Project Retrospective using Mingle

Last week, we conducted an iteration retrospective for the project that I am currently working, for a client based in Perth. Since we are a distributed team with the analysis team in Perth and the development team being based out of Melbourne, we used Mingle to do our Iteration Retrospective. I have conducted a few face-to-face retrospectives myself and it works fine. But this was my first experience being part of a distributed project team retrospective and we used Mingle to help us with the same.

Why did we use Mingle? Mingle as a tool is best suited for collaborative discussions within a distributed team. It can be easily set-up for anonymous feedback, which can then be discussed either through teleconferencing or video conferencing. The whole process took us about an hour and was a pretty successful exercise (except for some minor glitches we had with the voice, since we used Skype for the teleconference call).

The rules we followed during the retrospective session were the standard rules being:
- It’s not a blame game – provide constructive feedback to help the team move ahead
- One conversation at a time

We started the retrospective by hooking up to the Melbourne office on a teleconference line (Skype). Each of us also had logged into the Project Retrospective instance within Mingle. We then decided to use the next 10 minutes to enter our feedback within the Retro wall. The Retro wall had the below 6 categories and each of us could enter our feedback into any of the categories (without any particular order):
- Do less of
- Do more of
- Keep doing
- Start doing
- Stop doing
- Puzzles

The Retro wall was setup to accept feedback anonymously and thus no names were published against any of the feedback(s). After confirming that everyone had finished entering their feedback, we began discussing the feedback for each of the categories. Some of the feedback was quite self explanatory, while the rest required further discussion (Usually the person who wrote a particular feedback would expand on it and the rest of the team would add to the discussion as required). At the end of the discussion session, we voted on the items that each of us felt needed more discussion or needed an action item against the same (again, voting can be done anonymously using Mingle). At the end of the retrospective session, we had collected a few action items, with names assigned against each of them. I thought it was a pretty successful retrospective!

The Rhythm of Fit

I am currently working on a presentation on how Innovation is the key to building solutions that fit the purpose and thus offer a better rate of success. The inspiration for the same came from a section within the book 'The Elegant Solution'(by Matthew E May) which talks about how an innovation/solution should focus on clear and present needs and most importantly, how it should fit the purpose rhythmically.

According to the author, a great innovation should:
- fit the times
- fits within a larger system
- shapes the attitudes and behavior of people
- changes how people think and work
- allows others to see in it their own opportunity for a new life

A perfect innovation which identifies with the above criteria's and also has revolutionized the art of selling music, videos and other applications online is Apple's iTunes and iPod digital music players.



While we have had quite a good choice of digital music players, the one thing which was lacking in most of these digital music gizmo's was the experience. It is very important to provide for a seemeless experience that is easy to use and simple. That's where Apple's super slim music player 'ipod' and their new platform to legally distribute music online 'iTunes' has been a huge success.

While the iPod was a simple and great looking digital music player, people could purchase their favorite tracks online at the iTunes music store, mix their favorite tracks into playlists with iTunes and upload their entire music collection by synchronizing their super slim iPods to the iTunes application. Apple had delivered a complete solution for the new digital music age!

To add to it, with their recent launch of the iPod Touch and iPhones, there is a whole new market being created for creating and developing iPhone Apps (applications). Apple has provided an opportunity for all innovators (of all ages) to design, create and sell their applications on the iTunes App store. It thus not only nurtures innovative ideas, but also provides a reliable platform to sell their ideas to the world - A perfect example of how great innovations allow others to see in it their own opportunity for a new life!

The integration between the iPod and the iTunes music delivery platform is truly rhythmic.

Fighting Intuition!

Being an intuitive person, I have always wondered about the merits of making decisions based only on my intuition. There have indeed been times, when, having to make a decision quickly, I have relied purely on my intuition. It works many a times, but also fails me sometimes. I am sure we have all had similar experiences.

Recently I was reading a book based on the Toyota Production System ('The Elegant Solution' by Matthew E.May) and I was quite surprised to find a section there, discussing how making decisions based purely on one's intuition can be dangerous. It discusses how solutions that are regulated by mere 'gut instinct' usually never produces the perfect answer to the given problem. This problem arises mainly due to absence of solid facts and thus conventional wisdom rules the day. This means that the problem does not get the scrutiny, objectivity and critical analysis it deserves.

The book then discusses ways to counterbalance intuition and battle convention. One way can be found by using the principle of safety in numbers using patterns, as they offer a logical explanation for what we observe. This can be achieved by running the numbers (the right set of numbers for your business) to discover patterns hidden within the data. This helps to minimise risk and make balanced decisions.

