kanban and toc for execution excellence lean india summit 2014

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Achieving Execution Excellence with Kanban & TOC –

Case study from software support (Managed Services)

N. Balaji Ganesh,

Sirisha Somanchi


Achieving Execution Excellence

with Kanban & TOC –

Case study from software support

(Managed Services)

N. Balaji Ganesh,

Sirisha Somanchi


Agenda

Background

Challenges

Implementation

Benefits

• Why Change?

• Identifying gaps / Surfacing Bottlenecks

• Strategies to overcome bottlenecks

• Implementation plan

• Outcomes


Why Change?

Team

Organization

• High effort per ticket (2.2 P.Ds)

• Cost of Delivery reduction –

Productivity improvement

Customer

Enhance throughput of “back office”

tickets resolution from 25% to 50%

* From David Anderson’s book – Kanban (Successful

Evolutionary Change for your technology Business)

• Work throughput not meeting

customer expectations

• Sustain / improve end user

experience while reducing lead

times for work items


Challenges

Shared team -

Capacity constraints

High WIP

Business triggers for

enhanced throughput

Bottlenecks to flow –

high rework & wait time

Lack of Work

load leveling

No defined policies to

streamline work flow /

task prioritization

What to improve next ?

Uneven demand

High variation in cycle

time and effort per ticket

Multi-tasking across

Tickets, CRs, Projects


Why Kanban

http://kosmothink.com/2010/12/31/the-uncertainty-principal-or-how-to-choose-the-right-methodology/


Essence of Kanban

Little’s law – Work in progress lead time

Pull - Signal from upstream to downstream process

to start work.

Only when the tide goes out do you

discover who's been swimming naked.

Warren Buffett

Stop Starting, Start Finishing.

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/w/warren_buffett.html


Focus & Strategy

• Lean awareness

• Optimize Effort

• Reduce Cycle

time

• Visualize Work flow

• Demand Management

• Capacity planning

• Standardization

• Retrospective &

feedback (PDCA)

• Identify bottle necks

to flow - Limit WIP

(Kanban),

• Reduce Multi-tasking

• Analyze CFDs

• Team Workshops on lean, Kanban and TOC

• Games to demonstrate benefits of smaller batch sizes

• Participative decision making and fostering collaboration

• Core team - Action plans and timelines for implementation rigor

• Visual feedback loop


TOC – How does it fit

• Visualize value stream

• Go See Yourself

• Knowledge

Management

• Standardization –

Policies / Definitions

• Work load levelling

Identify

Exploit

Subordinate

Repeat

Elevate

• WIP Limit

• CFD

• Buffers

• Cross Skilling

• Mistake Proofing

• Problem Management

• Automation

• PDCA

• Back to

“Identify”


Kanban – Execution Flow

P

D

D

C

A


Bottleneck What to Change How to change

Capacity < Inflow • Streamline demand

• Address capacity gaps in

high demand areas

• Problem Management

• Prioritization Policies / WIP limits

• Cross skilling

High WIP in

functional testing

• Improve Dependency /

Test Setup Management

• Reduce wait times

• Marshal additional

resources

• Limit upstream WIP

• Identified and communicated dependencies in

planning phase

• Automated test environment scheduling and

restoration

• Cross functional team (CFT) - Developers /

Analysts for FT.

High WIP in

Analysis phase

• Competency

Improvement

• Reduce wait times

• Work allocation

• Monitor and Expedite “Wait for Info” cases

• Dedicated Resources / Time slicing policies

• On the job mentoring / training

• Right task for the right person

• Translator for non-English language tickets

Failure load • Minimize hand-offs

• Optimal Work allocation

• Improve upstream

quality

• Standardize “Definition of Done” (DoD) /

Acceptance Criteria for CRs / Complexity

definitions

• Allocated work based on skill and complexity

• Implemented analysis / code quality

improvements, gating reviews, CFT

Improving flow


Dealing with individual variations

Individual

Variation

Time on

Floor

Analysis

Knowledge

Management

Collaboration -

pairing

WIP limits

Training /

Mentoring

Cross

skillingTime

slicing

Work load

levelling


Visualizing Work Flow

I hear and I forget.

I see and I remember.

I do and I understand.

Confucius


Visualizing Work flow

Legend

MFG

PM&S

FICO

SCM

Project CR Slip Template

Project Name

Project Ticket #

RICEF

EM Effort in Days

Wish Date

Functional Cons Name

Assigned to (To be Filled by Allocator)

Slip - ZDHF/SLFN

Type ZDHF / SLFN

Ticket # APXXX

RICEF

Date of Assignment


Assigned to (To be Filled by assignee)

Monthly CR Slip Template

Release Month

Release Ticket #

RICEF APXXX

EM Effort in Days

Wish Date


Assigned to

Daily team huddles around the kanban board for 15-20 minutes.

3 questions asked to each person:

• What was done yesterday ?

• What is done today ?

• What are the bottlenecks and how can we resolve them ?


Cumulative Flow Diagram (Consolidated for all Work streams)

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

Release to

customer

Waiting for

information from

customer / third

party

• Monitor and identify WIP patterns

• Ask Why

• Brainstorm and resolve

• Go to step 1


• Typical reasons for variation were:

• Competency

• Complexity

• Waiting for information cases

• Functional testing delays

Visual charts for Y (resolution time) – maximum & average plotted separately for different

categories.

Week-wise performance and trends observed and analyzed from Dec 2014.

