Tag Archives: Standard Work

Posted on

Standard Work

Standard Work is one of the most powerful but least used Lean tools. By documenting the current practices, it forms the baseline for continuous improvement. Let’s review some of the benefits quickly.

Benefits of Standard Work

  • Standardizes the work across different teams, different people; ensuring consistency across the organization; making outcomes predictable and measurable.
  • Sets clear expectations, branding as to what’s ‘given’ when the team/individual says a certain activity is ‘Done’.
  • Ensure that certain routine, mundane tasks get done (and don’t get overlooked due to them being ‘boring’.)
  • A common ‘platform’ is set up, a baseline against which the effectiveness of the individuals and/or team can be measured; ensuring a certain level of quality.
  • It’s the DNA of continuous improvement (CI). It makes CI routine and ingrained in the very existence of the organization.
  • Standard Work is a ‘snapshot‘, a picture of the best way to do things at this moment in time, with an eye on continuous improvement.

Without standard work, there is no kaizen (CI)
– Taichii Ohno

In essence, Standard Work helps you in minimizing waste and maximizing value delivery.

Would it help to have your standard work documented? Can it help you, your team, your organization improve the productivity and deliver more VALUE for your customer?

Go ahead and document your Standard of Work.

What’s Better yet…

Get these Standard Work templates for FREE, and put your team on the “hyper Productivity” lane!

Standardized work is a collection and implementation of the best practices known to that point.

Scrum Master

Standard work

 

 

Product Owner

Standard work

 

Scrum Team

Standard work

 

Get them All

Standard work

 

Standard Work is a ‘snapshot’, a picture of the best way to do things at this moment in time, with an eye towards Continuous Improvement.
Tweet This

Interested in more …

Interested in more than just the Standard Work? How about Checklists, template emails, and worksheets to help your Scrum team?
playbook for scrum teams
Why reinvent? Leverage these Pearls of Agile Wisdom! Grab this Playbook now, for a tiny price!

Get them Now!

Not convinced yet…

Listen to what Steph has to say below 🙂

Testimonial from an actual Customer

I purchased this playbook and find it very helpful.  I think the email templates came in handy when trying to wrangle folks from all over the company together.  They keep me organized and the email now provides more information with these structured templates.

The “Standard Work” for each role is great as well.  It provides helpful hints on role responsibility and helps with keeping me organized with all the artifacts related to a project.

Great work and thanks!

– Steph W

I am convinced! Give it to me Now!

And…

Don’t forget to Subscribe to our mailing list to get more Pearls of Agile Wisdom.


                                                            

                                                                     
Posted on

The Art of getting MORE done with LESS

Can Agilists use Check Lists? Can checklists help them perform at a much better level? To answer this question, we will have to visit the two bookends of User Stories. Please grab copies of your team’s Definition of Ready (DoR) and Definition of Done (DoD).

Two book of end User Stories

Two books of end User Stories: DoR, DoD

A user story should not be allowed to go onto a sprint backlog unless it meets all the items listed on DoR; in order for it to be marked as READY. On the other end, teams are supposed to mark a user story as DONE only when it meets all the criteria a laid out in the DoD. Aren’t these checklists? Can we expand them to other areas of doing Agile?

Why use the Checklists?

If NASA can use checklists to send satellites into the outer space. If surgeons can use the checklist to eliminate contamination in the surgery room, why can’t we, the Agilists, use the checklists to eliminate the worst, minimize the waste, and improve our productivity? As Atul Gawande describes in his book, The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right, the knowledge exists, but often times we fail to apply it correctly.

We need a different strategy for overcoming failure, one that builds on experience and takes advantage of the knowledge people have but somehow also makes up for our inevitable human inadequacies.
– Atul Gawande,  The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right

Listed below are some additional benefits of using Checklists.

  • Helps you analyze what you are doing, why you are doing and then eliminate unnecessary steps and optimize it by combining some of them.
  • Makes work results more predictable.
  • Helps you in making Repeatable, predictable process.
  • Helps in delivering consistent quality and results.

Outline path to Success

Checklists, in essence, can help you improve your performance. They outline the path to success, with minimal resistance, because they are infused with your experiences and learnings from the past.

As Edward Deming once said, “don’t look at the individual, look at the system.” You can start with a simple checklist, and infuse them with your experiences and learnings. Refine them as you use them by incorporating the lessons learned with each use.

checklists

make it-use it-refine it-agile checklists

You can create a checklist on pretty much anything! If I know that I’m going to be doing a specific activity more than once, I would create a checklist.

