A3 Thinking forSolving Complex

Problems

and Evolutionary ChangeAlexei Zheglov | November 2013

@az1#lkce13

TO

Waterloo

The Limited WIP Society of KWCG

…I know it’s been tough. Listen, I can send you a good Agile coach to moderate this difficult sprint retrospective…

The Agile Retrospective Trojan Horse

Three RCA (root cause analysis) reports

Three Incidents

Three RCA (root cause analysis) reports

Three Incidents

Really???

• Continuous improvement

• Respect for people

Unknown unknown

Incident

Known unknown

RCA

Known known

Unknown unknown

Incident

Known unknown

RCA

Known known

Who cares?

LeanMemes.com. Created by @Kaizeneer

Rediscover the Purpose

$$,$$$,$$$

≠≠

“root cause”

incident

customer purposeproblem

Is your System 2talking to my System 1?

The Investigation Trail

The Processes and Improvement Methods

TRIBES

Tribal Security

Tribal Dimension 4:Tribes act to secure their

self-preservationif their security is under

threat

Tribal Attribute 11:A strong tribe developsit’s own unque language Tribal Attribute 19:

A strong tribe celebrates and cares for the skills, tools and implements required its prosperity

Tribal Attributes

Find more at greatbossdeadboss.com

Create a Bigger Tribe

ShuttleDiplomacy

Go and See

Shuttle Diplomacy

BiggerTribe

Problem as a Gap

Target and Theme

Downtime – what’s that?

Work with Existing Culture

…but we’ve got KPIs in place already to measure performance of each department…

…but we’ve got metrics already to calculate SLA credits owed to each client…

What Is Downtime?

NOC KPI

Client 1 SLA

Client 2 SLA

Client 3 SLA

We agreed on this temporary metric to measure the closing gap

Strong Opening “Why”

PLAN

STUDY

ACT

DO

No jumping to solutions

“If I had only one hour to save the world, I would spend 55 (59?) minutes defining the problem and only 5 minutes (1?) finding the solution.”

attributed to Albert Einstein

No jumping to problems!

A3 Thinking Meets The Improvement Kata

A3

A3 A3

A3

Vision

Current Condition

Challenge

Target Condition

A3 ?

A3 ?

A3 ?

Grasp the current condition – how?

Establish the next Target Condition –

how?

What is a good

Challenge?

The Improvement Horizon

The Improvement Horizon

EvenBiggerTribe

How many Countermeasures do we really need?

Why are the Indicators important?

Ord

ere

dU

nord

ere

d

Expert analysis-driven

Feedback-driven

PLAN

STUDY

ACT

DO

STUDY

Hypothesis: Pursuing the Action Plan to implement the Countermeasures will solve the problem.

the scientific test

Current condition

Target (date)

Changing the Current Condition Changes a Lot!

Problem (gap)

Analysis (5 whys)

Countermeasures Feasibility ofcountermeasures

Action plan

• Current condition?• What is the problem?• Target condition? Theme?• Analysis (five whys)?• Counter-measures?• Action Plan? Indicators?

Domain of Expert Analysis:

Domain ofSafe-to-Fail Experiments:

An A3 filled in entirely by expert analysis may be unsafe!

“…[a] partially completed A3 as the basis for discussions. This is tremendously powerful in interdepartmental situations where people may speak different lingo and have different perspectives.”

Durward K. Sobek II

Art Smalley

Emergent alignment

Expert analysis

continually tested for fitness

The Fitness Test

A Method Without Methodology?

Bring your own boxes and arrows

Is A3 Thinking Like Water?

A3Thinker.com

http://www.slideshare.net/cperrone/a3-kaizen-heres-howhttp://www.slideshare.net/HkanForss/stop-doing-retrospective-and-start-your-toyota-kata

Follow

• Claudio Perrone• David J. Anderson• Stephen Parry• Håkan Forss• Yuval Yeret• Jabe Bloom

The End (of the Presentation)

Email: alex@leanatoz.comLinkedIn: Alexei ZheglovTwitter: @az1Blog: learningagileandlean.wordpress.com

Image Credits• Human evolution. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Human_evolution.svg (CC BY-SA 3.0)• Cynefin framework: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cynefin_framework_Feb_2011.jpeg (CC BY 2.0)• Battlestar Galactica http://www.moddb.com/groups/space-ship-addicts/images/battlestar-galactica-ships

(CC)• Greek temple pillars, source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/isawnyu/5456498539/ (CC BY 2.0)• Tribal ritual: http://www.flickr.com/photos/64749744@N00/8403452/ (CC)• Large Tribe: http://www.flickr.com/photos/75348994@N00/8519730788/ (CC)• Hunting spears: http://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/6348543 (CC)• Car in repair shop: http://relationshipmarketingalchemy.com/alfetta-18&page=3 (CC BY 2.0)• Flock of geese: http://www.freefoto.com/download/9910-12-2210/Sunset-With-Passing-Flock-Of-Geese

(CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)• Water flowing around a rock: http://

commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rocks-Water-flow-Stream_ForestWander.JPG (CC)• Marine fitness test: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Marine_Corps_Physical_Fitness_Test (CC)• All book covers: fair use