), and the resulting extreme uncertainty that is, incidentally, the environment where startups thrive. To give one example, Reinertsen emphasizes the power of measuring thecost of delay(COD) of a new product. As with any methodology, applying the principles faithfully may require modifying the practices to fit a specific context. Learn how to manage and orchestrate development projects following advanced Lean principles. Reinertsen cautions against mistaking dynamic goals for static goals. With so many options to choose from, its no wonder theres confusion. Don Reinertsens third book is called The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development. It is worth noting that Team New Zealand explicitly invested in a second boat to create this superior test environment.

One of the great additions to the lexicon of product development comes from the notion of quantifying factors that those of us in product development often treat as soft measurements. So we need to optimize the rate at which were creating economically useful information. Don Reinertsen points out that were in business to make a profit, so decisions made during the development process should be made by considering how theyll impact profit. Unfortunately, this is often limited to what I refer to as a few golden nuggets. Even good books have lots of fluff in between the nuggets, usually in the form of extended stories to illustrate the point. In my own experience, companies that implement decentralized control often exhibit a mild form of schizophrenia. Yet timely delivery of new features often comes at the expense of agility, especially if cycle times are long. Almost all economic factors can be traced back to managing delay.

We can use similar mechanisms to manage WIP level. What will this do? Of course, this then makes the package even larger and of higher priority. Many of the startups I talk to - and their boards - seem to equate ability to "hit the schedule" with competence and productivity. Each section has numbered principles, and there are 175 in all. Speaking of text books As full as this book is with good ideas, there is another that actually beats it in terms of density.

Get started with Lean Product Development, Lean Product Development: Cultural Resistance, 4 ways to Ensure Your Lean product Development Initiative Won't Fail, The planning and task ownership is decentralized, No tasks on the critical path have wait time, You can monitor and control capacity loading. See if any of these sound familiar: 1. Two opposing forces create a U-Curve (depicted here as total cost), which gives us a range of good choices near the trough. Then, if we seek to minimize total cost, we will only focus on the portion we can see, the efficient use of capacity. By setting up the wrong incentives, we are rewarding the very behaviors that we seek to prevent. This workshop covers the ideas contained in Don Reinertsens bestselling book, The Principles of Product Development Flow. Under such conditions, management will almost automatically support anything that appears to help the "golden" project. As more is learned, we must be prepared to throw out our most fundamental beliefs about why we are doing the project and what we need to accomplish. But they can be managed by reducing batch sizes. In this chapter, Reinertsen uses traffic control systems because they must adapt to constantly changing and uncertain conditions accidents happen. J3[$)'Ph=KRZM|aM;z"9dgod A_T#K_U@HpMBOM,wc^dkneYfDfNe LJ3 VQ} 8d^Z)|)@3?-KCN-|`5J-@,lvI>! Z|duXmh;:sLaO)#NMK78|M}qrOsN\ K1P&qjk0X Y!(u'X"7Rc\2-n~ZsT|[_) .yW"]%W=@'PqFS9?)w0a?~&aT;>1l,`Fp${Z:V u)Q18k\:CR2ur.VJZ %{% It's refreshing to see ideas from these different domains brought together in a coherent way: If we limit ourselves to the relatively simple WIP [work-in-progress] constraints used in lean manufacturing, we will underexploit the power of WIP constraints. But it goes beyond that, including techniques for improving the economics of product development. The payoff/performance chart above illustrates a typical product development feature payoff curve. This can be particularly true with software development projects because we often establish goals for the project in the early stages and become locked into our believe that deviations from those goals are categorically bad. Reinertsen weaves together ideas from lean manufacturing, maneuver warfare, queuing theory, and even the architecture of computer operating systems and the Internet.

Reducing batches can have many benefits in a software development environment. The reason for this can be represented in the graph below: Here we see two opposing metrics: transaction cost and holding cost. ]bdRL&Py. Take one of Reinertsen's example: Unhappy with late deliveries, a project manager decides he can reduce variability by inserting a safety margin or buffer in his schedule. The principles of product development flow draw on insights from Lean Manufacturing as well as examples from the Telecommunications and Computer Operating Systems industries. And queues are leading indicators of system slowdowns so its important that we monitor them. To answer this second question, we must determine how queue size translates into delay cost, which requires knowing the cost of delay. Today, only 15 percent of product developers know the cost of delay. Just show it will benefit the "golden" project and you will get approval. Thank you for being such wonderful hosts absolutely fantastic environment (+ delicious food) to support the learnings.- Sending my husband to the course asap! It focuses on proven leverage points and specific practical methods that have helped participants achieve as much as a 90 % reduction in cycle time.

