Session Overview : How can continuous improvement culture and mindset be "transformed" with Lean and Kanban? What can corporate culture derive from and expand on cultures that still exist in Lean Manufacturing movement that began with TPS (Toyota Product System)? How can we leverage our knowledge of Lean and Kanban to transform organization's fitness for purpose? This is a workshop about a pictorial case study that shows how to apply Lean Manufacturing values, principles & best practices for continuous improvement in today's fast-paced IT landscape.

1. Case Study: Lean Manufacturing plant level continuous improvement
Leveraging Lean and Kanban
to implement
Continuous Improvement
LKNA2018 (Lean Kanban India 2018), September 21, 2018
LKNA2017 (Lean Kanban India 2017), September 16, 2017
Agile2016, Pecha Kucha Lightening Talk on July 27, 2016
by Ravi Tadwalkar
in/rtadwalkar @tadwalkar rtadwalkar@gmail.com

2. This is a story of Lean Manufacturing Plant Manager Shari, seeking
plant value stream level continuous improvement. Shari intends to
improve plant level visibility on SLAs, batch sizes (volumes) and
WIP. Here are some pictures from this Lean Manufacturing plant.

3. 3
Plant Manager Shari is trained
by Lean Enterprise Institute.
She has read Taiichi Ohno’s
“TPS”, Eli Goldratt’s “Goal”,
Gene Kim’s “Phoenix Project”!
You can say that Shari is big
on Lean, in just 10 pictures!

4. 4
Shari implemented Lean manufacturing at this
Plant she manages, influencing other 5 plants.
She implemented Lean, starting with Lean House
for tracking continuous improvement!

5. 5
Shari
implemented
accountability
board to drive
continuous
improvement
at her plant.

6. 6
Shari implemented
manufacturing kanban in all
“cells” to visualize work
related to continuous
improvement.

7. 7
Here Shari shows an
example of kanban
card that is attached
to a product across
workstations in a cell.
She says plant has JIT
(Just-In-Time)
inventory almost, with
at most 2 days of raw
materials!

8. 8
Shari implemented
visual controls to
visualize front-end
work for products.

9. 9
Shari
implemented
Lean tool 5S to
complement
other Lean tools
used in all plant
cells.

10. 10
Shari implemented
“Wall of Appreciation”
in cells. Jurgen Apello
talks about it in
Management 3.0!

11. 11
This is the
latest cell
Shari proudly
shows during
a plant tour.
She intends
to improve
visibility of
plant level
value stream
specific to
monitoring
SLAs, batch
sizes and WIP.

12. We saw some pictures from this Lean Manufacturing plant.
We will see how DevOps can be implemented to seek plant level
continuous improvements with Lean and Agile.

13. Upstream Kanban:
Downstream Kanban:
13
• Begin with the end in mind: create “Stop Starting, Start Finishing“ Kanban mindset
• Visualize flow between Portfolio (“Upstream”) with Release Engineering (“Downstream”)
• Visualize bottlenecks to flow at both upstream and downstream levels!
• Use Portfolio Kanban board across Org Design (Team of Teams)
• Use a simple Kanban board with a “Plan->Build->Run” or similar workflow
Run
F
E
I
Idea Deploy to Prod
G
D
GY
PB
MN
2
∞
AB
Biz Design
Plan Build (Dev & QA)
Architecture,
resource plan
Core team OMS …
3 3
DE
Explicit policy:
Feature is “done”
only when last
team working on
it has completed
“Deploy to Prod” Lead time ends at
1st infinite queue!
There could be
additional queues
with no WIP limit.
Lead time “clock”
starts at 1st queue
i.e. WIP limited
input queue!
3 3
Deployed
(Note touch time)
NPD
(New Prod
Dev) (60%)
Defect&
Tech Debt
(30%)
Innovation
(10%)
5
2
1
Expedite 1
3
Fixed
Date
Standard
Intangible
2
2
3
WIP Limits
based on
classes of service
(Release Engineering)
WIP Limits
based on
work types
(feature teams)
Upstream (Portfolio) and Downstream (Release Engineering) Kanban Systems

