This document describes the implementation and results of using daily 15-minute "flash meetings" for software development teams at Thales Group. The previous weekly 1-hour meetings were found to be too long, infrequent, and out of date. The new daily flash meetings have a shorter duration of 15 minutes, higher frequency of daily, and focus on key priorities like steering, performance, and problems. Teams have been practicing this for over 7 years and have found improvements in focus, visibility of team performance, reduced work-in-progress, improved product quality, and increased team involvement and motivation. The daily flash meetings combined with nightly builds have created a daily development cycle.

1. www.thalesgroup.com
Flash-meetings for
sw development
11/2012
Legal Entity/Division - 11/2011
Emmanuel CHENU, Thales Avionics, CC NAV
emmanuel.chenu@fr.thalesgroup.com

2. Framework
Framework: PDCA
Plan
What is the problem? the impacts? the root causes?
What is the plan to assess the root causes?
Do
What experiments are led according to the plan?
Check
What results are measured when running the experiments?
Act
What have we learned? adjusted? standardized?
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3. Context
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4. Plan
PLAN
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5. Plan / Problem
Problem: «Unsatisfied with our project weekly meetings»
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6. Plan / Problem
Problem: «Unsatisfied with our project weekly meetings»
#1 Duration:
. 1h is too long ...
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7. Plan / Problem
Problem: «Unsatisfied with our project weekly meetings»
#1 Duration:
. Pause activities for a full hour!
1h
1h !
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Ce document est la propriété de Thales Group et il ne peut être reproduit ou communiqué sans autorisation écrite de Thales S.A.

8. Plan / Problem
Problem: «Unsatisfied with our project weekly meetings»
#1 Duration:
. Lack of dynamism & efficiency ...
. Loss of focus on the highest priority topics (waste, no
respect)
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Ce document est la propriété de Thales Group et il ne peut être reproduit ou communiqué sans autorisation écrite de Thales S.A.

9. Plan / Problem
Problem: «Unsatisfied with our project weekly meetings»
#2 Delay:
. Problems are assessed too late (1 .. 7 days latency)
. Out-of-date data (1 .. 7 days latency)
. Impact of daily work
- is not obvious
- is visible too late to steer activities
= «Steering a project with a 1-week delay»
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Ce document est la propriété de Thales Group et il ne peut être reproduit ou communiqué sans autorisation écrite de Thales S.A.

10. Plan / Impacts
Problem: «Unsatisfied with our project weekly meetings»
Impacts:
. Participation is not systematic
. Loss of interest & of implication in the project
. Team performance below expectations
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Ce document est la propriété de Thales Group et il ne peut être reproduit ou communiqué sans autorisation écrite de Thales S.A.

11. Plan / Root causes
Root cause #1: The periodicity of the meeting is too low
=> accumulation of problems (7 days)
=> out-of-date data (1 .. 7 days)
=> missed synchronization points
Frequency of meeting < Frequency of problems (Nyquist-Shannon)
1 week stockpile of
problems, data & missed
synchronizations,
processed once a week
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12. Plan / Root causes
Root cause #2: Duration is too long
=> Focus is not maintained on the highest priorities
=> Part of the meeting is waste (no value, no respect)
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13. Plan / Strategy
#1 Lower the duration of the meeting (<< 1h)
#2 Raise the frequency of the meeting (>> 1/week)
duration
1h
Initial situation
period 7d
1 .. 7d
duration
<< 1h
Target situation period <<7d
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14. Do
DO
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15. Do
Practice 15-minute Daily Flash-Meetings
To reduce the duration of the To raise periocity of project
meeting (15 minutes << 1 hour) steering (daily << weekly)
2 teams are practicing the
following standard
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16. Do
#1 Kick-off
. Every day: same place, hour, & duration
. Daily-leader rotation according to displayed calendar
. All members stand facing large charts & task-board
. Only daily-leader is seated, facing charts, editing iteration backlog on a computer
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17. Do
#2 Nightly build
. The daily-leader
. reports the status of the nightly build
. organizes further analysis or corrective actions (if required)
The nightly build
- builds the executable files,
- runs the unit-tests,
- runs the acceptance tests,
- measures the product quality
- ships the product
- controls the andon
- ...
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Ce document est la propriété de Thales Group et il ne peut être reproduit ou communiqué sans autorisation écrite de Thales S.A.

