1. how to use
continuous improvement
kung-fu to pay down technical
debt
Kevin Behr
Chief Science Officer Assemblagepointe Inc.
Jesse Palmer
OSS Manager Hedgeserv
Date
Monday, September 30, 13

2. We looked at what was in our way
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hyper kinetic team
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lacked a structured system of work
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drive by management
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we sit between dev and ops
Monday, September 30, 13

3. so we started experimenting
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needed a rock paper scissor system of work
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to contain all commitments and requests
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wanted to see backlog and flow of work
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yeah we used a kanban (leankit that is)
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we started a light weight continuous improvement kata
Monday, September 30, 13

4. our improvement kata
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each morning we have a standup for 15 minutes
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Monday, September 30, 13
based on improvement kata used at toyota
go over answers to yesterdays 5Q

5. Target Condition
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Monday, September 30, 13
current condition

6. five questions
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what is the target condition?
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what is the current condition?
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what are a few obstacles to achieving the target condition?
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which obstacle will you experiment on today?
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What is your experiment?
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(when can we go and see the results of your expreiment?)
Monday, September 30, 13

7. what happened
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our first target condition was to get all of the work in the kanban and
make it visible.
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we did and we started noticing stuff like distractions and interuptions
(aka Newmans)
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we had no idea what we were doing so built simple project plans
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we had lots of issues started doing RCA on breaks
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built a feedback loop to dev to fix issues
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we built a list of techical debt projects we wanted to get done
Monday, September 30, 13

8. paying off murphy
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we set a new target condition of putting at least half of our effort
toward paying down tech debt as a team and still meeting priorities.
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we failed over and over
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obstacles
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better project plans - not overly planned just needed to est cadence
and prevent driveby’s
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we needed dev to fix some things
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we needed a mission to help us stay on track
Monday, September 30, 13

9. slog
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every day one standup -one obstacle - one experiment - one 5q
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like climbing one stair a day
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we hit our target condition once
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we hit it twice
Monday, September 30, 13

10. we now believed we could
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we realized what we really wanted (our Stake)
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we realized unplanned work was getting inour way
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the kanban painted an actual picture
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we decided to use the kanban to investigate.
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lots of experiments
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lots of failure
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we recruited help from dev and brough another team in
Monday, September 30, 13

11. it is growing
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we are adding another small team to start expreimenting
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they are downstream from the constraint (us)
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we will add another team to our merry band
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now dev and engineering can see our backlogs
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we can coordinate ready and doing for faster flow
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we are running the larger system at the speed of the constraint (us)
Monday, September 30, 13

12. throughput is up
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we are now all moving toward continuous delivery
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it will be our new target condition
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we will remove or dis-solve all of the obstacles
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we have a simple method to navigate uncertainty
(the scientific method)
Monday, September 30, 13

13. current condition
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our teams are building faster feedback loops
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we are planning missions together
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we can run “plays”
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we can absorb unexpected events without losing our memory aand
crashing commitments
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people wait on us less (lower cycle time)
Monday, September 30, 13

14. Monday, September 30, 13

15. ✤
Kevin Behr @kevinbehr
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kevin.behr@assemblagepointe.com
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Jess Palmer @crocketttubbs
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jpalmer@hedgeserv.com
Monday, September 30, 13