Utility + Warranty Service

12. WHAT LEAN PRACTICES HAS YOUR ORG TRIED? Lean Production Practices Often Applied to Services: • Reduce average activity time (stop watches!) • Heavy specialization (silos!) • Resource Management (offshoring!) • Stepwise forwarding (your incident record has 10 entries • Standardization (support scripts!) Focus is on activity and cost. Customers are frustrated. Workers are de-motivated.

13. THE NEW PERSPECTIVE Treat Service as a system and focus on capacity and capability to achieve flow. Economies of Scale Economies of Flow

14. FINDING FLOW Make the value-creating steps occur in tight sequence so the product will flow smoothly toward the customer. 2. Map the Value Stream 3. Create Flow 4. Establish Pull 5. Seek Perfectio n 1. Identify Value

15. USER DEMAND Story Story Story Defect Story Refactor Story Defect Story Where does it come from?

16. VALUE DEMAND Value Demand is the work that originates in product discovery and improvement.

17. FAILURE DEMAND Failure Demand is the work that originates in product mistakes, mishaps and misunderstanding.

18. THE LEAN NO-BRAINERS 18 We know about these from our Agile experience: - Small batches - Single piece flow - Limit Work In Progress

19. DECENTRALIZED CONTROL

20. ABOUT VARIABILITY In general, it is better to reduce the economic consequences of variability than to try to reduce variability. - Reinertsen Manufacturing Development Support Unit Unit Unit Unit Unit Unit Story Story Story Story Story Story Ticket Ticket Ticket Ticket Ticket

21. ESTABLISH PULL As flow is introduced, let customers pull value from the next upstream activity. Note: customer is the next downstream process, not just end 2. Map the Value Stream 3. Create Flow 4. Establish Pull 5. Seek Perfectio n 1. Identify Value

22. PULL 22 Push systems overwhelm capacity, creating turbulence, waste and delay Pull systems have a steady flow that provides predictability Push ♫

23. Normal Urgent Process Improvement WI Types: Design WIP=2 Test WIP = 3 Done Develop WIP=4 (Prioritized Backlog) Doing DoneDoing Done Bottleneck Station Workflow WIP Limi t WIP Limi t WIP Limi t SIMPLE SOFTWARE KANBAN BOARD To Do 23 KANBAN

24. KANBAN WIP Limits Visual Management Self Assignment Prioritization Incremental Improvement

25. CADENCE Sprint 1 Sprint 2 Sprint 3 Decomposition Scrum for development Lean for operations

26. SEEK PERFECTION As value is specified, value streams are identified, wasted steps are removed, and flow and pull are introduced, begin the process again and continue it until a state of perfection is reached in which 2. Map the Value Stream 3. Create Flow 4. Establish Pull 5. Seek Perfectio n 1. Identify Value

27. ABOUT PERFECTION Perfection is never actually achieved. The notion of perfection is itself subject to a process of continuous improvement. - Jonathan Snyder When does our process reach perfection?

28. REDUCING WASTE Manufacturing Enterprise System Support Inventory Stale support requests, planned process improvements, unreleased fixes Extra processing Heavy process steps, meetings, work assignments, manual reporting Overproduction Standardization of responses, speculative process changes Transportation Task switching, issue triage, offshoring, issue forwarding Waiting Specialist bottlenecks, batch fixes for a hot patch, reproducing environments and configurations, queue escalations Motion Emergency fixes, handoffs due to specialization, log in to multiple systems to test or research Defects Lost knowledge, mis-applied fixes, out-of-date scripts, Addressing systems instead of root causes, bugs The Seven Deadly Wastes

29. LEAN PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT GOALS Valuable Product Usable Knowledge Demming Cycle • Patterns • Institutional knowledge • Knowledge sharing • Learning Organization

30. FASTER FEEDBACK Demming Cycle

31. EXISTING FEEDBACK LOOPS TO IMPROVE Product Discovery Product Definition Product Development Product Delivery Product Operation Support Help Desk Reliability Configuration Performance Compliance Bugs Release Frequency

32. NEW FEEDBACK LOOPS TO ADD Product Discovery Product Definition Product Development Product Delivery Product Operation Support Learning Support viewpoint, tools Low value features Inefficient features Supportability features Feature ideas from customers Usability issues Wrong features Missing features Customer desires Emerging problems Help Desk

33. INCREASE CUSTOMER INVOLVEMENT Product Discovery Product Definition Product Development Product Delivery Product Operation Support Focus Groups Customer Representatives Customer Validation

34. AGILE ENTERPRISE MANIFESTO We are uncovering better ways of developing enterprise business services by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value: Incentives for quality and value over time and cost Agile organization over agile project methodology Knowledge management over tribal memory Economies of flow over economies of scale That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more. - A work in progress by Jonathan Snyder, Sr. Manager, IT Application Support, Adobe Systems, Inc.

35. REFERENCES Anderson, D. J. (2010). Kanban: Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Business. Sequim, WA: Blue Hole Press. Beck, K., & al., e. (2001). Manifesto for Agile Software Development. Retrieved from agilemanifesto.org: http://agilemanifesto.org/ Bell, S. C., & Orzen, M. A. (2011). Lean IT: Enabling and Sustaining Your Lean Transformation. New York: Productivity Press. Grönroos, C. (2007). Service Management and Marketing: Customer Management in Service Competition, 3rd Edition. Hoboken: J. Wiley. Humble, J., & Farley, D. (2010). Continuous Delivery: Reliable software releases through build, test, and deployment automation. Boston: 35 Reinertsen, Donald G. (2009). The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development. Redondo Beach, CA: Celeritas Publishing. Seddon, J., & O’Donovan, B. (2009). Rethinking Lean Service. http://www.systemsthinking.co.uk/6- brendan-jul09.asp Womack, J. P., & Jones, D. T. (1993). Lean Thinking. New York: Free Press. Womack, J. P., Jones, D. T., & Roos, D. (1990). The Machine that Changed the World. New York: Macmillian Publishing Company.