In Services, most processes are abstract & invisible. How can you ease their management? Visualise them

1. Visual Management
The Goal:
• The best Whiteboard standard structures to support your Risk management
• from Waterfall to Agile
• How can you manage something you don’t see?
• Visualize your Activities & your Risks, whatever
you are in Agile or Waterfall mode
• A few ideas for your WhiteBoard design

2. Why, What & How?
The Goal:
• Why do we need to visualise? To see the process, to communicate, to federate
• What do we need to visualise? Goal, problem & risk not to achieve the goal
the key points: Project Management = Risk Management
What & How?
What are my main
activities?
What is the key
period to monitor?
Are we on track?
What structure for
my WhiteBoard(s)?
Why?
visualise an abstract process
federate & coordinate all
the team towards the
common goals
highlight the problems & solve
the ‘tunnel effect’
guide the team toward
a self-management in a
frame defined by the
management

3. How man records information?
The Goal:
• Use an Interactive WhiteBoard
• Mixing vision, hearing & interaction
the key points: man records the most information through active listening
 20% by what he hears
 30% by what he sees
 50% by what he hears and sees
 70% when he talks about it
 90% when he interacts with it
Man records 90% of his information through
 Vision: share the same screen with remote attendees (video conference)
 Hearing: open an audio conference call with them
 Interaction: increase remote attendees’ focus with live annotation/movement
How man records information?

4. What do you want to monitor?
The Goal:
• List your main activities & qualify them regarding importance, risk
• Use capacity bandwidth (SLA) for urgent, non urgent, predictable, non predictable
the key points: a project manager is a Risk manager, what is important? what is urgent?
A standard problem is to not succeed to manage at the same time
• a predictable activity
• and an unpredictable one, mostly defined by an urgency criteria
Following this IT example what are your main activities & what criteria is important
Production support
Level 1: Production team
Level 2: Business support (BA)
Level 3: IT support (Dev)
Development
project
maintenance
CTB
RTB standard
complex
Standard IT activities
Predictible
Unpredictible
urgent
Non urgent
Standard criteria

5. What do you want to monitor? On Development activity
The Goal:
• Which classification for more visibility?
• Visualise your flow to manage it (limit the WIP, manage your bottlenecks, …)
the key points: manage dynamicaly your Risk through short Agile iterations, don’t follow
blindly an original roadmap
key project criteria
• Q1: Quality
• Q2: Time
• Q3: Cost
• Q4: Risk
Team Iteration (main) objectives
key questions about monitoring
Q1: what is my period of monitoring? (iteration)
Q2: On this iteration, is the team on track on its different activities?
Q3: On this iteration, on each activity, what are the main objectives of the team?
Q4: On this iteration, on each activity, on each main objectives is the team on track?
Status Workflow steps
Try this structure and adapt to your context
development project
maintenance
User story P1
User story Pn
…
User story M1
User story Mn
…
Version
Sub-project
Urgent
Ohter criteria of classification/visualisation Organise the user story list in the most efficient way for you
To Do In Progress Done
test … Prod delivery
By project?
By version?
By client?
…
By urgency?
study spec dev
Example 1
Example 2

6. What do you want to monitor? On Production activity
The Goal:
• Which classification for more visibility?
• Implement your SLA (find unassigned Urgent ticket, free people to be assigned)
the key points: manage efficiently your Risk through short Agile iterations
key project criteria
• Q1: Quality
• Q2: Time
• Q3: Cost
• Q4: Risk
Team Iteration (main) objectives
key questions about monitoring
Q1: what is my period of monitoring? Mainly daily, sometimes more
Q2: On this iteration, is the team on track on its different activities?
Q3: On this iteration, on each activity, what are the main objectives of the team?
Q4: On this iteration, on each activity, on each main objectives is the team on track?
Status Workflow steps
Try this structure and adapt to your context
production Level 1
Ticket 1.1
Ticket 1.n
…
priority
assignee
Ohter criteria of classification/visualisation
To Do In Progress Done
Example 1
Level 2
Ticket 2.1
Ticket 3.n
…
Level 3
Organise the ticket list in the most efficient way for you
By project?
By version?
By client?
…
By urgency?

