So, what I'm going to do now is now we're getting into the

more details about Agile. This is nice. This is high

level. But now we're going to get into the nuts and bolts

of the heart of it.

So, we're going to talk about doing the right work. There

are two things. There's doing the right work and doing the

work right. So, what work do you do, how do you do it.

So, this bit is...it's all the time, isn't it? And then we

have too much work, pressure to do, do, do. Come on, more,

more, more. And you just get flooded with stuff.

And of course, almost every team has some of these. So,

I'd like you to put up your hands. If one of these is your

situation, one or more, can I have a show of hands? One or

more.

Something you recognize there, right? Right. So, here are

some concepts that I want you to absorb a little bit and

then we'll see where it fits in.

So, Dr. Liebig was one of the great thinkers, and this is

his first statement that has a huge impact on how we think

and work. Growth is controlled not by the total resources

available but by the scarcest resource. Keep that in mind

now.

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Where the most limited number the people, where the scarce

resource, that's where your focus should be.

The next one, you can only deliver as fast as the slowest

part of your process. And this is Eliyahu Goldratt. So,

he's like the father of, let's say, operational production

systems.

He did a lot of research, sixties, seventies, et cetera.

And at any given time, there is at least one constraint

which limits the system. So, there will always be a

bottleneck. So, imagine there's three roundabouts and the

traffic is flowing.

And in the morning, at roundabout number two, there's a

traffic jam. Big traffic jam. So, you say ah, you know

what we'll do? We'll bald flyover on number two.

So, you build a flyover. What happens to the traffic jam?

It moves to number three. Now number three is the jam.

We'll build another flyover.

At every point at any process, there is always one

bottleneck that determines the speed at which you can go.

The trick is for you to find that bottleneck and tune it so

that the bottleneck is where you want it to be.

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So, these are the principles behind how we're going to

apply Agile.

Then there was Mr. Little, and this is Little's Law. So,

what he says here is that if you want to increase the cycle

time...cycle time is the time something takes to go from

here to here.

The request comes in, the request is fulfilled. How long

did that take? That is known as cycle time.

If you want to increase the cycle time, make it go faster,

you have to reduce the work in progress. That doesn't

sound right. It sounds like if you do more, you will get

more done.

Uh-uh. It doesn't mean that. You have to manage the

on-ramp. So, sometimes in big highways, you'll see the

side roads when they join, they'll have traffic lights,

red, green, red, green, and they let one car on at a time.

If you put too much in there, you will block it. So, you

have to remove constraints and don't overburden. So, this

picture says it all.

If you do too much in the pipe and jam it hundred percent

utilization, everybody working hundred percent, one more

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project, one more project, you will get less done in the

same given time.

So, in three months, you will do three balls, whereas here,

same number of balls, same size of the pipe, in three

months, you'll do six. And it almost doesn't sound right.

It's like an oxymoron.

Your brain doesn't comprehend it. So, try it when you're

writing your birthday cards and you're inviting people for

your birthdays.

So, you write the card, all the cards, ten cards. Then you

write all the envelopes. Then you put the stamp and you

time it. Then you do it another way. You write the card,

write the envelope, put the stamp, write the card, write

the envelope, put the stamp and you time it.

The second way will always be about 30 percent faster than

the first. Seems strange, isn't it? How is that possible?

That's because of a thing called switching loss. So, as

you change your focus, you lose productivity. So, we are

not good multi-taskers. It's just a myth. You want to do

one thing at a time and finish it.

And if you stay focused on this, then you get more done in

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a given period of time. So, understanding this principle

is very important.

So, I'm going to skip that. So, over here, you've got the

mission and vision. Every company has that at the high

level. Then they have the goals and the strategic

initiatives. That's your strategy.

Now, this flows down into the funnel into your programs,

and then they're prioritized and they're ready to start

work. That is called doing the right work.

And down below, at the bottom of this, is called doing the

work right. So, the work comes through, and then the teams

pull the work. If you push the work on to them, that's

like that girl drinking from the fire hose. It's just...so

you have to allow teams to pull.

