This post shows the A3 technique and how it is an effective management tool.

The contents of this post are my summary of THE BOOK on this subject: Managing to Learn: Using the A3 Management Process to solve problems, gain agreement, mentor and lead – by John Shook. Available via Lean Enterprise Institute and Ocapt (in Canada).

Why A3?

Over the last year, I have used A3 to solve serious problems myself as well as with clients that I am coaching. I am blown away by how effective it is. I think of it as the howitzer (big gun) of problem solving and use it for complex problems.

Root cause analysis tools are very helpful, however, do not provided a context for resolving problems. A3 is a complete process. If you are not familiar with root cause analysis, see my related blog post.

What is an A3 anyway?

As shown in the middle of the diagram below, A3 is the name for a large sheet of paper (17″ x 11″). With the A3 technique, it is filled up with useful information. Space is intentionally limited to make sure only the most relevant information is shared. At Toyota, the A3 report is used to drive company decisions from shop floor to senior management.

Let’s walk through the sections:

1. Problem – What is the problem that is causing problems? Also, give attention to the title as the summary.
2. Background – How did you decide to work on this problem? What is business problem?
3. Current Conditions – Describe the current conditions with visuals and numerical data that you have analyzed.
4. Goals/Targets – What is the desired target state? This is the place to use SMART goals.
5. Root Cause Analysis – What are the underlying causes? Use ask why five times and fishbone diagram.
6. Countermeasures – How will you reach goal state? What activities can be identified that will address root causes and how were the best ones selected?
7. Plan – What is the plan for getting there? When will the countermeasures be implemented?
8. Followup – What were the results of deploying the countermeasures? Now that there is new information, it is time to revisit the A3.

You may have noticed that this is an elaborated version of PDCA – Plan Do Check Act. This is the heartbeat of a learning organization.

It takes time and effort to complete an A3. Weeks not days. Use when appropriate.

Tips: Experts strongly recommend using real paper. Yes, you will need to re-write; editing is a good thing. A wiki is great for details, but not for thinking and summarizing.

A3 to gain agreement, mentor and lead

In this section, I want to share how the A3 technique is a powerful management tool.  Consider the following diagram:

A3 is about people working together to solve problems. The Japanese word Nemawashi is about going to the roots to reach consensus and alignment in a deep way. An A3 changes the way we work and communicate with each other. When meetings start by reviewing the parts of the A3 that have been completed, there is great focus on the remaining work. I have also seen new project participants brought up to speed very rapidly.

At Toyota, the A3 is used to do work. It is used to solve problems, make (set-based) decisions and execute plans.

Lean is famous for using pull to deliver the right part at the right time at the right place. With A3, the person driving the change effort can pull authority by working with other people and demonstrating leadership. It is chilling to see this work. I was coaching a junior analyst to put together an A3 on a production problem. When the issue escalated, the VP recognized the analyst as the expert and asked him to tell people what to do to fix the problem even though he had no formal or informal leadership role.

Finally, the A3 can be used to build a learning organization. One key aspect is to celebrate mistakes. This is also common with building an innovation culture through Improv or theatre techniques. At Toyota, it is used to develop people by helping them think for themselves to solve problems. A manager’s job is to build people and mentoring people on the A3 is a great way to do it. (Like a self-organizing team, but on an individual scale.)

I wish I had a real A3 to share, but the better ones I have are client confidential.

If you want to learn more, I urge you to buy the book or check out webinar on Managing to Learn.

Cross-training charts (also skill training charts) are a standard part of the Lean toolkit. They are used to identify limited skill sets that can lead to bottlenecks and work stoppage.  See manufacturing example.

In Scrum (and some Agile), we have the notion of cross-functional teams and place value on generalists who can go where the work is. Cross-training charts can help get you there.

Technology and Domain skills

When helping teams assess themselves, I separate technology skills (who knows a library or tool) from domain skills (who know the frazzit module). Once teams do this, the lightbulb goes off – “Oh that’s why it takes so long when we need to do work on the frazzit – only Bill knows it and he is busy with other stuff”.

On the left is a legend I have used with a couple of wiki-enabled clients to track the matrix. (Excel works too and has a nice colouring feature under conditional rules but is less visible.

Consider the example cross-training matrix below for the developers. (QA, BA important too, but they have different technologies/skills). Across the top we have the names of the developers. As you can see, on the front end, they have an OK idea how to use SpringMVC and JSTL; there are no experts, though, so it may not be clear what their frame of reference is. Sometimes people don’t know what they don’t know. Very limited experience with UXD (User eXperience Design) which may be an area for attention depending on usability goals for the product.

