This post is about how I run a value stream mapping workshop as part of an Agile/Lean readiness assessment or as part of ongoing process improvements.

Value Stream Map’s are very useful for understanding how your current process works. My initial understanding came via Mary Poppendieck (books and training). Later I learned the details from the book Learning to See: Value Stream Mapping to Add Value and Eliminate MUDA by Mike Rother and John Shook; it’s all about manufacturing but the principles hold.

Workshop is ~10 people x 3 hours

For this meeting, I ask for a cross-functional group that can define the steps involved with going from concept to cash. This group may be in the 5 to 15 person range depending on the organization. Depending on how many people you have you may want to split them into multiple groups. Groups can do the same or different processes. My rule is to get to as small a group as you can and still have enough knowledge of the process.

With regard to time – 2 hours may be enough for a small company while a large bank may require the full 3 hours.

Slides used to Introduce Value Stream Mapping

Below are the slides I use to introduce the workshop. Mostly you’ll just see pictures that I use to introduce the concepts, so you gotta know this stuff well. In addition to value stream mapping, I talk about Muri, Mura, Muda and have them think about the 7 types of waste.

View more presentations from Michael Sahota.

Explain how to create a Map

Before starting the exercise, I run through creating a value stream map with them so they get a feel for how it works and agree on conventions.

As people indicate what the steps in the value stream map are, I write up each step and create the legend shown on the left. It doesn’t really matter what process you use – the point of this part is to give them a feel for identifying each of the parts. Go through a few steps until you can see they are getting the hang of it. Remember to write the time on value added and waste stickies (missing in legend).

Size matters. Queue size, that is. It is important to show how much WIP (work-in-process) there is at each step. People often know things like: we have a product roadmap with 200 features in it or 9 features waiting for development.

Some teams may not feel comfortable identifying any activities as waste. That’s OK. They may not be ready for that yet.

Mapping Exercise

It helps to pick a concrete project that is typical for the organization. Something like an average feature, typical client request or urgent defect fix. This helps people move away from a conceptual process to talk about what actually happens in real life.

It is a good idea to warn people that they may be surprised with how things actually work. Taiichi Ohno, one of the founders of Toyota Production System, joked that it is good to have a poor starting place so there are easy opportunities to show process improvement.

During the exercise, I float between the groups to answer questions and make sure things are on track. After about 20 minutes the teams are usually cooking and can proceed on their own.

Once everyone is finished, each team presents it’s value stream map to the large group. Sometimes there are minor corrections, but these are usually fine details that don’t change the big picture.

Example Value Stream Map

Below is an example (click for a large image) of a completed value stream map for funded development at a 50 person product company. In this particular case, the company noticed that 5 days of planned work actually took 15 days (with rework) plus another 10 days of waste due to communication overhead.

Special enhancements:

• Along the top we have communication waste – this is the extra time needed to manage a project in a dysfunctional process that spans 9 months.
• Below the main flow we have rework arrows. Each arrow indicates the % chance that the work item needs to return to an earlier step. As can be seen, there are multiple return trips after reaching production.

Debrief with management

At the start, I explain the overall activity and its purpose. Together with some of the original authors of the map, we walk through the steps. I stick to explaining the Value Stream Map concepts and let others explain the content. Managers are usually surprised at how long it takes to complete work.

It is especially important to clarify that we are talking about the Lean concept of system efficiency - defined as time working on product/elapsed time. This will be unrelated to other measures of efficiency at the company.

The usual follow-up on this workshop is one to specify the desired future state. Of course, all of this is a great candidate for using the A3 technique.

As a trainer, I have become increasingly convinced that games and simulations provide an excellent platform for learning concepts and new behaviours. I am playing and training with more and more games than ever before. It was getting hard for me to remember all the games and decide which one to use in a particular situation. (Can someone please create a public website where we can list games, rate them and tag them by the problems they solve?)

Where Games Play

Here are some of the games that I am currently use or want to use in training.

What’s with the grid?