14. “As-Is” Value Stream Map – Illustrating Kaizen Lightening Bursts
Customer
Plan (Idea / Discovery) Build (Delivery) Run (Operations)
Business
Case
PlanningPrioritization
- Ideation
- Biz & Tech
Assessment
- Go/No-go/Defer
- Capacity
Planning
- Project
Planning
- Prioritization
- Project Selection
- RFE Approval
Design
(Arch)
Build
(Dev)
Test
(QA)
- Technical
Design
- WBS
- Integrate
- Test Planning
- Ops Planning
- Get Approval
- Deploy to QA
- Configure Tests
- Manual Testing
- User Acceptance
Production
Go-Live
Business-As-Usual
Change Mgmt
(ITIL)
Environment
Provisioning- Ops Planning
- Config&Deploy
- Wait for DBA
- Get Approval
Prod Support &
Monitoring
Ops Mgmt
(DB, Network)
3 to 5 m 4 to 6 m
2 to 3 m Sustenance mode
Business
Portfolio:
Governance &
Oversight
Environments & Tools
Time
Ladder
(approx.)
Lead Time ?
Value Add Time ?
Non-VA Time ?
Electronic Information Flow
Offshoring
Teams
0.5 m 1 m
1 m 1 m
1-3 m
0.5 m 2 m 0.5 m
0.5 m 0.5 m
1-2 m
1-2 m
1-2 m
1 m
WIP (Inventory)PUSH- scheduled before neededExternal source
LEGEND
Eliminate Waste
Time Analysis
Non-Value Add vs. Total
45%
Value Add vs. Total
55%
Value Add vs. Non-VA
?
Sustenance
14

15. “To-Be” Value Stream Map – Seek “Build” Process Improvements
Customer
Plan(A “Release”) Build(Deployables) Run (Operations)
TDAD
Multi-
Sprint Plan
Backlog Prep
<Story Map>
- Technical Design - Multi-team
- At cadence
- Ops work
- 1 story map
- per team
- per epic
Design
(Artifacts)
Sprint Plan +
Sprint Retro
Iterate
(Dev & QA)
- MVD (wiki)
- Test Plans
- UX artifact
- 2 mtgs, 4hr each
- Ops work included
- Build w/ Unit Tests
- Execute test cases
- Expedite bug-fixes
- Dev & Test NFRs
Demo
Business-As-Usual
Change Mgmt
(ITIL)
Environment
Provisioning- Env on demand
- PO Acceptance
- Production bugs
- Proactive DBAs
Prod Support &
Monitoring
Ops Mgmt
(DB, Network)
3m 3m (4 sprints) 1m Sustenance mode
Business
Portfolio:
Governance &
Oversight
Environments & Tools
Time
Ladder
(approx.)
Lead Time ~4m
Value Add Time ~2m
Non-VA Time ~2m
Time Analysis
Non-Value Add vs. Total
50%
Value Add vs. Total
50%
Value Add vs. Non-VA
1
Electronic Information Flow
Offshoring
Teams
2m 1w
1w .5 w
NVA:1d
1m
0.5 w 1w.5 w 2w
NVA:1d
1w
WIP (Inventory)PUSH- scheduled before neededExternal source
LEGEND
Eliminate Waste
1w
3m (4 sprints)
Sustenance
15

16. 16
Begin with end in mind:
visualize work on a
“Plan->Build->Run”
value stream of
Enterprise Kanban
Enterprise Kanban System with "Plan->Build->Run" value stream

17. 17
In the beginning:
A workflow automation solution requires starting
with an end-to-end process simulation.
Shari started solutioning by organizing use-case
scenarios for process simulation of plant level
process improvements.
Process Simulation for Planning a workflow automation initiative
round1: Discussion
about sharing your
experiences on
implementing
Process Simulation

18. 18
Shari participated in solutioning by
role playing as Plant Manager during
User Story Mapping for plant
simulations about improving Lean
Manufacturing value stream with
visibility on SLAs, batch sizes and WIP.
Note how her persona shows up on a
slide in this picture showing this user
story map as well
Story Map: Driver for Lean Portfolio Management
round2: Discussion
about sharing your
experiences on
implementing Story
Mapping

19. 19
Like Lean manufacturing plant, for continuous improvements, IT
uses Kaizen events e.g. open spaces in corporate setting:
Using Open Spaces to build communities of practice for “Kaizen”