What about the domain matrix? Well, it looks the same but with areas of the application outlined at an appropriate level of detail. You can put the whole team (not just dev) on this one.

Lottery/Truck Factor – Are you managing your risks?

Truck factor is about how many people on your team can be hit by a truck before you can no longer effectively support a piece of software.

The cross-training chart can be used to assess how well management is managing risk. Usually what I see is “not at all” and the result shows in terms of deteriorating code quality due to departures and growth.

How to spread knowledge?

There are lots of ways. My favourite is pairing. I also like to impose a limit on publicly declared learning goals – just pick one thing to learn at a time to provide focus.

My suggestion: give your team time to share knowledge and let them decide h0w they want to do it.

Footnotes

• I keep talking to people about this so I thought I had better post on it. Most recent discussion was at a session at Agile Coach Camp in Waterloo.
• See complementary practice of Timeline and Marketplace for understanding other team members.

Here is a very short (2 min)video where Selena Delesie and I reported back on a session at Agile Coach Camp Canada. This is what a group of 10+ of us came up with.

I’ll link to the writeup when it is posted.

Thanks to everyone who was there – it was a fun, intense and valuable session for me.

Lyssa Adkins ran a very practical session at DeepAgile that shared several tools for team formation or for tuning up existing teams. She often uses these right at the project start since team members may know very little about one another – even if they have been working together for years. Here is a run-through of three of the exercises.

Constellation – Understanding each other through motion

I love this exercise. It provides the team members as well as the coach important information about everyone on the team. It is called constellation since everyone arranges themselves around an object on the floor (in our case a roll of tape) depending how they feel about a statement such as “I like getting results”.  People align their bodies with the statement: standing beside the object signifies strong agreement while standing far away to signifies strong disagreement. It is very powerful since people are engaging their whole bodies. To learn more, there is a full write-up on Lyssa’s blog.

Timeline – sharing our pasts

In timeline, each participant draws a timeline of their life with peaks, valleys and major life events. In turn, each person describes their timeline to the team. Team members listen and note skills or talents (on sticky notes) that stand out. These are then posted at the bottom of the timeline and reviewed as a team. This approach is about figuring out who the person is and what special perspectives they bring to move the project forward. When we did this, it helped the demo subject feel more positive about their talents. Nice.

Marketplace – sharing our talents

In marketplace we pretend we are a vendor in an open-air market place and decide what wares we have to sell. What are our special skills and talents that pertain to this project? We even get to create a banner to attract people. Under the table are things that are true for us, but may not directly relate to the project. The debrief is the same as timeline. Usually a coach will use one or the other (in the training session half of us did marketplace and half did timeline).

Below is my marketplace as an Agile coach.

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

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).

Sadly, I did not do as good a  job capturing the the LSSC10 keynote sessions as I would have liked, but maybe I captured something you missed…

Don Reinersten really turned me off at the start of his session (The Easy Road to FLOW Goes through a Town named LEAN) which started with what felt like Kanban bashing 101. Many of his comments seemed aimed at a literal implementation of a production-like Kanban system in software – something I have not seen in practice. Despite this misdirection, there were some very strong points that I would like to highlight. See video/slides on InfoQ.

Elimination of Variability is Toxic. Great Product Development requires creativity, taking risks and encouraging failure. No errors means no learning. This reminds me of Jared Spool’s Keynote on building great products and aligns with efforts such as Enough Kanban! Use XP for Single-piece flow.

Don also introduced the Internet (TCP/IP stack) as a very different model for work execution. Again, I was a little disappointed since a lot of teams are already  implementing similar elements. e.g. Different quality of service through urgent tracks in Kanban boards. A number of people said the talk was a quick synopsis of his new book: The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development and contains ideas that will shape lean software for the next five years. These are smart people so I am going to have to get the book.

Risk, Lean Development and Profit

The second keynote was by Bob Charette.  I love the quote he shared with us about assumptions and risk:

“It’s not what you know that can hurt you; it’s what you know that ain’t so” – Will Rogers

I am reminded of the damage assumptions can bring every time I train people with my Scrum-friendly version of the XPGame. Bob points out that assumptions are risks we have accepted.

