From http://esp.leankanban.com/ In this presentation, which covers blocker clustering, service-delivery review and fitness criteria metrics, you will discover some techniques for identifying and mitigating risk. The talk is based on software-delivery experiences at both the delivery-team and management levels.

1. De-Risky BusinessEnterprise Services Planning Summit 2016 @mattphilip
Techniques for Identifying and Mitigating Risk

2. Fitness Criteria
Blocker Clustering Probabilistic Forecasting
Service-Delivery Review
Techniques

3. Fitness Criteria
Technique: Fitness Criteria

5. A metric that enables us to
evaluate whether our product,
service or service delivery is
"fit for purpose" in the eyes of
a customer from a given
market segment.
-- David J. Anderson
What is a Fitness Criterion?

6. @mattphilip #kanbanESP

7. @mattphilip #kanbanESP

8. @mattphilip #kanbanESP
delivery
team
customer
exec sponsor
Risk factors,
Success criteria
TDD, code coverage,
JS framework,
team happiness
Fitness Criteria
coach
WIP

9. @mattphilip #kanbanESP
delivery
team
customer
Exec sponsor
Quality
Delivery time
Predictability
coach

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business
CIO
PMO able to track progress,
No teams falling behind
“Doing Agile,”
Estimating well
Fitness Criteria
delivery
team
delivery
team
delivery
team

11. @mattphilip #kanbanESP
business
CIO
Value delivery,
Reliability
delivery
team
delivery
team
delivery
team

12. Asking your customers what they value about your
service or product
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Agile Manifesto

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Fitness criteria are a key to self-organizing teams

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Fitness Criteria Metric Health/Improvement Metric
Metric that enables us to evaluate
whether our product, service or service
delivery is "fit for purpose" in the eyes of
a customer from a given market
segment. Effectively comprise the Key
Performance Indicators (KPIs) foreach
market segment.
Metric that guides an improvement
initiative or indicates the general health
of your business, business or product
unit or service delivery capability.
Direct Indirect/derivative
Examples: delivery time, functional
quality, safety
Examples: flow efficiency, velocity,
percent complete and accurate, WIP
Customer-oriented/derived Team-oriented/derived

15. If it’s not at least derivative of a fitness
criterion, it’s at best a vanity metric,
and at worst a misguiding metric.

16. Service-Delivery Review
Technique: Service-Delivery Review

17. @mattphilip #kanbanESP

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19. Net Fitness Score
Delivery Quality
“Did you get what you wanted?”
Net Fitness Score (NFS) =
% satisfied customers –
% dissatisfied customers
Question 1: How "fit for purpose" did you find this delivery?
Question 2: Specifically, why did you give that rating?

20. @mattphilip #kanbanESP
1. How "fit for purpose" do you find this facilitation service?
2. Specifically, why did you give that rating?
Rating Description Indication
5 Extremely: This facilitation service was everything we
needed and more
A satisfied person who felt that the service was fit
for purpose
4 Highly: This facilitation service was everything we
needed
3 Mostly: This facilitation service was most of what we
needed but some of our needs were not met
A neutral person who didn't get everything needed
to be delighted with the service but got something
acceptable for his or her time investment
2 Partially: This facilitation service met some of our needs
but lacked significant and important elements
A dissatisfied person who felt purpose was unmet
by the service
1 Slightly: This facilitation service had some value but
most of what we needed was missing
0 Not at all: This facilitation service had no value

21. Blocker Clustering
Technique: Blocker Clustering

22. @mattphilip #kanbanESP
Blocker Clustering
• Leverages a kanban system to identify and quantify
the things that block work from flowing
• Helps “trim the tail” in distribution (risk)

23. • — Photo from Woodland Trust
WHAT IS A BLOCKER?
An abnormal condition that prevents a committed work item from progress

24. @mattphilip #kanbanESP
Getting Started
• Talk with your team about it
• Define “block” for your team
• Minimally instrument your
kanban system to gather
data, including the block
reason and duration

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Blocker Analysis

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35 Dependent Story blockers

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69 days lost to Dependent Story blockers

28. @mattphilip #kanbanESP
Learnings
Team 1
• internal blockers caused 20 days worth of delay
• external blockers caused 147 days worth of delay
• the biggest blocker cluster accounted for 86 days of
delay
Team 2
• 141 stories in the release
• 66 stories were blocked at some point —
nearly half

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85th percentile

30. @mattphilip #kanbanESP
85th percentile

31. Probabilistic Forecasting
Technique: Probabilistic Forecasting

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Filters
All filters must be set before
using this simulation. You can
change the filter settings on
another chart, then return
here.
Source Dates
Projected Dates
Relax input validation
More Trials
From 3/11/2016 First
To 4/5/2016 Last
From 4/6/2016 < >
To 7/8/2016 94 days
5 10 15 20 25 30 35
0
200
400
600
800
1K
1.2K
1.4K
Monte Carlo (13K trials)
Total Items Complete in 94 Days
Occurrences
▾
Metadata Services Delivery Time Data.xlsx, 4/6/2016 Monte Carlo: Simulate Completed Items ▼
Copyright 2014 Actionable Agile, Inc. (https://www.actionableagile.com)
20
30%
18
50%
16
70%
14
85%
12
95%

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• Have a conversation with your customer to
discover fitness criteria
• Ask “What decisions would these affect?”
• Make them visible
• Use in feedback loop (e.g., service-delivery review)
• Try blocker clustering
• Forecast using data, not guesses
Risk-Mitigation
Takeaways for
Tomorrow

34. • Defining Fitness for Purpose (http://www.djaa.com/defining-fitness-purpose)
• Your KPIs Probably Aren't! But What Are They?
(https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/your-kpis-probably-arent-what-david-anderson)
• Klaus Leopold, Troy Magennis, Larry Maccherone
• Service-Delivery Review worksheet (mattphilip.wordpress.com)
• RAID Bingo (mattphilip.wordpress.com)
References and Further Reading
@mattphilip