20. 20
Like Lean manufacturing plant, for continuous improvements, IT
uses TQM’s PDCA loop on a Kanban board like this:
Example of
continuous
improvement
about
introducing
DevOps via
feature toggle
Example of Continuous Improvement Kanban Board with PDCA-loop
round3: Discussion
about sharing your
experiences on
implementing Kaizen
for continuous

21. 21
In summary: Workflow Automation Solutioning is an
end-to-end process, starting with process simulation,
to visualize epics on Enterprise Kanban, to big room
planning, to implementing user stories based on DoD,
to visualizing deployable artifacts on DevOps Kanban!
Summary of visualizations used in Plan-Build-Run Value Stream

22. During planning, create org alignment to improve flow (1st way of DevOps), using Portfolio Kanban system.
22
Role of Manager: Leading from the front, Applying 3 ways of DevOps
Enable managers in shaping various communities of practice: create culture of continual experimentation & learning (3rd way of DevOps).
• Begin with succinctly defined portfolio hierarchy or swim lanes that consist
of strategic (CAPEX) and tactical (OPEX) investments:
• Themes
• Initiatives
• Features
• Create single-piece flow of portfolio items with Portfolio Kanban board.
Apply lean metrics for continuous improvement.
• Apply first way of DevOps: emphasize on performance of entire system by
analyzing value streams, WIP, lead times & due date performance.
During execution, enable continuous feedback loops (2nd
way of DevOps) with obstacle boards to act on
impediments & dysfunctions.
• This requires low-fidelity obstacle escalation process.
This can be a 2-level (team->management) process, or
a 3-level (team->program>portfolio) process.
• Example of obstacle board and related workflow:

23. FYI: Swift-Kanban & Atlassian Tool Chains Integrated for DevOps with SAFe
Development Tools
Atlassian BitBucket (GIT)
Developer writes code and
check-in
Associate JIRA Issue Types
(Tasks / Bugs)
Build gets triggered
 Microsoft Visual Studio (For .NET)
 Eclipse (For JAVA)
Atlassian BAMBOO for CI
Build Definitions for:
 Database
 .NET
 Java
Atlassian BAMBOO for Continuous Deployment (CD)
Approve / Reject
Build
DIT1
Functional
Testing
• Continuous Integration
• Scheduled Build
Approve / Reject
Build
DIT2
Approve / Reject
Build
SIT
Regression
Testing
Selenium
Approve / Reject
Build
UAT
UAT Testing
Approve / Reject
Build
PROD
Functional
Testing
DEVELOPMENT Branch
QA Branch
MASTER Branch
FEATURE Branch
Service & Data Mock
Epics
e.g. Ship to Home Pre-pay
(JIRA Issue Type)
User Stories
(JIRA Issue Type)
Monitoring
Ngaios
Initiatives
e.g. Sports on Spectrum
(JIRA Issue Type)
Release Stream aka Agile Release Train (ART)
Themes
(Strategic Goals)
 prevent defects related to
Requirements problems
 Test Planning
 Test Execution
 Traceability & Reporting
 Defect Creation in JIRA
 Track Coverage & Quality Metrics
UX Team DB Team ART Engineer Product Managers
Note: Integrate Atlassian Bamboo with “Chef” for non-windows deployments
DevelopmentTasks
Visualize Portfolio Timeline by Releases
Swift-Kanban Metrics
and/or
EasyBI plugin
(Reporting & Charting)
On top of existing JQL queries
Visualize Investment by Themes
PMO-level
Status Reporting
Testing Tasks
23
Kanplan: backlog
for Kanban and
Scrumban teams
23

24. In Summary:
24
That’s Lean Manufacturing workflow automation related continuous improvement case study.
Implementing DevOps means creating DevOps mindset & culture. That requires lots of Lean,
Six Sigma, TQM, Lean Startup, and yes, Bit of Agile with Lots of “Respect for People”:
Top down approach:
30-60-90 strategic plan for
continuous improvement
with baseline assessment of
DevOps capability maturity
Bottom up approach:
Crowd sourcing tactical plan
for continuous improvement
with assessment based open
space events
Inside out approach:
PDCA Kanban board for
feedback driven visibility
with Lean Startup method
(build-measure-learn loop)
and TQM (PDCA loop)
Implementing DevOps requires mindset & culture open to all approaches