This optimum amount of how much this team can do is called

the work in progress limit, the WIP limit. So, this is the

job of Agile, of management, of leadership, to manage the

funnel.

Align the strategy with the work, manage the funnel,

visualize it. I showed you the wall at the beginning so

you can see the work flowing through until the point that

delivery starts.

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Now, how does it apply to operations? I'll show you all

later. And over morning coffee, I had three requests

already. Yeah, but my team is distributed and we're

virtual, so how do we do it?

How many of you all have that question in your mind? Yeah,

almost everyone. It's difficult. But we're going to talk

about that.

So, there are basically three practices here. So, the

strategy practice. The discover and the program practice

is the same, so I'll show you that, and the operational

practice.

So, you've got three patterns that we're going to learn and

the practices of how to do that Agile. How to do that

Agile. Managing the funnel. How do your work Agile,

whether it is program work or operational work.

That's it. Everything Agile, from the top down. So, we're

going to learn how to take small batch sizes. These are

the characteristics. Small pieces of work. You don't want

programs that are a team of 50 and 60 and doing...you have

to break it down because then you can be more flexible with

it.

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You want a single prioritized backlog. If you've got five

or ten customers coming in, you want the backlog

prioritized using the customers or using the product owner

or using somebody that the teams don't have to worry about

the prioritization. It has been prioritized.

You want to allow the teams to pull the work so it's not a

manager or somebody just pushing the work on there. Do

more, do more, do more.

You will do less. So, we're not talking about working

harder here. We're talking about working smarter. And by

working smarter, you actually do more. Sounds strange.

And you're having fun while doing it. How about that?

It cannot get better. And I'll tell you, once you start

working Agile, you will never go back. Never go back to

any other way.

So, small, stable, cross-functional teams. You want the

teams to be smaller. You want them to be stable, to know

each other and to start working.

And cross-functional. So, there's the product owner, the

customers, the people who are delivering it, the testers.

But also the governance people. All these people who

manage and audit your process, they should be there too.

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So, we're going to show you how you get them involved. And

lastly, loosely coupled, tightly aligned. You want the

teams to have some flexibility to move but all going in the

same direction.

So, it's very important to try and focus your teams, rather

than cutting your teams this way. Team 1, only analysts.

Team 2, only designers. Team 3, only...you want to make

the teams this way so that everyone, including compliance,

is in the team. So, they're called cross-functional teams.

How do we do that? We'll talk about that, too.

Now let's talk about leaders and managing. So, how many in

the room here are managers in some form? Doesn't matter

which level, where, what, everything. Some level or the

other. Okay, so quite a few.

So, what do they do? While these teams are working Agile
and doing standup, what do the leaders do? So let's look

at what the leaders do.

So, organizing a group of people to achieve a common goal

is the best definition I've seen of leadership. It's

simple and it's powerful. So, what's the first thing you

have to do in this?

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Define the common goal. Where are you going? So in that

part, you must have a clear strategy and some say yeah, of

course we have a strategy. But is it clear? Is it clear?

Does everybody see it exactly the same way? This is a

tricky picture, isn't it? You go ooh, ooh, what is that?

Which side is the car going? That's how our strategy is

sometimes. It's there but I don't know where.

So, the first thing you have to do is use these Agile

techniques and the Agile practices that we're going to show

you. We've got a design pattern...a pattern for doing

strategy. It's called a strategy pattern.

So, leaders can use the strategy pattern to actually come

up with a mission, the vision, the goals, the blockers, you

see. You are here, but you want to go there. And in

between, there's all these road blocks.

How do you get there? You have to make a strategy. I go

this way or I go this way or I go underneath. Maybe I go

over it. This is choice. Strategy is about choice.

And to make the best choice, you have to work

collaboratively. You have to get the wisdom of the group

together. So, there's a pattern, an Agile pattern to do

this.