There is also a very interesting section of this chapter that discusses how to sequence work. There got to be so many pages marked that I started putting the stickies on the side of the page so I could tell the new ones from the old ones. It is what they refer to as the ramp meter.. By the time a book gets on my radar, it probably has some new information to offer. Here again, we see the use of a more quantitative approach to evaluating this feedback and defining the right metrics to target economic indicators of performance.

However, different jobs will often have vastly different costs-of-delay. Many who have had this experience will report the ultimate avoidance of the dreaded device. If we are blind to queues, we won't know the delay cost, and we will only be aware of the cost of capacity. To view or add a comment, sign in. When they tested improvements in keel designs, they used two virtually identical boats. That is often a bad trade (although, as I'm sure Reinertsen would hasten to add, not always!).

Just for the economic explanations, this book would be worth the price of admission. we focused on the wrong end of the value chain, optimize the rate at which were creating economically useful information, Science and economics behind failing fast, Part 6 where we look at other key Lean Product Development principles. In the previous two blogs I made a compelling case for Lean Product Development being the business opportunity of the century, and then gave an example of how and why we focused on the wrong end of the value chain. Weve created a space, which is designed to meet the high expectations from our driven, creative trainers and consultants, and for you to feel comfortable, almost like home. 0000000799 00000 n If you have been doing agile for a while it is a good way to put your everyday praxis in perspective.". If anything, he left me wanting more stories that would further illustrate the mountain of golden nuggets he has provided. s-U->8nb4=ry Z[AlE"s m8$cnFv(%Y"Bxj.SY*% Startups are frequently guilty as charged - the 4-year death march example above could be written about dozens of venture-backed companies slogging it out in the land of the living dead. He identifies a dozen fatal flaws that plague existing product development, beginning with a failure to properly identify and quantify the economics of development cycles, and outlines how to address these issues. Then youve found the right place. good ideas here, but Ill briefly summarize what every product developer should know. Set Points). As I was trawling the internet for some brain fodder on Lean,I came across a good book that tackles usual questions of batch handling in the lean space.This one is from Donald Reinertsen-he also has couple of you tube videos as well.Am reproducing an excerpt from Eric Ries. Given what I have already said, you can imagine that my attempt will be wholly inadequate, but at least I can try to pique your curiosity. Product development queues are more insidious because they tend to be invisible. The book is organized as 175 principles, organized into chapters by area.

Vi er specialiseret i SAFe,(Scaled Agile Framework) og erSPCT Gold partner hos Scaled Agile, Inc. Reinertsen argues that queues are the most important factor in maintaining optimal product development flow. That depends on your experience with Lean Product Developmentand your reading and learning style. 0000000955 00000 n So, the set points have been adjusted to match the sensitivity of each variable. As great as these ideas are, we borrowed a few other methods from other sourcesAgile, and Theory of Constraints. Finally, decentralization is a key principle for managing and optimizing complex systems. [This book] will explain why large queues form when processes with variability are operated at high levels of capacity utilization. If we can apply economic principles to the value of features, we can quantify the benefit of continued development and properly assess whether additional features make economic sense. We are now four generations beyond that method." But, what is the cost of this buffer? One of the hallmarks of this book is the use of some unexpected sources for models of behavior. Or consider principle B9: The Batch Size Death Spiral Principle: Large batches lead to even larger batches: The damage done by large batches can become regenerative when a large batch project starts to acquire a life of its own. And we do that by studying information theory and systems theory. Continuing the theme of ascribing economic value to costs of delay, the chapter on WIP discusses how said cost can be minimized by controlling WIP. They can also assess when it is appropriate to engage leadership. By sailing one boat against the other, they were able to discriminate small changes in performance very quickly. Team New Zealand designed the yacht that won the America's Cup. w0a{\1;; eGmycl_[6Tq,k_ S}l{^2J-$0'J09isH#FC6D*vO*O-)x2{j e2j6*wmzE. This means that there are no external factors that argue for shipping product on any given day.