• People – games about people learning individual skills or learning about individuals
• System - games about the team or organization
• Concepts - games primarily about teaching concepts or ideas
• “Experiencing our reality” - games the help us understand ourselves and our context

Links – People/Concepts

• Multi-tasking (10 min)
• Collaborative Origami – collaboration & communication (15 min)
• Yellow Brick Road: Fresh Insights through peer coaching (90 min)
• Pair Draw (30 min)
• 99 Test Balloons – acceptance testing (30 min)
• Go! – Your brain on Scrum (10 min)

Links – System/Concept

• The Biggest Bang for the Buck – backlog organization and prioritization – (60 min). Game I created with Gino Marckx will be released around Agile2010.
• The Backlog is in the Eye of the Beholder – organizing backlog from stakeholder view (40 min). Game I co-created at Deep Agile.
• Business Value Game – helps understand differing sources of value. (90 min)
• Marshmallow Challenge – understand benefits of incremental design (45 min)
• XPGame – Scrum variant – basics of iterative development and acceptance testing (180 min)
• Penny Game – Flow of value, process improvement (40 min?)
• Bottleneck Game – understanding process and applying theory of constraints (90 min)
• Name Game – Limit concurrent projects (10 min)
• Movers and shapers – team dynamics (10 min)

Links – System/Reality

• Ball Point Game – process improvement, teamwork – simpler than penny game (40 min)
• Value Stream Mapping – hmmm. not a game really
• Leadership Game – self-organization and leadership styles (180 min)

Links – People/Reality

• Constellations – Share team perspectives (30 min)
• Improv Games and Hypontizing hypnotist – Get better at collaboration and innovation (10 min to ?)
• MarketPlace – share skills with team members (30+ min)

Other thoughts

Please draw your own maps and share them!

Other games

I did not include games that have are designed to achieve and outcome such as  retrospectives, planning poker or Innovation Games® since the primary purpose is not training/teaching. These are important too.

Happy to be finally attend InnovationGames in Chicago, July 15/16.

Subtitle: How we created and played a brand new game all in one day.

On Day 2 of DeepAgile, Michael McCollough and Don McGreal got us started on with a game design workshop. From there we used open space to invent and play the game with other attendees. This blog shares what we learned about product backlogs and game design.

Getting started: A room with a view

The first job in open space was to create 3 consecutive session in the open space (one for each of: objectives, design and play – see photo). I announced that each open space session was independent and that people could attend just one or all – we would do a re-start at the beginning of each one. Working and collaborating with others – what a great way to use Open Space.

I scoped out an amazing room at NERD with a round table, ceiling-height whiteboard and a spectacular view. Perfect for inspiring a team and encouraging collaboration.

Learning Objectives: Keep it simple

We started with a long list of learning objectives at the end of Mike & Don’s workshop (see photo on left). We knew this was way too long and had it winnowed down to the three within the next hour (see photo on right). By the end of the day we had stripped it down even further to just the first objective: there are multiple ways to represent a backlog. KISS strikes again.

The Problem: Product Backlog Management has challenges

The starting place was to help product owners to organize and prioritize their backlog. We spent discussed the topic for a while to get on the same page. We figured out there are a whole bunch of steps involved in building and maintaining a backlog (See diagram below):

1. Identify Stakeholders
2. Identify work (Stories)
3. Estimate work (units, T-Shirt sizes); identify risks
4. Organize & Prioritize <– Focus of our game is on organizing
5. Communicate
6. Execution & tracking (Release burndown/up)
7. Re-prioritize

(We had a great diagram on the whiteboard but can’t find it. So I redrew it from memory and added some flourishes.)

The simple act of preparing brainstorming objectives for the game led to a better understanding for all of us on the full life cycle of a product backlog. The big picture allowed us to focus in on one part: organizing and prioritizing. Even this was too big! We split approaches and concepts into ones that were more about organizing and ones more about prioritizing. At this point we had three game concepts:

1. The missing stakeholder game – who are my stakeholders and why are the missing? (prioritization)
2. “Malfunction at the stakeholder junction” – AKA the dysfunctional stakeholder game. “I want this.” “No, I want this.” (prioritization)
3. The Backlog is in the eye of the beholder – all about organizing based different stakeholder perspectives. (organization)

We did a strawman vote and there was a clear consensus around moving forward with the last one – on organization of the backlog.

Working together on the game

It was fun. Really fun. I played the role of product champion and facilitator.

We started with the Pomodoro Technique to stay focussed and on track (yes, I even drew tomatoes on the whiteboard).  In the design session, we got into a state of flow and just kept going to meet our timebox.