7. ‘intellectual’ vs ‘manual’ activities
The Goal:
• Which timescale? Which subjects to focus on?
• Which structure is more adapted for which activity?
the key points: Challenge ‘unpredictability’, ‘urgency’. Use capacity bandwidth to separate
‘predictable’ & ‘unpredictable’ activity when needed
Main standard Whiteboard structures are focusing on:
• The process steps: How do we do?
• The calendar: When do we do?
• The Project/Sub project, release: Which subject?
• The people: Who does What?
‘manual’ activity
e.g. Production support
‘intellectual’ activity
e.g. Development
Predictability
Mostly unpredictable
Macro steps
Manage the flow
Calendar
Day plan with hours & people
Projects, Releases, …
Which subject?
People
When do we do?
Specially urgent ticket
Who does What?
Day to WeekWeek to monthTimescale
Mostly predictable
Project Maintenance
Month to year
Main focus
Standard
WB tructure
Goals & process steps
Production support

8. ‘Pros’ & ‘Cons’ of the main standards
The Goal:
• Which columns, which lines?
• Benefits & Warnings
the key points: try & test several structures through short Agile iterations.
By default, we’re used to Calendar but it’s the less efficient, the less dynamic
Main standard Whiteboard structures are focusing on:
• The process steps: How do we do?
• The calendar: When do we do?
• The Project/Sub project, release: Which subject?
• The people: Who does What?
Macro steps: How do we do? Calendar: When do we do?
Projects, Releases, …
Which subject?
People
Who does What?
Column
Line
Well adapted to … Monitor one team’s activity Coordinate several teams contribution (rendez vous)
CONs Hide replaning from one week to the next one
PROs See where are the bottlenecks in the process Well adapted to manage synchonisation problems

9. From Waterfall to Agile
The Goal:
• Predictable vs unpredictable activity
• Which structure for Waterfall & Agile
the key points: setup Daily meetings together with ‘management’ meetings like SteerCo to
ensure the sprint goals are a translation of TOP management vision (hoshin kanri)
• The whiteboard visualise the team activity on a shifting time window
• A whiteboard can help whatever is the project management methodology (Waterfall, Agile, …)
• The frequency of the morning meeting should be adapted to the release cycle leadtime
Tip: the whiteboard has to live (i.e. updated regularly)
Waterfall release cycle
Important lead time
e.g. 11 months
4 releases in parallel
Agile release cycle
Short to medium leadtime
e.g. 6 weeks
2 Releases in parallel prioritisation
By iteration
e.g. SCRUM
‘On the flow’
e.g. Kanban
Mosty predictable (e.g. development)
-> management with roadmap/planning
activity
Mostly unpredictable (e.g. production support)
-> management ‘on the flow’

10. Appendix
The Goal:
• Examples of WhiteBoard structures
the key points: before using electronic WhiteBoard like JIRA, try & test several structures
with a physical whiteboard through short Agile iterations
‘Intellectual’ activity as IT development
• Waterfall
• Agile/Scrum
• Agile/Kanban
• Program coordination i.e. manage ‘Rendez-Vous’ between
projects, User Stories, teams
‘Manual’ activity as IT production support
• Monitor your SLA:
• Do you have an urgent ticket not assigned?
• Who could be assigned?