I follow a simple process to create them. Start with an outline of what tasks you would have to carry out to complete the activity. You don’t have to put in a lot of time and effort and come up with an elaborate checklist. Once you have the initial outline, just do ‘the thing’! And, as you do it, refine the list.

Yes, the initial list may not be complete. Yes, it may not be elaborate. But you have a checklist that you can improve on and make it better as you do it again and again. To ensure the ‘continuous improvement’, one of that last item that I almost always have is:
Is there any way I can improve this checklist?

Automate or Delegate

In his highly successful book The Four Hour Week, Tim Ferris suggests four simple steps to freedom:  Eliminate-Simplify-Automate-Delegate.

One of the side benefits of having checklists is that it helps you delegating the activity or individual tasks. It also helps you eliminate the unnecessary steps as you use them and optimize them. Once you have used a checklist to complete the activity couple of times, one of the three things could happen.

  • Automate:
    Find a way to automate the activity.
  • Delegate:
    If you cannot automate this process then find a way to delegate it to somebody who can follow your checklist.
  • Do It yourself:
    If you cannot delegate it and you are ‘forced’ to do it,  you should be able to finish it quickly and efficiently as you have optimized your checklist. This should allow you to finish the activity quickly, with a higher quality, minimizing, if not completely eliminating, the waste.

Enabling and Empowering

Checklists are enabling and empowering! They are ‘concentrated doses’ of experiences and learnings, acquired over multiple iterations. They help you in improving your Sprint Planning, the Backlog Refinement, Sprint Review, and many other events and activities.

Even the most expert among us can gain from searching out the patterns of mistakes and failures and putting a few checks in
– Atul Gawande,  The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right

Create one, use it, and you will realize how liberating they are! Let us know your experience in the comment below. And, don’t forget to share it with your peers and community.

Why reinvent the wheel? Get this booklet (containing various checklists) and get a jump start!

Add to Cart

Playbook for Scrum Teams – Get it Today!

Posted on

Scrum Master Standard Work

We talked about the Standard Work for Product Owner in my earlier post. Now, let’s look at the other important role in Scrum: The Scrum Master (SM).

Scrum Master wears many different hats while working with the Team. I like to say that Scrum Master has many faces. He is a Facilitator and ensures the Scrum framework is followed; as well as he is the Protector of the Team. He is a partner with Product Owner and other players in the organization, as well as he is the ‘Terminator’, eliminating Impediments so that team can continue making progress. I can go on and on.. but let’s keep that for a separate post.

Standard Work: Scrum Master
Let’s start identifying the activities that the Scrum Master is carrying out to ensure the team continues to create and deliver Value for customers. Here is my recommended list of activities, categorized into Daily, Weekly, by Sprint, by Release, and so on. I also have listed activities that Scrum Master has to do to ensure a successful launch of a new Scrum Team.

Standing up a new Team

  • Ensure the team has gone through Agile training
  • Working with the team, collectively, come up with a ‘Scrum Calendar’ to ensure that all the events are discussed, time and locations are agreed upon. Use this activity ‘Scrum Calendar’ to facilitate this discussion.
  • Ensure the team has a good understanding of the roles. Use this activity ‘Start with Y’ to bring everyone on the same page and have a common understanding, expectation about each role.
  • Ensure that PO has shared and discussed the Vision and Roadmap with the team
  • Use ‘Agile Bingo’ to Ensure that the team has worked on and collectively agreed upon: [Download Agile Bingo here http://bit.ly/agileBingo
    • Working Agreements
    • Office Hours
    • Definition of READY
    • Definition of DONE (for User Story, for Release)
    • Dependencies and Risks has been discussed and identified/acknowledged
    • Make it Fun! Ask the team to create their own identity; come up with a name that reflects their collective identity and purpose
  • Ensure all the events have been scheduled and show up on appropriate stakeholders’ calendar. Send out the invites for next two to three months
  • Get more details on Agile Bingo and other activities mentioned here at http://bit.ly/improveScrum

Improve your scrum ceremonies

Daily

  • Attend and facilitate the daily Scrum event.
  • Rigorously ensure the rules of Scrum are followed.
  • Provide updates on impediments and dependencies reported by the team.
  • Update and post the task burndown and story completion charts.
  • Update the Scrum board and other information radiators to make work and progress visible
  • Be the ‘Sherlock Holmes’: Look for unidentified impediments and work towards removing them, even before they have a chance to distract the team
  • Work to remove the impediments identified by the team and escalate them to stakeholders as required.
  • Represent the team to outside parties.
  • Protect the team from distractions.