We had to deliver a game since it was announced and on the open space board! As my thesis supervisor said – “Nothing concentrates the mind like a deadline.”

We did lot’s of brainstorming. Everyone was really good about coming up with ideas and letting go of ones that weren’t working out. One idea Greg Ott came up with was that of a garden (see photo on right). After a while this turned into the the farm metaphor we decided to use for the game. In retrospect, having a huge wall to keep ideas alive was invaluable.

Playing the Game

Playing the game was a lot of fun. You could feel the energy in the air (see photo) and the room was packed with designers, players, and observers. We got mostly very positive reviews.

You can find the game rules and feedback here: Backlog is in the Eye of the Beholder Game v0.7 This is our current version and it is supposed to be published with Deep Agile Open Space notes. Feel free to use and make your own.

Thanks to everyone who designed, played and supported us. Special thanks to core co-inventors: Warren Elliott, Greg Ott, Mary Gorman, Dan Zaino, Judy Rivais.

(This is part of a series on DeepAgile 2010 Games Weekend).

Michael McCollough and Don McGreal ran a valuable workshop on how to create your own game. Mike and Don have been creating simple, fun games for years and have noticed an approach they follow. See TastyCupcakes for lots of great games. As a caveat, they outline one particular style of game development – simple games. This is in contrast with complex games such as XPGame and Business Value Game (which are favourites of mine).

It all starts with a problem. What do you notice going wrong? What do you want your teams to understand better?

Next come your objectives. Pick one to three things that you want the game players to learn.  For extra points you may want to consider the Dreyfus model or Bloom’s taxonomy. These were suggested by attendees. Mike and Don keep it simple.

For a while you will need to spin and loop around as you search for an idea. As this happens, it is helpful to be constrained by some principles: stick to objectives and keep it simple (KISS). Inspiration will come from material (cards, balloons, etc), as well as games in other industries. Their mantra is “Beg, borrow, steal” and them make it your own. Learn from your participants – they will tell you a lot if you listen.

Finally, summon the courage to try it (or just do it). Start as soon as possible and iterate.

And remember, the whole point is the debrief. Give ‘em space and let ‘em discover.

(This is part of a series on DeepAgile 2010 Games Weekend).

Tobias Mayer led a fun and effective session (Agile Playground) at DeepAgile where we played games for building team and collaboration.

Movers and Shapers for team dynamics

I first played this game with Tobias at Agile 2009 and found it very powerful for teaching the impact of our behaviours on team dynamics. There are three rounds of simulation with different focus on how to interact with others. A detailed write-up of the game is on Tobias’s blog. Very handy for shifting thinking and focus to team behaviour.

Hypnotizing Hypnotist for pairing and collaboration

This is a very cool exercise to provide participants a sense of directing, following and collaborating. The group is formed into pairs. One person is the hypnotist and guides the other person with their hand. The hypnotizee’s job is to keep their face 1 foot from the hand of the hypnotizer (see Tobias hypnotizing on left). Debrief. Roles are reversed. Debrief.

Now it gets really fun. In the next stage, pairs hypnotize each other at the same time (see Lyssa and Tobias on right). This generates some laughs and interesting behaviours. I think we also ran it with one half of the room at a time so we could see what was happening. Remember to applaud.

Other stuff

There was other really cool stuff I am skipping over:

• Failure Bow – give people the freedom to take risks and recover from mistakes. This allows them to be available and productive rather than discouraged and disengaged.
• Pair storytelling – One person puts their hands behind their back and the other stands behind them and becomes their arms and hands. Once a story topic is established, the participants get to tell a story together with the hands leading.

(This is part of a series on DeepAgile 2010 Games Weekend).

At DeepAgile2010 this past weekend Mike McCollough led a session on Retrospective Games. We played a brand new game called Balloon Madness as an excuse to use several different retrospective formats. The game is in the conference booklet but is not yet posted on TastyCupcakes (check site for lot’s of fun Agile learning games).

What I learned about retrospectives

• Change the format on a regular basis. One attendee switches things up every retrospective.
• You can get great results by focussing on more of what works. This is inspired by appreciative inquiry. We are so used to looking at what the problem is, that looking at success can have a powerful shift.
• Another was to have each person write a personal commitment story card for something to do in the next iteration. They signed the card and someone else agreed to pair with them on it to provide support. The cards were posted beside the scrum board as a reminder. They were reviewed at the start of the following retrospective.
• Liked-Lacked-LongedFor was also suggested as a powerful way to connect with people’s deeper selves.