25. Appendix
Approach, Details and Samples of various process artifacts

26. Operations wide Proposal for Management Review

27. How can Modern Agile & ESP work in Operations?
• Operations currently has a plan driven management approach to align an
ecosystem of interconnected and interdependent services.
• For Operations , Modern Agile based transformation will enrich the
management approach to be more value-driven, for faster “flow” of work.
• Model Agile approach supports ESP (Enterprise Services Planning).
• ESP is a Kanban based management system of cadences to coordinate and align
across multiple interconnected services or domains, to create customer value
• ESP enables business agility without loss of management control.
• EPS enables speedier value delivery, improved optionality and business agility.
• ESP will also make Operations leadership focus on flow efficiencies in addition
to resource efficiencies, to achieve V2MOM level goals.

28. Step 1:
Intake & Planning
(1- 2 weeks)
•Define V2MOM level Goal(s)
- e.g. Tech Refresh initiative for
1. on-time engineering wide provisioning
(rack & loose gear on/off boarding)
2. Planning new compute capacity
•Reduce Scope for incremental value
(~1 quarter to 6 months)- leveled by
capacity to do work-
early adopter programs/products
- e.g. rack onboarding process workflow
•Identify key stakeholders:
from Business, Dev/Engg, SQA/Test,
Release Engg and/or Operations
• Identify landscape:
Value chain, initiatives, priorities,
expectations, impediments, and known
constraints
•Create initial Lean change plan using
canvasses such as:
“Lean change canvases” for both
initiatives, and
“Strategy canvas” for tracking strategy
through execution
Step 2:
Discovery phase
(2-3 weeks)
•Apply "learning to see” approach to
Create value by finding sources of non-
value-adding wastes, whether
necessary or unnecessary; and to
reduce or eliminate those.
•Narrow down and validate current
state value stream map (VSM)–
identify current process workflows,
analyze timings and identify NVA
wastes (impediments) causing delays
in flow.
•Visualize future state VSM- “single
piece flow” in ideal world.
•Gap Analysis Workshops- to identify
gaps between “as is” and “to be” VSMs
in terms of key tenets related to
people, process, tools, governance &
metrics
•Assessment of process maturity
•Formal Report- Submit assessment
worksheet highlighting gaps
Step 3:
Roadmap phase
(4-6 weeks)
• Recommendations-
•People- new roles as
needed
•Process – ESP Cadences
•Tools for road mapping
•Governance & Metrics
• 30-60-90 plan specific to
identified gaps in order to
improve process maturity
• recommend “Strategy canvas”
based Kanban system for
tracking strategy through
execution
#Step 4:
Pilot Phase
• Identify people for new Roles from
selected teams, if needed
• Training & Coaching
- Process
- ESP cadences, agendas, meetings
and
- People
- Changing roles & responsibilities
- Tools
- Roadmap sync with cadences
• Build-measure-learn
-learn to either pivot or persevere
• Validated learning
-socialize outcomes & communicate
plan of continuous improvement
#Step 5:
Wider Rollout
•Move the needle
• Build Community
• Transformation team &
charter
• Add champions, evangelists
• Cadence of events
• Execute Lean change plan for
scaling, apply process evaluator
tool with a centralized or
autonomous governance model
with Modern Agile values and
ESP cadences based on an
evolutionary (phased) framework
like Kanban and/or Scrumban
#Time line is context dependent after step 3
28
Approach (Modern Agile with ESP Cadences)

29. Improvement Plan for Operations
1. Understand Direction / Challenge(s)
• We need to work out challenges with hardware on-boarding and off-boarding
• a major bottleneck for Operations wide Tech Refresh initiative
2. Assess Current Condition
• Value stream mapping (VSM)
• Find operational inefficiencies
• Document “as is” state VSM
3. Achieve next feasible target condition
• Document “to-be” state VSM
• Design Kanban Boards for “to-be” workflows
• Visualize & limit work-in-progress
• Show improvements in cycle/lead times
• Further tuning…with controlled experiments
4. Iterate steps 1 to 3, to achieve more feasible targets with more experiments
• e.g. “dock to bootstrap” in 1-2 days with 1 empowered team

