1. Continuous Improvement It’s a culture thing… By: Anton Rademan

2. References • http://leansixsigmadefinition.com/glossary/kaizen/ • https://davidkigerinfo.wordpress.com/2016/04/01/3-excellent-companies-and-how-they-apply-kaizen-in-the-real-world/ • https://hakanforss.wordpress.com/2012/04/25/agile-lego-toyota-kata-an-alternative-to-retrospectives/ • https://blog.kainexus.com/continuous-improvement/top-tips-for-introducing-continuous-improvement-to-employees

3. Kaizen From the Japanese words “kai-” which means “change” and “-zen” which means “good.” The popular meaning from Toyota is “continuous improvement” or “small incremental improvements” of all areas of a company, not just manufacturing. Self Sheep Sacrifice Whip Alter

4. Company using Kaizen • KiichiroToyoda founded the company in 1937 • Considered the 13th largest company in the world by revenue • Toyota produces 13,400 cars per day • The ideology of kaizen is an essential part of Toyota and the Toyota Production System since kaizen in itself means no process is perfect and understands that there is always room for improvement, a thought that resonates within Toyota and the way they operate at all levels.  • Kaizen means all personnel are expected to stop their work when they encounter any abnormality and, along with their supervisor, suggest an improvement to resolve the abnormality

5. Do not show this slide… Toyota’s employees receive incentives for finding inefficient practices and designing ways to improve them and the effective application of the PDCA cycle helps support quick-decision making in many aspects of organizational tasking. Oops!

6. Common phrases used in teams If only… • It is not fun to work in the team… • The company should… • The BO should… • The PO should… • The developers should… • The testers should… • The [ ] must… 

7. Why change? • Learn from our past that something is just not working (pain) • Not to stagnate as a team • Determine your own outcome • Better for us coming to work (“love 1440”: Stephen De Villiers Graaf) • We can never get time wasted back • It speeds you up by eliminating waste Inspect and adapt

8. Who’s responsibility is it to drive this? It is for every single person in the company to do this … but it starts with us!

9. 6 Principles of the Continuous Improvement • Improvements are based on small changes; not major paradigm shifts or new inventions • Ideas come from employees • Incremental improvements don’t usually require a big investment • Employees take ownership • Improvement is reflective • Improvement is measurable

10. If you step on a Lego… Change it…

11. How do we do it? 1. Understand the Direction, so you know where you are going 2. Grasp the Current Condition, to get your reference point 3. Establish the Next Target Condition, that is your next step on the path towards the vision 4. Plan-Do-Check-Act Toward the Target Condition

12. Does the improvement reduce waste? Will the improvement reduce any one of the 7 Wastes of software development: • Task switching • Partially done work • Motion • Waiting • Extra processes • Extra features • Defects Let’s improve

13. Will it make us awesome in any one of these categories that we defined as a team? • People • Process • Technology

15. How do we do make it part of daily work? Step 1: Plan • Identify the problems during the retrospective • Dot vote on the biggest pain point • Discuss the current situation • Determine the root cause • Provide solutions • Categorize solutions on the impact implementation matrix

16. How do we do make it part of daily work? Step 2: Do • Add initiative in JIRA “By doing this we expect the following” • Assign a champion • Add sub-tasks • Implement the POC

17. How do we do make it part of daily work? Step 3: Check • Present the results at the next retrospective • See if the fix applied resolved the problem by comparing the results with the expectation

18. How do we do make it part of daily work? Step 4: Act • Fine-tune the fix to continuously improve

19. Build your own reality one block at a time… It starts with you!