At DeepAgile in Boston, I played Yellow Brick Road: Fresh InsightsThrough Peer Coaching. The game was led by it’s inventor – Portia Tung who did a great job even with a very large group. If you haven’t played this, I suggest you make the time.

The game teaches people skills and resources to be effective coaches by practicing with peers. In the game, people take turns in one of 3 roles: Client (with a problem), Coach, and Observer.

Solve real problems

In the role of Client/Dorothy, you get to be yourself and bring up a problem that you want to work on. Over several iterations, new perspectives help you access the resources you already have. So a cool side-effect of this game is that you get fresh insights into whatever problem you want to work on.

Coach practices questions

The coach gets to practice listening and asking questions. We discovered that listening is something we need to practice since we are so used to jumping in with our expert opinion and solutions.

We also get practice with different types of questions (image by Portia Tung):

Observer provides depth

The observer roles gives you a chance to step back from the situation and really notice what is going on. Portia’s picture captures the simplicity of the task:

I was reminded that observation is a very helpful debugging technique. It is also less than easy – especially if you are like most of us and out of practice.

As the observer, I was able to get much deeper insights.

Go play this game

I am going to play this game again for myself and to help those I am coaching. The complete game instructions and presentation is available for download, so give it a go! I’m sure you will get value out of it. Even better, get Portia to come play with you so you can see some of the finer points.

(This is part of a series on DeepAgile 2010 Games Weekend).

The workshop was nothing short of amazing. Lee Devin took a group of us through a 5 hour deep-dive into the key skills used by actors to create and collaborate. What Lee calls Artful Making (see book for more). This is 100% applicable for Agile teams and this has immediately become part of my toolkit for fostering creativity and much more.

(Part 1 of 5 blogs on the Scrum Gathering in Orlando.)

I have attempted to capture the key aspects of the workshop in the mindmap below.

I walked out of the session with:

• Better ability to LISTEN. This had been on my self-improvement list for years.
• A deep sense of playfulness, curiousity and creativity. Lee helped me reconnect with skills I had when I was much younger.
• A strong connection with other participants.
• Understand my EDGE in a number of different situations. I can now explore and expand this in a positive way.

The exercise where we were creating together through movement is a great way to illustrate the benefits that can be found through pairing. Together we were able to create and invent things that I could not even conceive of in advance. It was really awesome to experience such effective collaboration without words.

Not only was this fun, it also is immensely practical. One note of caution when you do take it: you will start off slowly and build the foundations; the really cool stuff comes together later on.

Kudo’s to the Scrum Gathering organizers and many thanks to Lee for sharing his craft.

Special mention to those that made it special for me. In photo: Mark Strange, Siraj Sirajuddin, Lee Devin, (me), Juan Banda.  Also, Mats Janemalm (not in photo).

This is a list of some resources that are useful for getting started or growing your understanding of Agile.

The permanent page for this content on my website is here (so this is better place to link to since it will be updated).

Getting Started

Short articles for printing out and reading while you are on the train/subway.

• Agile Manifesto – Web page
• Agile Manifesto Principles – Web page
• Article on the history of Iterative developement
• Connections between Lean and Agile
• Short Scrum Guide – 13 page article/guide
• Scrum on a page – This you can put on a wall near you.

Intro to Scrum/Agile

• A Gentle Introduction to Agile – Presentation
• Agile Executive Briefing – Presentation
• Scrum in 10 minutes – Video (10 min)
• A Day in the Life of a Scrum Team – Video (6 min)
• Scrum Overview by Ken Schwaber – Video (60 min)
• Overview Powerpoint by Mike Cohn

Other Stuff you need to know to get your project started

• Getting started with User Stories – Book Excerpt
• Agile Estimation and Planning by Mike Cohn – Video (90 min)

Next Steps

• Check out some of the other resources below.
• Start reading some of the books.
• You have started a journey of learning – be patient and enjoy the trip.