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And then cascaded down. Now, the next thing, once you've

got that, as a team, what you need to do is you need to

structure your teams. A leader has to structure the teams

based on those Agile principles. So, cross-functional

teams, small teams, empowered.

So, I had, when I did the presentation in Bangalore, it was

quite interesting. There was a lady who put up a hand and

said yes, I know, but I'm a team of ten. I've got two

people in Bangalore, one in Calcutta, two in China, one in

New York, one in L.A. and that's the team.

Totally distributed. Does that make sense? Why was it set

up that way? Well, I don't know. That's why they told us,

you have this person in Calcutta. That's it.

So, this structuring the teams, making sure the right

resources are in the right place at the right time is very

much a leadership job. You get this right, 80 percent of

your problem is solved.

Then you have to remove bottlenecks and eliminate waste.

Now, while the teams are working, the leaders are on the

job. They're not in the job. So, what they're doing is

actually they're visualizing the work.

Remember, I told you all these people working. The leaders

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are helping to visualize so everyone, including the team,

can see the picture, the value stream map of how work is

flowing.

What are the measures? Where are the bottlenecks? How do

you eliminate waste? Why are you doing that process? Does

it make any sense to do that?

And because teams work in silos, you have different

departments, the process flows like this. But the teams

are structured like this. Is that right? Yeah?

So, the leaders have to get together to optimize the

process because the teams can't. The teams are stuck in

the silo. They can optimize their bit, but they can't

optimize across the silo. So, that's where the leaders get

together and they're working, and we'll show you.

So, that is a pattern called the operations pattern that

the leaders can learn on how to do this. And Genbutsu is

go see the real thing. In the old days, we used to call

this management by walking around. You may have recognized

that.

So, it was thought in the eighties. What does it mean? It

means don't rely on your person, your subordinate to give

you all the information. Just go and see. Walk. Visit

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the teams. See the walls.

And that's why we make it visual. See the bulls eye. Oh,

what is that issue there? Because what happens over time,

we sanitize the information. The team has a problem, let's

just change that word. Then they change this word. So,

you get what is called watermelon projects.

It's very green on the outside and it's red inside. So, it

goes...everything is very nice and green because it's been

sanitized.

So, you have to walk and go see the real thing. The other

thing that the leaders have to do is that. They have to

govern for greatness. Now, this is the most important job.

If you allow too much of work to hit the team, because

everybody...is demand more than supply here? Demand for

work.

Yeah, of course. If you don't throttle the funnel, your

teams will drown. They say yeah, we're busy. Yeah, we're

busy. They're not going to stop working. They'll keep

working, but the productivity will go like this.

And you won't even see it. So, very important that the

managers throttle the funnel and do it visually. And then,

of course, they also have to provide steerage and talk to

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HR people, management. They have to look at governing the

work and providing guidance.

And the last one that leaders have to do is drive

innovation. Now, this is not about taking the pharaoh's

whip, we shall innovate. Innovate! No. That won't work.

So, to innovate, you have to create an environment where

people learn. That's all. Create an exciting work

environment, empower the teams. Sharing, learning,

encouraging people to go outside, learn from other things,

rewarding them when they do that. And the magic will

happen automatically.

So, you put them all together, inspire purpose. This is

the vision, mission, goal, setting that and cascading it

down all the way.

Then set up for success. Right team structures, right

people. Managing the funnel, govern for greatness, and

then finally driving innovation.

So, five things that leaders have to do using the Agile

values and principles. So, it's not just for teams. Agile

is very much for leaders. And if they don't change the way

they work, and this is...fortunately, this is one of the

few companies, maybe the only one where right from the CEO

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down, from Ginni down, they're committed to working Agile.

That is just enormous. You're ever so lucky to be in a

company to have top-down commitment to making this change.

Do you think this is easy to do, to throttle the funnel,

to change the processes? Is that easy? No, this is not

easy stuff. But it's going to be done.

And the leaders are going to do it, because they're

empowered to do it. Because it makes common sense.

Everyone knows what has to be done. Now it's about getting

it done.

[END OF SEGMENT]

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