Ideas such as cadence, forecasting and synchronization are discussed. Im certain I read the whole book at least six times within the first year or two after buying it. Institutionalization of large batch sizes. Noneconomic flow control. For most companies, the biggest impact to profit is the cost of delay. I mention this because Reinertsen is an author who has stood the typical model on its head. Instead, there are a bunch of stories on what individual companies have doneand those stories vary a lot. And while its impossible for me to say whats best for your particular situation, I can share what we have found to be the most useful starting point. My favorite part of this chapter was the discussion around alignment. This ultimately enabled them to triumph over a much better funded American team. He also introduces this idea: when it is imprudent to eliminate variability, the better choice is to minimize its cost. In order to trade them off against each other, we have to convert their impact into economic terms. Myths are busted on practically every page, even myths that are associated with lean/agile. Fast feedback allows us to remain vigilant for these opportunities. %PDF-1.4 % Lowering capacity utilization (and thereby queues) and reducing batch size (iteration cycle time) have such an effect. Again, you will find some powerful tools to think about how to optimize the use of human and system resources. But its also well written and Don Reinertsen speaks a little more strongly when he talks about how present day product development methods are backwards. Find a way to get it into the requirements of the "golden" projec. Its goal is to help us recognize that every artifact of our product development process is really just a proxy variable. This snippet is characteristic of Reinertsen's writing style and reasoning. Fast feedback provides a reinforcing cycle that keeps our inventory of design variations low. After all, when upper management has been told a project will succeed for 4 years, it is very hard for anyone in middle management to stand up and reverse this forecast Our problems grow even bigger when a large project attains the status of the project that cannot afford to fail. Managing timelines instead of queues. I have become a skeptic of concepts and practices that are not measurable and Reinertsen dives right in with this chapter about ascribing economic value to the work we do as product developers. Here are a couple examples: B2: The Batch Size Queueing Principle: Reducing batch size reduces cycle time; F8: The Cadence Batch Size Enabling Principle: Use a regular cadence to enable small batch sizes. A day delay has almost no cost, as far as profitability is concerned.

If engineers want their personal tests to get high priority, their best strategy is to add them to this large, high-priority test package. Even worse, and unlike their established counterparts, startups often experience a non-quantifiable cost of delay. The project manager is actually trading cycle time for variability. He points out that we often use surrogate (or proxy) measurements that offer little or no economic connection with the marketplace. He points out that in the military, field personnel are given a mission, but since conditions on the ground can change rapidly, advantage goes to the fighting force that can adapt the quickest. Let me close with an excerpt of Reinertsen at his best, using an unexpected example to illustrate the power of fast feedback to make learning more efficient: It should be obvious that fast feedback improves the speed of learning. Fortunately, he broke it into sections representing eight key principles of Lean. And there are already stories of companies that have tried the wrong things and failed. Today, only 2 percent of product developers measure queues.

Failure to correctly quantify economics. We want to take Agile training to the next level and believe that effective learning should be just as fun, interactive and inspiring as serious business and hard work. (For an introduction to the topic, I still recommend Reinertsens book Managing the Design Factory.). Lean Product Development: Where in the world should you begin? He prescribes controlling capacity utilization as the best way to manage queue size. Throughout this book, ideas are integrated from different chapters. We are located only 2 minutes walk from Christianshavn Station and 12 minutes from Copenhagen airport (Kastrup) by metro. Achieving Product Development Flow takes a different, science-based, approach. Creating short feedback loops is nothing new to the Agile practitioner. 0000002588 00000 n Clearly, big iterations require big queues. However, Managing the Design Factory (MDF), by Don Reinertsen, has forty-six notes in it! Reinertsen also provides a number of ways to visualize and monitor WIP to know when to deploy WIP control measures. Some of these things happen on a schedule that can be anticipated and others cannot. As we already know, congestion for product developers means bigger queues, higher capacity utilization, delays and higher costs. Reinertsen draws on a variety of areas (economics, queue theory, control theory, the military) to explore the consequences for product development. For example, here's him discussing our collective blindness to queues: To understand the economic cost of queues, product developers must be able to answer two questions. Capacity utilization is revisited with an eye towards determining the correct margin to leave available to ensure higher flow rates. 0000003091 00000 n Small batches (or short iterations) provide fast feedback (more on this later), but they also have the effect of reducing queue size. So if its a good book, Ill actually finish it. In a truly new market, we face no meaningful competition, there are no tradeshows to present at, and customers are not clamoring for our product. An intensive two-day workshop on practical, economically justifiable approaches for improving flow in product development. As importance grows, such test packages get even higher priority.

Because each principle is labeled with the type and a sequence number, the book is easy to use as a reference. When leadership defines the mission clearly, teams can interpret their situation against that mission to make good choices. There is a lot here about not only selecting the right metrics, but how to establish the right control mechanisms so that the metrics have their intended consequences.

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), and the resulting extreme unc