Additional Learning Resources

• Scrum
  • Scrum Overview by Ken Schwaber – Website
  • Scrum Overview by Mike Cohn – Website
• XP
  • eXtreme Programming on C2 Wiki.
• User Stories
  • An Introduction to User Stories – Presentation
• Agile Estimation and Planning
  • Agile Estimation and Planning – Presentation
• Lean
  • Demo showing impact of bottlenecks
  • Lean for Business – Website
• Fun Stuff
  • Punchy video about how Agile can improve on Waterfall
• Agile Team Room
  • Agile Team Room – Photos
  • How does radical collocation help a team succeed?
• Pairing – team collaboration on tasks
  • Benefits of Pair Programming – C2 Wiki
  • Benefits Research Paper – Cockburn & Williams
  • How Pair Programming works - General concepts behind pairing and pair programming] (used in training)
  • Promiscuous Pairing - Some ideas on how rapid pairing can cultivate creativity. Also, How-to Article
• Agile Documentation Practices – Web Article
• Agile Testing – Video (60 min)
• Automated Testing
  • Automated Acceptance Testing – Presentation
• How Agile are you? (Agile Adoption)
  • Nokia Test – basic Agile test
  • Uncle Bob’s more extensive test
• Crystal Clear – low ceremony Agile process
  • 7 Properties of Crystal Clear – Article
  • 7 Properties Mind Map

Books to Read

Stage 1: Getting the basics in place

• Agile and Iterative Development: A Manager’s Guide
• Scrum I: Agile Software Development With Scrum – Basic Instructions
• Scrum II: Agile Project Management With Scrum – Stories about Scrum Usage
• User Stories Applied: For Agile Software Development
• Scrum and XP from the Trenches
• Agile Estimating and Planning

Deepening the practice

• Implementing Lean Software Development: From Concept to Cash
• Agile Software Development: The Cooperative Game
• The Software Project Manager’s Bridge to Agility
• Scrum III: Enterprise Scrum

eXtremeProgramming

• Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change
• Extreme Programming Installed
• Art of Agile Development

Technical Practices

• Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software
• Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code
• Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams

Lean

• Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit
• The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement
• Critical Chain
• Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation

Other good ones

• Crystal Clear: A Human-Powered Methodology for Small Teams
• Managing Agile Projects
• Fearless Change: Patterns for Introducing New Ideas

Games & Simulations

• XPGame – learn how Agile really works
• Leadership Game - learn different leadership styles and how you relate to them
• Bottleneck Game – learn how to improve your processes to eliminate bottlenecks
• Business Value Game – learn strategies and challenges with prioritizing work (product backlog)

As one of the organizers of Agile Tour Toronto I was thrilled with our success in attracting attendees – we sold out a month before the conference.  We decided that we would rather have a smaller conference with a good experience rather than a larger one that is more than we can manage in our first year running it.

To run the conference, we created a not-for-profit organization – Toronto Agile Software Development Community – with a mission of helping people and companies in the Toronto area with Agile techniques.  I was sad that we could not do more to help grow Agile in the community.

A few days ago, Yves Hanoulle, announced that he would like to do some training to help justify flying all the way to Toronto just for a one day conference.  I agreed to help and we are going to jointly run not one, but two workshops around the time of Agile Tour Toronto.  This will allow Yves to attend and present as well as provide an opportunity for those who can’t attend Agile Tour Toronto.  The works are:

Agile Kick Start – Monday, Oct. 19th

Agile Kick Start is for those new to agile as well as those interested in learning more about the technical pillar of Agile called XP.  We also talk about agile values, self-organizing teams, project vision, scaling agile, visual management, the famous XP game.

Agile Games Day – Wednesday, Oct. 21st

Agile Games Day provides hands-on experience with key Agile concepts through a day of learning by doing.  This includes defining business value, leadership/self-organization, and learning how to go faster using the Theory of Constraints.  If you haven’t tried before, this is a great way to learn and internalize concepts.

Why offer these sessions?

As organizers of Agile Tour Toronto, we noticed that there were a lot of people registering groups of people from their company to get basic training.  Hence the motivation for offering Agile Kick Start.

One of the things we talked about doing as part of Agile Tour Toronto was to run a games track since we know how important hands-on learning is.  Then we hit complications like finding more space, soliciting proposals and just didn’t have enough time.

Yves and I are really excited to be able to offer these workshops as a complement to Agile Tour Toronto and hope you can attend.