30. Goals of VSM (value stream mapping)
• Main goal of VSM is to create value by finding sources of muda (non-value-adding
wastes), whether necessary or unnecessary:
• Other goals of VSM are to eliminate mura (unevenness) and muri (overburdoning)
See also: https://www.lean.org/lexicon/muda-mura-muri

31. “As-Is” Value Stream Map – “Rack On-boarding” Workflow
Customer
Request to Dock (160+ d) Prepare (13-15d) Bootstrap (3d)
PO Creation ReceivedPO Processing Pre-Config Land @DC Configuration
160+ days 13 to 15 days 3 days
Pre-planning
for
Approved
Demand
Time
Ladder
(approx.) Lead Time. 176+ d
Value Add Time 42- 44 d
Non-VA Time 80-165 d
Electronic Information Flow
Operations
3
days
7
days
7
days
13-18
days
3
days
60-140
days
WIP (Inventory)PUSH- scheduled before neededExternal source
LEGEND
Eliminate Waste
Time Analysis
Non-Value Add vs. Total
50-75% or more
Value Add vs. Total
25-50% or less
Value Add vs. Non-VA
½ to 1/3 or less
Work In Progress
- Create RQSVR
- Approve RQSVR
- Shopping Cart
- Create PO
- Approve PO
- Create Asset via ASN
- Create PROCR
- Create LGSRV
- Approve LGSRV
- Execution smartsheet
- Asset arrival
- Scan asset
- Update TMA
- Close PROCR
- Close RQSVR
- CIE prep work
Post-Config
- SWFPA: rack profile
- Electrical/power WO
- Network Pre-Config
- Pre-cable network
- Move
- Scan
- Install
- Auto Verify
- Configure switch
- Check ILOM & Racks
- TMA status=in-Service
- Rack profile scripts
- SASRV: begin bootstrap
- Auto bootstrap (via API)
- Close SWFPA
- Resolve LGSRV
- Bootstrap completed
9
days
0 days
4-6
days
0 days
11
days
0 days
5
days
0 days
Asset Mgmt (8-10) Site Services (~40) Data Center TS (13) Network (8-10) Vendor (25-30)
Lack of standardized work, e.g.
Rack life expectancy, depreciation decisions
Network Bubble decisions Ports availability

32. “To-Be” Value Stream Map – “Rack On-boarding” Workflow
Customer
Pre-Config Land (on dock) Post-Config
Order
Request
Purchase Order
Purchase
Order
Dock
? days ? days ? days
Pre-planning
for
Approved
Demand
Time
Ladder
(approx.) Lead Time. ? d
Value Add Time ? d
Non-VA Time ? d
Electronic Information Flow
Operations
?day
s
?days
?days ?days
?days
?days
WIP (Inventory)PUSH- scheduled before neededExternal source
LEGEND
Eliminate Waste
Time Analysis
Non-Value Add vs. Total
? % or more
Value Add vs. Total
? % or less
Value Add vs. Non-VA
?
Not Started
Dock
?days
?days
?days
?days
?days
?days
?days
?days
Deploy
Standardized Work
One empowered team(80-100)?

33. Modern Agile ESP- PE-wide Proposal for Management Review
4 Pillars of Modern Agile
33
Make Safety
a
Prerequisite
Make People
Awesome
How do we make
people awesome
through our
product and how
do we make our
teams awesome?
How do we
promote safety
around
interactions with
one another as
well as make our
products safe to
use for our users?
Experiment &
Learn Rapidly
How do we
increase the
feedback loop?
When we get stuck
or aren’t learning
enough, we take it
as a sign that we
need to learn more
by running more
experiments.
Deliver Value
Continuously
How do we get
value into our
customer’s hands
as frequently as
possible?
01 02 03 04

34. Lean Change Canvas- format for Initiatives

35. Source:
https://www.slideshare.net/AgileRenee/entrprise-services-planning
https://www.slideshare.net/agilemanager/kanban-cadences-information-flow

36. Lean Canvas (Ebay example)

38. Strategy Canvas (Transformation example)