11. Waterfall whiteboard
Context:
• 3 Releases in parallel, average Release leadtime 11 months
• A mini roadmap attached to each Release step at the hand of the team members
the key points: what are the sprint goals? Is the team on track? Why? What is the team
mitigation plan?
• Visualise the status of each Release 2.9 in UAT, 2.10 in DEV & 2.11 in STUDY
• Support the team members in their respective assignment
• Dedicated part to
• production support activity (should be limited to level 3)
• Project KPI mainly discussed during weekly or SteerCo

12. Agile/Scrum whiteboard
Context:
• Sub-team 1 on application 1, sub-team 2 on application 2 & 3
• Team in Scrum with the following Release Cycle (see above)
the key points: build all your Release Cycles. Manage dynamically your Release cycles
with the WhiteBoard
• Visualise the team goals on the iteration (sprint backlog shorted by priority)
• Visualise the problem & risk not to achieve the goal (potential bottleneck on Test & UAT)
• Dedicated part to
• production support activity (should be limited to level 3)
• Project KPI (BurnDown, …) mainly discussed during weekly or SteerCo

13. Agile/Kanban whiteboard
Context:
• One of the main goal of Kanban is to ‘Pull the Flow’ instead of Pushing it
• To do so, we apply the principle of ‘Limit the WIP (Work In Progress)
the key points: limit the WIP = finish what you have started before starting something else.
Short and stabilize the leadtime of User Story families. Required for SLA
• 2 bottlenecks on SPEC & on TEST
• Dev is Over capacity: 2 developers are free
• What can the team do to fluidify the process i.e. solve the current bottleneck?
• Better work on the Test bottleneck: move the 2 free developers to help on TEST
• If you solve the Spec one, you’ll potentially make worse the situation on Test not limiting the WIP
Validated
&
prioritised
SPEC
doing done
DEV
doing done
TEST
doing done
Deployed
Ticket 13
Ticket 14
Ticket 15
Ticket 16
WIP = 6 WIP = 3 WIP = 6 WIP = 3
Ticket 17
Ticket 18
Ticket 10
Ticket 11
Ticket 12
Ticket 8 Ticket 4
Ticket 5
Ticket 6
Ticket 2
Ticket 1
Ticket 3
Ticket 7
expedite expedite expediteexpedite expedite expedite expedite expedite

14. Calendar whiteboard
Context:
• For teams whose job is mainly to coordinate large project
• Like Product Owner in ‘Scrum of Scrum’
the key points: use day, week, month as appropriate
• People are not doing themselves the project but are coordinating programs
• Their focus is to manage ‘Rendez-Vous’ i.e. deadlines synchronizing several teams
• Dedicated part to
• production support activity (should be limited to level 3)
• Project KPI (BurnDown, …) mainly discussed during weekly or SteerCo

15. Production Support whiteboard: week basis
Context:
• Production team with a problem of capacity to do all the tickets
• A SLA has been defined with clients to focus on urgent ones and ‘delay’ less urgents ones
the key points: define the key questions regarding your activity. The WhiteBoard should help
you to answer them
key questions about monitoring
Q1: find any urgent tiket not yet assigned:
• 83 urgent for 2 hours of workload
• 46 standard for 7 jours of workload
Q2: find someone free to be assigned on 83 & 39
• TM 5 has 3 hours today (assigned for 5 hours of workload)
• TM 2 is free
• 83 is assigned to TM 5
• 39 is assigned to TM 2
current
date: J status (Plusieurs éléments)
ticket
Backlog
ID urgency status assigned description deadline workload created Somme de workload Étiquettes de colonnes
31 1open not assigned x J 6J Étiquettes de lignes J J+2 J+5 Total général
9 1in progress TM 1 y J 4J-1 not assigned 5 2 7
7 1in progress TM 3 z J 7J-1 1 5 5
55 2open not assigned a J+2 3J 2 2 2
66 2in progress TM 1 b J+2 3J TM 1 5 7 12
47 2in progress TM 3 c J+2 7J 1 5 5
7 3in progress TM 3 e J+5 1J 2 7 7
75 3in progress TM 4 f J+5 6J TM 3 3 8 8 19
11 1closed TM 1 g y 5x 1 3 3
34 1closed TM 2 h y 7x 2 8 8
3 8 8
TM 4 1 1
3 1 1
Total general 13 17 9 39