18. Do
#3 Product quality
. The team
. reports the quality metrics
. updates the quality charts
. organizes further analysis/corrective
actions (if required)
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19. Do
#3 Product quality
= # lines of code not fully covered by tests
+ # warnings in the code & tests
+ # times the coding standards are not fulfilled
+ # traceability errors
+ # complex operations
+ # 'todo' & 'fixme' tags in the code & tests
+ # new tickets to estimate
+ # opened tickets
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20. Do
#4 Development tasks
. The daily-leader
. runs through the tasks by order of priority
. The team
. reports status (expenses, progress, estimates, problems)
. updates the work-in-progress on the task-board
. The daily-leader
. updates expenses, estimates in the iteration backlog
. Available team members
. pull new tasks from the iteration backlog
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21. Do
#4 Development tasks
! If the team reports complex problems or technical issues
the daily-leader invites the stakeholders to resume the topic after the daily flash-meeting
! The task-board displays the WIP in the VSM:
Task-board
VSM
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22. Do
#5 Team performance
. The daily-leader
. reports the team performance to the team (costs & progress; quality already
reported!)
. The team
. updates the performance charts
(costs & progress)
. analyzes the performance
. organizes corrective actions
(if required)
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23. Check
CHECK
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24. Check
#1 Regular practice
. Every working day >7 years = >2500 flash-meetings
. 5 teams involved
. 7 < team members < 50 (large team / 4 teams)
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25. Check
#2 Frequency & duration
. 15min < duration / meeting < 20 min
. 1h15 < duration / week < 1h40
=> overall time spent in meeting has not been reduced ...
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26. Check
#3 Focus
. with 15min target duration, all non-value information is
removed
. reduce duration to focus on highest priorities
. focus: steering, performance & problems
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27. Check
#4 Visible team performance
. Progress, costs & quality are displayed & up-to-date
(daily)
. Problems are displayed, analysis & corrective actions in
progress
. Shared vision
- of tasks & priorities
- of team performance (progress, costs & quality)
. WIP is visible (with problems: dependencies &
bottlenecks)
=> sw development is now visible!
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28. Check
#5 WIP & product quality
. wip is reduced in 2 scales (1 day, 2 weeks)
. product quality improves at each iteration
#6 Implication
. Every day:
- Team members attend & participate
- Daily team leader rotation
. Team members concerned by costs, progress & quality
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29. Check
#7 Continuous improvement
. The team practices continuous improvement:
Daily flash-meeting standard displayed & often improved
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30. Act
ACT
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31. Act
#1 The war-room
. Dedicated war-room (noisy meetings, room for charts)
#2 The schedule
. Not too soon => to gather data
. Not too late => to plan the day
. 9AM < kick-off < 9:45AM
. Time-slot booked in calendars!
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32. Act
#3 Computers
. Only for the daily team leader!
. Large screen => failure
Turned-off
. Focus on the action, not on the screen!
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33. Act
#4 Daily-flash meeting = PDCA
. Plan:
- Define the conditions of success for today
- Plan today’s tasks to meet success
. Do:
- Perform today’s tasks
. Check:
- Tomorrow, check performance (is success fulfilled?)
. Act:
- According to performance, adapt behavior in order to succeed
This document is the property of Thales Group and may not be copied or communicated without written consent of Thales S.A.
Ce document est la propriété de Thales Group et il ne peut être reproduit ou communiqué sans autorisation écrite de Thales S.A.

34. Act
#5 Work-in-progress
Daily flash-meeting + nightly build
= daily cycle within which tasks are DONE
=> reduces WIP
#6 Visible impact & motivation
. Visualize the impact of a day of work on common goals
. The team sees it can make a difference
=> enhances autonomy & motivation
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Ce document est la propriété de Thales Group et il ne peut être reproduit ou communiqué sans autorisation écrite de Thales S.A.

35. Act
#7 Project steering
. A single iteration burndown is not enough to steer
activities of the iteration
Amount of work (%)
Focus is on
completion of
work within
the milestone
Milestone (days)
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36. Act
#7 Project steering
. A single iteration burndown is not enough to steer
activities of the iteration
. Focus on completion of work within a miletone (progress)
. But, what about:
. costs?
. product quality?
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37. Act
#7 Project steering
. A single iteration burndown is not enough to steer
activities of the iteration
Visualize problems: OK
But, what is the problem?
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38. Act
#7 Project steering
Amount of work (%)
Focus on costs
Allocated budget (days)
Add a focus on costs!
Amount of work (%) Focus on progress
Milestone (days)
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39. Act
#7 Project steering
Per functionality Full scope
costs
progress
Add progress & costs per functionality/feature!
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40. Act
#8 Learning
Daily flash-meetings develop skills:
. to lead meetings
. to organize self-directed work with pulls systems
(autonomy!)
. to identify & solve problems (problem solving develops
skills!)
. to steer activities
. to share knowledge > 1 / day
. and ...
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41. Act
#9 Continuous improvement
. Daily flash-meetings = case study to learn & practice
continuous improvement
. Everyone is involved
=> The know-how is then used for other issues
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42. Act
#10 Discipline
. The meeting must occur!
. Tight time-schedule
. Focus on relevent information
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43. Act
#11 Respect
Daily flash-meetings = environment where the team:
. shares goals, responsability & success
. develops skills & autonomy
= RESPECT for people, their work & their time
This document is the property of Thales Group and may not be copied or communicated without written consent of Thales S.A.
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44. End
THANKS
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