Each Sprint

Information Radiator

Information Radiator

  • Ensure that the team is ready for next sprint
    • The User Stories have been identified and are READY
    • The Dependencies have been identified and ‘separated’ from User Stories slotted for the sprint
  • Facilitate sprint planning
  • Facilitate Daily Scrum, and ensure that it finishes within the allotted 15 minutes (use the Productivity Hacks we discussed earlier such as Parking Lot, Yellow Card, After Party, ..)
  • Ensure that team is adhering to their Working Agreements as well as the Definition of Ready and Definition of Done
  • Ensure that the team follows their WIP limits. Challenge team to finish the work, before starting new work (user stories)
  • Ensure that various tracking charts are updated and posted in the area where they are visible.
  • Ensure the Team conducts ‘Backlog Refinement (Grooming) event while in the sprint, focused on getting stories READY for the future sprints. The team should have a pipeline of READY stories that will keep them busy for at least n+2 sprints.
  • Own the impediments, track progress on resolving them, and provide regular updates to the Team on each one of them. Ensure that team has worked around to continue making progress until the impediment is resolved.  
  • During the Sprint, ensure that Story Burn up chart and Task burndown charts are updated daily
  • Pay attention to the Story burn up chart, and work with team to avoid the Hockey Stick
  • At the end of the sprint update:
    • Release Burnup chart – This chart should show the “top line” scope, actual velocity for completed sprints, predicted velocity for future sprints (Trend line using 3 sprint average), and the planned release date. Identify the gaps (between the predicted points and the desired “top line” points) and start having conversations around it with Product Owner and the team.
    • Feature completion – This chart should show the progress toward all features as well as the priority/sequence order that features are to be built.  Highest priority features should be on the left side. Ensure that there is activity on the feature at Left.  
    • Identify and keep a running list of ‘Features at risk’. Lowest priority features are “at risk” if the predicted velocity doesn’t intersect the “top line” by the planned release date.
    • Continue to have a discussion around them with Product Owner.
    • Business value completion – Work with the Product Owner to produce the desired graphs (e.g. business value points per story point, story point burn-up, the breakdown of business stories vs. enabling stories, etc.).
    • Update the Team velocity chart and Say: Do ratio based on the completed sprint.
  • Facilitate Sprint Demo (Showcase) and Sprint Retrospective events.
  • While team is focused on the current sprint, spend some time and energy on getting things lined up for and ready for next sprint
    • Update Team Calendar, incorporating vacation times and holidays. This will help in predicting team’s capacity for the upcoming sprint.
    • ensure that various events are planned, scheduled and on the calendar. Various events such as Sprint Planning, Sprint Review, Backlog refinement, Sprint Retrospective.  
    • Work with Product Owner to ensure backlog items are identified and READY for next sprint
  • Communicate sprint/release progress to stakeholders
  • Communicate Impediments to stakeholders

Each Release

  • Facilitate Agile Planning  / Release Planning
  • Collaborate with Product Owner to ensure that:
    • Backlog Items are identified and prioritized for the Release cycle
    • Highest priority backlog items have gone through ‘Backlog Refinement (Grooming)’ activity and are READY
    • Dependencies have been identified

Would it help to have your standard work documented? Can it help you – the Scrum Master, your team improve the productivity and deliver more VALUE for your customer?

Go ahead and document your Standard of Work. Start with this list, update it, refine it, and put your team on the “hyper Productivity” lane!

Standard work

Get your FREE copy of Standard Work Today! 

In essence, Standard Work helps you in minimizing waste and maximizing value delivery
Click here to Download your FREE copy

Posted on

#makeTheShift: Start Creating VALUE

#makeTheShift – Finishing Work and Start Creating Value

#makeTheShift

Stop starting too much work, Start creating VALUE

Too often we have too many things ‘in flight‘. With the computers in our palms and pockets, we are taking multi-tasking to the extreme! Start this new year with a promise to yourself: Promise not to start more work. Instead, shift the focus on finishing the work and creating Value.

It doesn’t matter how much work you have on your plate or how busy you are. What matters is how much Value you are creating for your customers. Adopt a Work in Progress (WIP) limit for yourself and adhere to the limit.

You will be amazed as to how much MORE you will accomplish in the new year with this formula!

{Adopt + Adhere } to WIP limit = Amazing Accomplishments! #makeTheShift pic.twitter.com/sWuSsK1eKL Share on X

Posted on

Check List: Importance of Product Owner and Standard Work

Product Owner (PO) role is a very important role in Agile. She often wears many hats! She is working with Stakeholders on creating and maintaining the Value Backlog and identifying the right priorities. Lady in Pink - the Product Owner She is also working with the Development Team on creating Work Backlog that creates the Value that is being sought. She is essentially working as a bridge between Stakeholders and the Team, between Value Backlog and the Work Backlog. And she is acting as a bridge between the Business and the IT.

