© 2012 Michael DePaoli., All Rights Reserved
Why Continuous Improvement Programs Fail – Can Kaizen and
WIP Help?
Michael DePaoliAgile/Lean Coach, cPrime
Welcome – About your Speaker
Michael DePaoliAgile / Lean Coach, cPrime
13 Years combined Agile and Lean experience
27 Years in software industry – roles from developer to CTO, Product Owner, Management Consultant
Specializing in helping companies craft strategies for Lean‐Agile transformation and context specific tactics leveraging systems & interdisciplinary thinking
http://www.linkedin.com/in/mdepaoli@AgileMike
“It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.”
W. Edwards Deming
SHARE WHAT HAS IMPEDED YOUR TEAM’S CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT EFFORTS?
Sailboat Innovation GameContinuous Improvement
Paradise
WHY DO CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT EFFORTS FALL SHORT?
REPORT FROM MY EXPERIENCE
o Magical Thinking
o Teams executing a PDCA cycle and forget the ‘C’
o Assumption that continuous improvement at the Team level is an innate skill
o Company Culture Doesn’t Value It…aka it doesn’t value learning
Magical Thinking
Denial
The Missing ‘C’
PD A
Does Our Process Make My Scrum Butt Look Big?
© 2012 cPrime Inc., All Rights Reserved 8
Continuous Improvement Isn’t an Innate Skill of Teams
Company Culture doesn’t value Learning hence no Continuous Improvement
Improvement in Organizations requires change of one type or
another
Why does change fail so frequently?
Because Size Matters!When it comes to change
BIG CHANGES CAN BE SCARY… CAUSE A MORE PRIMITIVE RESPONSE
OrHere’s how your role will change working within the Scrum process……
Product Manager
OUR 3 BRAINS
(AMYGDALA)
A Neuroscience Detour
BigChange
SmallChange
© 2012 Michael DePaoli., All Rights Reserved 15
Don’t Awaken The Amygdala!
Keep folks in their Neo−Cortex and rationally engaged in change
How do we enable continuous improvement without having
continuous fear…?
KAIZEN
TO MAKE BETTER
o Kaizen enables "continuous improvement”
o Kaizen deals in the small – small thoughts, actions, and rewards
o Small change avoids fear response
o Many small changes can quickly result in big change without the overhead
o Roots in TWI
WHY KAIZEN WORKS
“All changes, even positive ones, are scary. Attempts to reach goals through radical or
revolutionary means often fail because they heighten fear. But the small steps of Kaizen disarm
the brain’s fear response, stimulating rational thought and creative play.”
One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way- Robert Maurer, PhD.
WIP LIMITS – A SMALL CHANGE WITH BIG IMPACT
This small change can have dramatic affect in improving cycle time, throughput and quality
It provides a means to enable continuous improvement
WIPLIMIT
Product Quality
Process Effectiveness
Customer Satisfaction
Social Capital
WIP can provide an immune system like response to impediments
It can free up the time for improvements and innovation to occur
Swarming Behavior on Bottlenecks
Know what you'd like to improve?
What will you measure to know that you are improving?
REVIEW We shared experience of Why continous
improvement / change efforts fall short Explored why change fails – Our brain and the
importance of the size of change Explored Kaizen Looked at introducing WIP as an Example of
Kaizen Improvement requires measurement, else how
do you know you’re improving
REFERENCES
Dan and Chip Heath, Switch, 2010
Robert Maurer, Ph.D. , One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way
David J. Snowden and Mary E. Boone, “A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making”, Harvard Business Review, 2007
Eric Ries , The Lean Startup
James Thorton, “Humans have three brains” , article posted on site “The Book of Threes -a Subject Reference Encyclopedia”
Article: http://www.threes.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2472:humans-have-three-brains&catid=70:science&Itemid=52
Thank you for attending!
Top Related