A game to explore lean aspects, such as flow efficiency, batch sizes, waste in software development.

1. - or use the Flow Luke
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Based
on
h*p://www.netobjec4ves.com/system/files/DotGame_vas11_0.pdf

2. § Illustrate Little’s law
§ Visualize why high resource utilization might be bad for
flow efficiency
§ Create an understanding that the most efficient way of
getting flow is adapting to constraints
§ Show how people in front of a bottleneck are actually
causing problems when adding more work
§ Show that its better not to work in many situations
§ Show the effects of big batches
§ Show that much work in progress adds waste and make
it harder to fix and detect problems
§ Show the value of customer collaboration
§ Show the value of in process testing
Purpose
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3. § Material
– 3x3 yellow post-its (300 post-its)
– Color dots
§ Team of 8 persons and at least a couple of
observers
§ The game is played in 3 round
– 5 min pre
– 5 min running
– 10 min discussion
Set up
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4. § From queuing theory
§ The number of items in a system (WIP) equals
the arrival rate (or throughout) times the average
time an item spend in the system (lead time).
§ WIP = TP * LT
Little’s law
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5. We are a software shop, that
produces this:
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6. The group roles
§ Business Analyst - Picks 6 post-its
§ Technical Analyst - Puts on yellow dot
§ Designer - Puts on red dot
§ UI Developer - Puts on green dot
§ Developer - puts on both blue dots
§ Tester - discards anything of poor quality
§ Project Manager - uses stopwatch
§ Customer - receives the finished product
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7. Workflow
Business
analyst
peels
of
6
post-­‐its
Technical
analyst
put
yellow
dot
on
Designer
put
red
dot
on
UI
designer
put
both
green
dots
on
Developer
put
both
blue
dots
on
Make
those
blue
dots
touch,
but
not
overlap!
Tester
check
against
spec
Puts
in
defect
area,
or
give
to
customer
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8. § It’s important that every one work on maximum
capacity
§ Everyone is a specialist
§ We work in big batches (6)
§ You hand of your work to the next inbox when
finished
§ You are not allowed to talk with each other
Round 1
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9. Setup
BA
TA
Design
UI
Dev
Test
Material
PM
Times
5
minute
round
Times
first
batch
Warns
team
1
min
before
finish
Customer
Accepts
deliveries
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10. § Don’t accept anything where the blue dots are
overlapping or not touching
§ The dots in the corners should be fairly well
spaced from the two sides
§ Respond to people when asked, but don’t
volunteer information
To customer
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11. § PM counts
– # of completed post-its
– # of accepted post-its
– # of post-its that are in progress (WIP)
§ How long did the first batch take? Lead time?
§ Throughput # of completed post-its/5 minutes
§ Lead time (now) WIP/TP
Debrief
Round
WIP
Total
Defects
OK
TP
LT
60
18
16
2
3,6
16,7
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12. § Only do work when the ”outbox” is empty – pull
§ Once piece flow (not 6 post-its a time)
§ Could you do in-place testing (test should not
find any errors)
§ PM measures several post-its lead time
§ Customer answers questions
Round 2
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13. § PM counts
– # of completed post-its
– # of accepted post-its
– # of post-its that are in progress (WIP)
§ How long did the first batch take? Lead time
§ Throughput # of completed post-its/5 minutes
§ Lead time (now) WIP/TP
Debrief 2
Round
WIP
Total
Defects
OK
TP
LT
4
24
1
23
4,8
24s
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14. § Grab one post-it and work as a team
§ Honor your specialties
§ Discuss first how to organize team work
§ Customer allowed to intervene
§ Testing part of work
Round 3
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