The Product Owner also sets the direction of the Initiative (or Project, if you want to call it that). She sets the direction by identifying the priorities; and she is one of the big factors, if not the only factor, that has huge influence on success or failure of the initiative.

Many faces of Product Owner

Many faces of Product Owner

Benefits of Standard Work
Product Owner role being such a critical role in the success of your initiative, would it help to document the work she has to do? Does it add value to having documented this Standard Work?

Standardized work is one of the most powerful but least used Lean tools. By documenting the current practices, standardized work forms the baseline for continuous improvement.

Let’s review some of the benefits quickly:

  • Creating standard / Standardizes the work across different teams, different people; ensuring consistency across the organization
  • Set expectations, certain level of expectations, branding as to what’s ‘given’ when the team/individual says a certain task is done
  • Sets up a common platform against which the effectiveness of the individuals can be measured
  • Ensure certain level of quality
  • Ensure that certain routine, mundane tasks get done (and don’t get overlooked due to them being ‘boring’)

Standard Work: Product Owner
Let’s start identifying the activities for the Product Owner now that we are clear on the importance of the role and the benefits of Standard Work. We can start listing out the Daily and Weekly activities, as well as the activities that need to happen when a specific event is happening, for example, Release Planning.

Daily

  • Attend the Daily Scrum meeting
  • Did I answer (if any) questions raised by the Team members, within a few hours?
  • Did I resolve / remove / find work around for business impediments?
  • Do I need to provide Story-level CAT (client acceptance testing)?
  • Do I need to connect with business Subject Matter Experts / business community for any open or upcoming item?
  • Story Burnup
    • Did I update and review Story Burn up chart?
    • Is the team working on highest priority stories?

Weekly

  • Product Backlog planning / Backlog grooming with Business stakeholders
  • Break Epics to Features, assign Business Value
  • Break features to potential User Stories
  • Ensure that each Story has “Who, What, Why” identified
  • Ensure all Features and User Stories have Acceptance Criteria (AC)

For Each Sprint

  • Review charts
    • Release Burn up / story completion
      Examine the “top line” scope, the current and projected velocity, and the anticipated date the velocity line intersects the “top line” scope. Make adjustments to scope or release date as necessary
    • Feature completion
      Is the team working on right things in the right sequence? Is effort being applied to future features that should be applied to near-term features?
    • Business value completion
      Examine the trend of business value per story point (RoI) being delivered. Can we sequence higher ROI features earlier in the release schedule? If only lower ROI features remain, can we end the project early? Can we remove high-cost / low return stories from features to improve the feature ROI?
    • Maintain Product Backlog
      • Re-sequence features
        Examine the planned features for each release and adjust as team velocity, capacity, ROI, risk, dependencies, etc. are better understood
      • Create/Update/Delete Epics, Features and User Stories
        As we get smarter, update the backlog with the current understanding of the epics/features/stories
      • Backlog Grooming with Team
        Work with the Team to add sizes to any epics/features/stories that don’t have a size assigned
        Ensure information dashboards are updated and visible (topline, velocity, release burnup)
        Assess risks and dependencies among epics/features/stories
    • Get Ready for next Sprint Planning meeting
      • Collect highest-priority stories that represent approximately 125% of the teams average sprint velocity.
      • Ensure user stories are detailed enough with validations for team commitment.
      • Work with the technical Product Owner (tPO) to identify and prioritize the highest-priority/predecessor enabling (technical) stories
      • Develop and communicate Sprint Goal(s)
    • Sprint Review
      Facilitate part of the review, explaining Business Scenario and Goals, and then hand-over to Team member to showcase/demo the functionality
    • Participate in the Sprint Retrospective with the Team
    • Sprint Planning
      discuss the sprint commitment with the team. Hold the team responsible for meeting that commitment.
    • Update Vision (if necessary)
    • Communicate sprint/release progress to stakeholders

For Each Release

  • Create/Update the Vision
  • Identify epics and features
  • Assign business value to epics and features
  • Group features into “minimal releasable feature sets”

Would it help to have your standard work documented? Can it help you, your team improve the productivity and deliver more VALUE for your customer?

Go ahead and document your Standard of Work. Start with this list, update it, refine it, and put your team on the “hyper Productivity” lane!

Standard work

 

Get your FREE copy of Standard Work Today! 

In essence, Standard Work helps you in minimizing waste and maximizing value delivery
Click here to Download your FREE copy