It also lists four key measures that help in fighting intuition - as advocated by Toyota Production System (TPS) engineer Taiichi Ohno:

1. Always temper immediate action
2. Resist drawing conclusions on emotion
3. Question hearsay
4. Draw from experience, but don't rely on it solely.

Value Stream Maps and Process Improvement!

I was recently involved in an exercise to map and improve the invoicing process of a company. We conducted a workshop to define and map the existing process for invoicing - using a Value Stream Map. We then used a timeline graph to measure the Value added and Non-Value added time during the process (refer below)



It was interesting to note that the actual value add time was only 2hrs 20mins compared to a total process time of 7days 3hrs 25mins (includes a weekend)!
The above exercise helped us to identify areas for improvement within the invoicing process. We were then given a target of refining the process to be completed in less than 5 working days.

Our next step was to identify the main problem areas & also the common reasons for its occurrence. Once we identified all the problem areas and the reasons behind the same, we had a brain storming session to chalk out strategies to resolve the main bottlenecks which were delaying the process. We then created a roadmap (of activities) to initiate the problem fixing process. Due to confidentiality reasons, I cannot detail the actual issues that were identified or the fixes that we put into place to resolve them. But what I can share is that we have been able to successfully achieve our goal of reducing the total process time to less than 5 working days! **Hurray**

But, I guess that's just the start as we are still in the trial stages and need to track the process to identify if the measures that we took to resolve the issues - were they short term only or can they sustain in the long run? Also, more importantly, our next steps are to identify areas for Continuous Improvement(CI). Will we succeed .... ? Only time will tell!

Learning to Effort Ratio!

Within my previous blog titled ‘Tradeoff Curves’, I discussed the concept of tradeoff curves and how Toyota’s passion for extensive prototyping provides for redundancy which helps to plan a risk adverse system balanced with the infusion of new ideas. Let me discuss the concept a bit further by looking at the Learning to Effort ratio which quantifies the advantages of prototyping and having redundancies in your plan. Prototyping allows system designers to push the limits of testing proven subsystems (as far as required) to ensure that it works perfectly and also can meet changing system targets. The knowledge gained is not lost, but is banked for future projects.

Now trying to put things in perspective, lets consider a simple real life example of designing a house. Consider designing 4 houses. If you design using multiple choice alternatives for each component of the house, you'll end up with many more combination of designs than if you design using only a few concepts for each component. Thus using four interchangeable sets of each component, you could have 1024 unique house designs (theoretically at least!).



It also results in significant build up of knowledge which can be used for future design purposes. This is in comparison to just 4 unique houses you can design using only a few unique concepts. Another major advantage is that it also significantly improves the innovation to risk ratio i.e using the concept of interchangeable components, significantly improves the project success ratio.

Less is More!

This weekend, I had been to the Hunter Valley for a relaxing day of wine tasting and great food with my friends. Not just being satisfied with tasting different variety of wines, we decided to attend a behind-the-scenes wine tour at one of the vineyards for a chance to understand the wine-making process. It was a very informative tour as we got to see and learn various details that go into making that perfect glass of wine. Our tour guide was a very experienced wine producer and he told us a lot of interesting facts and stories. But, what interested me the most was his punch line that he used through-out the tour “Less is more”. I had heard that phrase being used in many other situations, but what surprised me was how it was related to the process of producing wine [Though the origin of this 19th century proverbial phrase is unknown, its often associated with the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who adopted the motto "Less is more" to describe his aesthetic tactic of arranging the numerous necessary components of a building to create an impression of extreme simplicity, by enlisting every element and detail to serve multiple visual and functional purposes].

According to him, the amount of vines planted within a hectare of land was inversely proportional to the quality of the wine that could be produced. Apparently, each particular piece of land can produce only a certain amount of good wine, irrespective of the total area planted. E.g: An hectare of land has only enough nutrition to either produce 10 kgs of quality grapes to produce a liter of high quality wine or can produce 20 kgs of low quality grapes which can still produce only 1 liter of high quality wine - Less is more!

He also used the phrase to explain how it is most efficient to grow only a few bunch of grapes per vine. This allows for channeling all the nutrients to a few bunch of grapes and thus get high quality and flavor rich grapes. Thus they regularly trim the vines to allow only a few flowers (which gets fertilized into a fruit)to grow per vine - Less is more!

I have used the phrase "Less is more" during discussions about improving process efficiency, lean production/manufacturing, product design and development etc., but it was a refreshing change to hear the same being used to grow grapes!