With some  of the practices and processes, learned over time, we tend to stop thinking and ask questions if they are appropriate in the situation and if they work. Our agile backbone is kind of a stiff and we are keeping the same position all the time.

It is important to REMEMBER that we need to keep an open eye into what we are doing, what are others doing, identify things that we could do better and execute the improvement.

It doesn’t make sense to keep the same posture only because it worked few times before and it will work again. Every project is different and every project should evolve into “perfection”.

“No change is bad” Toyota President Katsuaki Watanabe

Cheers,  Greg

Tell me the Story

Story is software requirement/feature/pice of functionality that is presented in story telling way. For example:
‘Given that I am a new user,
When I arrive at xxx site home page and I click Register button
I will see the registration form so I can register and use the awesome site’

This is just one way of story formating and wording. As many people and teams as there are, wording can take different shape.

For the purpose of the Wall we would normally have stories written on a index card in a bit shorter form with reference to more verbose version. The more verbose version contains acceptance criteria (we are using Mingle most of the time for that purpose).

The Wall

The wall is a physical place where we stick our story cards. Wall is a visual dashboard. It gives every team member current state of an iteration.

Wall is usually split into columns that indicates what is the current state of the story. A wall will usually have columns like:

• In Analysis
• Ready for Development
• In Development
• Ready for QA
• In QA
• Ready for Sign-off
• Finished
• Blocked (the infamous one)

This is a very typical wall setup. I worked with this shape of wall on many projects I was on. It is quite good, gives all important feedback through entire life cycle of a story.

It is very important to point out the fact that story wall maps to a development process. The columns on a wall are direct map to the way we work. As you might already know it is essential to bend and improve the process in order to achieve best results possible.

A very short break through the mentioned story wall. When Story got analyzed it moves into ready for development. Developer picks it up and works on it. When work on it is finished it is ready for being QA. If there are any bugs or hidden “features” it goes back to Development and so on. Once QA is happy with the story it is ready for Sign-Off. In any point in time if something stop story from being Developed/QAed/Analyzed it goes into blocked. Once the story is showcased it officially finished.

In perfect world this sounds good, but … as software development world is one of the most imperfect, it doesn’t. For example, if stories are in development, QAs might have nothing to do. If stories are developed in “high rate” the QA column will pile up. Once story is in QA, devs are picking new story and start their work on it. When bug is discovered on previous one it is raised as bug, or story is moved back to ready for development.

Evolution

In our current project, we have identified some issues and decided to change, improve our way of working from the very beginning. As process changed so did our story wall.

Once all the stories for iteration have been analyzed they are landing in Ready for Development. The team has 6 developers, as we are pairing, we are 3 pairs working on 3 stories at the time. This makes THREE streams of work that could be started at any time. We decided that we will create THREE vertical slots for that THREE pairs. This means that it is impossible to have four stories worked on at any given point in time.

Next, we decided to eliminate QA column. It doesn’t mean that there is no QA, it means that QAs are involved in testing from very beginning. While the story is worked on, every single bit of new functionality is presented to QA to check it out. Developers are getting immediate feedback and very often tips for things that they could miss. In a mean time QAs are testing on their test environment and preparing automated tests.

We have the luxury of heaving one QA per DEV pair. This makes little teams of THREE. When development is finished there is very little for QA to test as it was already done. At the end newly created automated tests are fired up just to confirm that all is done.

As it is a team effort (a DEV pair plus QA) to FINISH the story, DEVS are helping in testing and in development of automated tests when needed. The story goes than into Ready for Sign-Off.

It involved discipline to make sure that only one story is worked on at the time, until entirely finished and being ready for presentation to business sponsor.

The THREE musketeers are responsible for the story to be finished and to improve the process.

Revolution

How did this process change affect our project. Short summary.

• We have completed all the required scope for release, in given time (a little ahead of time)
• Number of recorded bugs: 1 (fixed few minutes after it was reported)
• Team morale, GREAT

We are very happy with this setup. What YOU think about it?

Cheers, Greg and the Team

Introduction

What I learned in introduction is:

• a bunch of scientists that meet in MIT decided to collect all the information from all major car manufacturers around the world about every single aspect of car manufacturing
• team of 65 people were gathering information from all major car manufacturing companies
• book is based on academic research but presents a dry summary of findings, instead of being a report

The Industry of Industries in Transition

Findings in this chapter:

• automobile manufacturing is the world’s largest manufacturing activity
• after World War I Henry Ford and General Motors’ Alfred Sloan kicked off the mass production
• after World War II Eiji Toyoda and Taiichi Ohno kicked of lean production at Toyota Motor Company
• the world of mass production is struggling at the moment with too many managers, too many workers and too many plants
• craft producer uses highly skilled workers and simple but flexible tools
• mass producer uses narrowly skilled professionals with expensive, single purpose machines
• lean producer combines both
• Lean is lean because it uses less of everything compared to mass production
• mass production goal is good enough == acceptable number of defects, maximum level of inventories, narrow range of products
• lean production goal is set on perfection == declining cost, zero defects, zero inventories, endless product variety
• lean changes the way people work and their professional career

The Rise and Fall of Mass Production

Kick start of mass production:

• Henry Ford designed perfect vehicle for manufacturing, easy to use, interchangeable parts, easy to fix
• first change introduced to assembly line was moving parts close to a workers so they save time and don’t have to go to get them
• every assembler would only perform single easy task
• introduction of moving assembly line

Workforce

Perfecting interchangeable worker:

• every assembler had only one task (e.g.. put two nuts together) – boring
• every worker required 5 minutes of training
• dividing workers; work floor workers, engineers
• no career for those on the floor
• new career for professional engineers

Organization

Ford was aiming to achieve vertical integration within organization. Produce cars entirely in one place and ship them onto entire world. Problems with shipping and trade barriers caused Ford to start manufacturing cars in 19 other countries outside US.

Tools

For created a set of simple tools that would perform only one job and could be operated by unskilled worker. All the tools were highly accurate and almost completely automated.

Product

No surprise in here, the product was a car. At the beginning of mass production Ford was producing Model T. Ford’s car was very popular, it was cheap and everyone could repair it.

Introducing Management

Because until 1925 all the decisions were made by Henry Ford and in one place organization and control of the entire production process across all the countries was impossible. Alfred Sloan introduces management and decentralization of decisions through the company. Ford also introduces standards across mechanical car parts that made it possible to introduce some variety between models.

The fall

After many years of continues rise, year 1955 was the peak time in mass production. After this time, US domination on car market started to decline. The cause of that was mostly the appearance of new car companies in Europe and in Japan. More importantly those companies were introducing greater variety of car models than standard Ford’s setup.

This is all from first few chapters. I will read the birth of Lean in next chapter and share. Stay tooned

Greg