Profit = Exchange of Risk. There are three types of risk:

1. Information
2. Control
3. Time

We need to choose between these to maximize profit

Related Posts

Check out blog post: Above All, Stay Open to New Ideas, Humble to the Current Limits of Our Knowledge, and Be Ready to Innovate, Absorbing Ideas from Other Bodies of Knowledge

Mary Poppendieck gave her usual well-researched and convincing tour-de-force presenation at LSSC10 on several approaches to organizational change with a talk titled “What’s wrong with targets?”

The purpose of the whole talk is to trash Management by Objectives. See my related blog noting the damaging effects: SMART goals may not be that smart. As an alternative, Mary shares 4 effective models for organizational change.

I have heard a lot recently about the book Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. It uses the metaphor of the Rider and the Elephant. I like it a lot since it lines up well with my NLP tools and understanding of the unconscious mind. Anyway the change model is very clear:

1. Direct the rider – provide clear direction and objectives.
2. Motivate the Elephant – appeal to emotions to provide energy for change.
3. Shape the path – create a supportive environment that will keep things on track.

Toyota Kata: Managing People for Improvement, Adaptiveness and Superior Results by Mike Rother is a second approach for driving change. Check out the above description in the mind map. It reminds me of the A3 technique that I have been using for the last year with great success. I’ll blog on my experiments later.

Strategy and Deming’s systems analysis + PDCA + People were the two final models to round out organizational change approaches that involve people rather than measure them. Caveat: SMART is OK for projects; not people.

Clinton Keith gave an insightful session around designing and configuration a Kanban system for leveled video game production.

Clinton described Scrum and Kanban coexisting peacefully. They used cross-functional Scrum teams to drive collaborative creative work at the outset of the project where team members would swarm stories. Aside from creating the game concept and playability, one of the outputs was to design and implement a Kanban system for producing game levels.

Game level construction requires different highly-specialized skillsets cannot help each other out – the audio engineer doesn’t know anything about graphic design. So Kanban is perfect. A system with fixed takt time was constructed and staffed appropriately to have a steady creation of game levels. Even the levels were broken up into zones to reduce batch size and improve flow.

Some team members continued to run 2 week sprints on solving challenging problems that came up during level construction and playability. For this environment it seems like Scrum and Kanban are both appropriate. This is a huge take-away for me – a better understanding of where Scrum makes sense and where Kanban makes sense.

Another interesting story was to Time Box Art to balance customer value with cost/time when developing artwork (see graph below). Artwork can go on very a very long time and it is difficult to define done. One solution to this is to create a timebox to focus work at the point of diminishing returns. Another benefit is that a timebox can drive creative energy. The example given was that for a high-speed car chase through Paris, you don’t need high-resolution buildings.

If you are interested in learning more, his book Agile Video Game Production is coming out May 2010. Video and slides of the session is on InfoQ.

Harrison Owen gave a very insightful keynote speech at Scrum Gathering on OpenSpace and how we often think about management the wrong way.

(Part 2 of 5 blogs on the Scrum Gathering in Orlando)

He started with an explanation of how he has come to think about systems of people over his 75 years on the planet. There are two rules or heresies:

1. All systems are Open
2. All systems are self-organizing (at some level)

Someone asked the question of how to manage a company? Harrison replied that it’s the same as Open Space:

1. Sit in a circle
2. Use a bulletin board for what to talk about
3. Market place for agreeing when and where to talk

What isn’t in the mindmap is how he invented this.  The story goes that he had a very successful conference with speakers and sessions, but he was told that the best part was the coffee breaks. So, when faced with the problem of organizing another conference with very little time, he decided to have one that was just filled with coffee breaks.  3 Martini’s later and open space was born.

How effective is Open Space? Harrison has the view that it can create astounding results by helping people reach agreement and resolve conflicts. He has seen this consistently time after time when running Open Space.

Mike Bria blogged about the Open Space the next day.

I first read Fearless Change: Patterns for Introducing New Ideas by Mary Lynn Manns and Linda Rising when it first came out many years ago as part of Scrum Toronto book reading club. It has been an important source of ideas that have allowed me to successfully adopt Agile at many companies. This is an essential part of any change agent’s toolkit.

Mihai Iancu has a wonderful mindmap to show the patterns in a visual an approachable manner. Thanks to Mihai for allowing me to share this with you.

Here are some of my favourite patterns:

• Do food – Create a relaxed setting and leverage cultural bonding that happens when people eat together
• Tailor made – Find the right solution for the people you are working with; every situation is unique
• Step by step – Take things one step at a time and build on successes

Please comment on yours.