Visual Trend – Resolution Time (Correction Tickets)


Skill Matrix

• Training plan identified for skill gaps

• Internal training provided on Adobe forms and workflow

• On the job mentoring done through collaborative development

Consultant

UCF

Cleared

UCF Next

Level

Smart

Forms

Adobe

Forms Reports

Module

Pool

Enhance

ments

Interfaces

(In/Out) Conversion Workflow EDI/ALE OOPS WebDynpro

Team member 1ABAP 3.2 ABAP 4.1 1 2 4 3 4 3 3 1 0 0 0




Team member 5ABAP 4.1 N/A 2 0 2 2 2 4 4 1 2 2 0






Team member 11 N/A ABAP 2.1 2 2 4 2 3 2 2 0 0 0 0







Project Target 3 4 10 5 6 5 8 3 3 5 0

Current status 7 1 11 7 10 7 9 1 3 5 0

Target Date 31st Jan 31st Jan

Skills

None 0

Trained 1

Experienced 2

Proficient 3

Expert 4


Control Charts –Average Cycle Time

191715131197531

50

0

-50

Observation

In

div

idu

al

Va

lue

_X=20.2 _

X=13.1

UC L=80.8

UC L=27.4

LC L=-40.4

LC L=-1.2

31.503 21.848

191715131197531

80

60

40

20

0

Observation

Mo

vin

g R

an

ge

__MR=22.79

__MR=5.38

UC L=74.45

UC L=17.58

LC L=0

31.503 21.848

LC L=0

I-MR Chart of P3 Resolution time (Avg Days)

Control charts were used to monitor cycle

average and maximum cycle time for P2, P3

and P4 categories.

Out of control points were analyzed for

specific reasons and appropriate preventive /

corrective actions.

Observed improvement in average cycle

time for both P3 and P4 tickets

Cycle Time (Days) Before

(Wk 49 – 4)

After

(Wk 5 – 14)

P3 – Average 20.2 13.1

P4 - Average 13.9 9.23

1715131197531

30

20

10

0

-10

Observation

In

div

idu

al

Va

lue

_X=13.90 _

X=9.23

UC L=33.24

UC L=23.60

LC L=-5.45 LC L=-5.15

27.337 5.968

1715131197531

24

18

12

6

0

Observation

Mo

vin

g R

an

ge

__MR=7.27 __

MR=5.41

UC L=23.77

UC L=17.66

LC L=0 LC L=0

27.337 5.968

I-MR Chart of P4 Avg Days_1 by P4 Avg Days_1


Observed that process improvements are statistically significant when compared with pre-improvement stage.

Validation of Process Improvements

Before : Jul – Sep 2013

After: Mar – May 2014


Benefits – Productivity and Cycle time

Ticket resolution effort reduced by 62%

83.4% increase in throughput for “back office” tickets resolved with the same team size.

Cycle time reduction of:

16.54% for P2 tickets



Cost of delivery (Manpower costs as % of revenue) reduction from 36.8% to 25.1%.

Enhanced people engagement / end user experience

00.5

11.5

22.5

Trend Chart of Effort per ticket (p.days)

p-Days

22%

36%33%

29%36%

44% 43%50%205

231214 220

376380

425

326

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

400

450

500

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

40%

45%

50%

55%

60%

Oct-13 Nov-13 Dec-13 Jan-14 Feb-14 Mar-14 Apr-14 May-14

Pe

rce

nta

ge R

eso

luti

on

Month

BO Resolution Performance(Oct '13-May '14)

BO Contribution

# of Tickets in BO


Customer Delight – CSAT Improvement

Customer commendation – Customer commended the team for resolving 425 tickets from

offshore (BO) in April 2014 against 173 in July 2013.

Customer PCSAT improved to 6/7 from 5/7 in FY12-13 – Customer was impressed with the

implementation of lean during his visit and would like to carry forward these tenets back to his

team.

Annual CSAT survey - Continuous Improvement as Expectation1 with rating 6/7 and average

overall rating 6/7. % Satisfied (Top2 Box – rating 6 or 7) improved from 60% to 100%

Benefits passed on to the Customer – Additional throughput with same team size resulted in

annualized savings of 1.3 million USD

Customer renewed the contract 6 months in advance for 1 more year (earlier contract end date

was October 2014), extended contract value = 5.5 Mn USD ACV (from Nov’14 – Oct’15)


Control / Sustenance Plan

• Continued usage of

• Kanban board

• Daily huddle around the Kanban board – 3 questions

• Resolution effort per ticket – To be monitored and sustained at 0.9 – 1.0 p.days

• Trend Chart of cycle time – Max and Avg Resolution chart plots to be continued and

monitored / analyzed for any spikes and troughs.

• Continued Inflow vs capacity analysis / cross skilling as required

• Disseminate lessons learnt to the team.

• Monthly retrospectives

• Root Cause Analysis for any exceptions

• Tickets slipping SLAs

• High cycle time

• Failure load


Conclusion / Lessons Learnt

Visualize

Kanban

Board,

Swim

lanes

• Integrated Kanban

Board

• Due date

• Delay Indicators

• Zeigarnik effect

Flow

WIP

Limits

CFD

• WIP Patterns

• Surface bottlenecks

• Reduce hand-offs

• Streamline demand

Optimize

Lean

Kaizen

• Exploit, then

elevate

• Cross functional

teams

• Reduce failure load

• Enhance capability


References


Winning Team


Thank You

Balaji Ganesh N

Sirisha Somanchi

kanban and toc for execution excellence lean india summit 2014

Leadership & Management