How long would it take your organization to deploy a change that involved just one single line of code? Do you deploy changes at this pace on a repeatable, reliable basis?
2.
Complexity Score: Give your organization a complexity score on a scale of 15, where 1 = a minimalist approach similar to Inditex, and 5 = an approach which results in maxumim complexity. What one single thing could you do to reduce your complexity score one point? (Note: A more complex approval process is not a good candidate for reducing complexity. Inditex's approach to governance and approval is as minimalist as the systems themselves.)
3.
Seven Wastes: Pick the one waste that is the worst offender in your organization1) partially done work, 2) extra features, 3) relearning 4) handoffs, 5) task switching, 6) delays, 7) defects. What single thing can you do to significantly reduce that waste?
4.
Hold a weekly waste clean-up hour. During the first week, start the hour by talking about one of the seven wastes. Spend the first quarter of the meeting coming to an agreement about what the waste really means in your world. Then spend the next 15 minutes brainstorming to create a list of examples of that particular waste in your development process. Pick the top five candidates and during the next week measure how much waste each one actually causes. At the next weekly meeting, look at your measurements and decide which waste is the "biggest loser" and create a plan to do something about it. Execute the plan and measure the results during the next week. At the next weekly meeting, decide if the results warrant a permanent change, and if so, make the change permanent. At the next weekly meeting, move on to the next waste and repeat the process.
5.
Value stream map: If you want to draw a value stream map of your process, try it in steps:
Gather anyone who is interested and take an hour to draw a mapno moreand a half hour to discuss what you've learned.
Now take a half day to gather some data that was missing during the first exercise and encourage the involvement of a few key people who seemed to be missing. This time, take two hours to draw the map and an hour to discuss its implications.
Have you learned enough from these two quick experiments to know where your biggest waste is? If so, move on to doing one or two quick future value stream maps, and then start addressing the biggest waste.
