Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Javapolis Sessions

Here are the full abstracts for my two official Javapolis conference sessions…

UNI: (Monday 10 December) The Zen of Agile Management

What is the essence of agile management? How do you create a culture of continuous improvement? With light touch, empowerment, delegation, high levels of trust, and focus on the correct leverage point to drive maximum advantage. Learn the Zen of agile management! A set of techniques developed by David J. Anderson over the last 8 years through his experience managing teams at Fortune 100 companies such as Motorola and Sprint using Feature Driven Development, Microsoft Solutions Framework (and Team Foundation Server) and his latest work at Corbis using Lean ideas such as kanban. This half-day workshop dives into the heart of how to manage with queues using kanban boards, cumulative flow diagrams and application of wider ideas in management science, to software development process. Through David’s experience as senior director of the software engineering function at Bill Gates’ private company, Corbis, you will learn how to scale Agile and Lean techniques enterprise-wide.

CONF: (Friday 14 December) A Kanban System for Software Engineering

Ideas from Lean Thinking have been growing in popularity with the Agile software development community. Over the past year, the use of kanban (literally signal cards) popular in manufacturing has been seen as the significant innovation in managing agile work and is growing in adoption at firms such as Yahoo! David Anderson introduced the first electronic kanban system at Microsoft in 2004 and has since extended the technique through his work at Corbis. Kanban acts to limit work-in-progress and focus the team on achieving a continuous flow of value to the customer. Kanban innovates on accepted agile management practice by providing an iteration-less process with a regular release cadence. It helps achieve a balance of demand against capacity on the team and eliminate multi-tasking. David will present a brief history of the technique through case study reports from teams at Microsoft and Corbis. The kanban system enables David to deliver on his Recipe for Success: focus on quality; reduce work-in-progress; balance demand against throughput; and prioritize. Technorati tag: Agile, David+Anderson, Agile+Management, Javapolis, Kanban, Software+Engineering

Monday, October 29, 2007

XPUG Belgium - BOF at Javapolis

On the first day of Javapolis, I’ll be giving a BOF session in the evening for the XP Users Group in Belgium. The session is scheduled from 19:00 to 22:00 so hopefully I’ll still be awake as the jetlag should surely be kicking in by then. Perhaps the XPUG guys can bring some Red Bull? As we’re using a BOF room at the conference, anyone attending Javapolis will be welcome. I’m deliberately presenting different material than the main conference. So for the first time, I’ll be publicly talking about trust and collaboration and how to build it in your organization. I’ve been researching this for the past couple of years. And I hope to put my thoughts in to a coherent presentation and test it with the audience in Belgium. Hope to see some of you there… [Register for the event]

Building a High Trust Culture in you Software Engineering Organization

If the essence of agile development is rooted in high levels of trust, how do you set about creating a high trust culture? When so much of what you and your team may have experienced in their career is based in an assumption of low levels of trust - contract negotiation, audit, finger pointing and blame, how do you set about reversing that and building a high trust culture?

What is trust? How do you build trust between individuals and is it possible to build trust between teams and across organizations? What are the benefits of high levels of trust? And why trust is essential if your agile and Lean organization is to be enduring and “built to last”?

David Anderson will present for the first time, his extensive research on trust and collaboration and map his learning with his own experience as a manager of software engineering departments using agile and Lean techniques over the last 8 years. Technorati tag: Agile, David+Anderson, Agile+Management, Javapolis, Software+Engineering, Extreme+Programming

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Yahoo! Speaker Series

I didn’t say anything publicly in advance as it was a private visit I made last week to Yahoo! However, Aaron Sanders has blogged about my Speaker Series presentation on kanban and leading cultural change at Corbis. So I thought I’d share his thoughts with a wider audience.

[Update] Aaron has posted the videos he and Orion Auld shot while I was there. Enjoy…

Driving Cultural Change with Kanban Part 1 and Part 2 (about 1 hour each) Technorati tag: Lean, David+Anderson, Agile, Kanban

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Optimizing Painting Booths

In, Agent Technology: Painting Trucks at GM, the folks at Cutter demonstrate how software agent technology can be used to automate empowerment to the shop floor (quite literally the machine without human decision making). The agent’s bidding algorithm effectively eliminates potential waste in the painting booth and minimizes lead times for painting by accounting for the transaction costs of any one paint job. If the paint booths were a constraint then the agents would be exploiting the constraint in an optimal fashion (assuming the algorithm is correct.) This is an example of how modern computer science (not software engineering) techniques can be used to deliver on a Lean or Constraints Management solution. Technorati tag: Lean, Automotive, Software+Engineering, Computer+Science

Monday, October 22, 2007

Bypassing Hubs - where is the constraint in the long haul airline industry?

I really liked this article, The Giant on the Runway, in last week’s Economist. While the locals here is Seattle can take some pride that Boeing appears to have pulled one over on rival Airbus with its 787 Dreamliner model, and its lean manufacturing capabilities that see huge aircraft assembled on a moving line, greatly reducing WIP inventory and lead times, mean that it isn’t just the cheap currency that make the Boeing planes more competitive. The article in the Economist gets at something deeper - the guess work required to predict the future constraints on the long haul airline business and how best to exploit it. Make sure to read down to the section titled, Bypassing Hubs starting…

Boeing believes that a combination of airline deregulation and the popularity of heavy-twin aircraft have changed long-haul flying for good. Instead of the hub-and-spoke system, in which passengers flew in 747s to big hub airports and then took short-haul flights to their final destination, Boeing says that passengers now want the convenience of flying point-to-point and that smaller long-haul planes make it both possible and economical for them to do so. As evidence, Boeing points to the drying-up of orders for passenger versions of the 747.

The following paragraphs go on to debate the cost-accounting efficiency model that clearly guides the strategic planning at Airbus. And we are offered a debate about point-to-point heavy twins versus the hub-and-spoke model that started with the 747 and Airbus believes can be further enhanced with the A380.

If Airbus are to win then the constraints have to be air traffic control systems limiting expansion at more airports, environmental concerns and physical constraints limiting growth of runways and takeoff slots at major hubs, and perhaps the number of qualified pilots. Airbus would exploit the constraint by simply flying a bigger aircraft - the A380. This allows more passengers to pass through the constraint. The exploitation mechanism is a bigger batch transfer. It allows more people to fly without more runways or takeoff slots. It is also efficient from a cost-accounting perspective and drives a lower cost per passenger mile.

However, those of us who’ve been paying attention to the Lean revolution that is quietly dominating businesses well beyond automotive manufacture, may recognize Boeing’s strategy. Boeing’s approach is Lean - based on smaller batch transfers with smaller aircraft, and direct flights between traditionally secondary airports and minor hubs. Rather than overload hub airports it assumes that the correct exploitation strategy is to avoid the hub altogether. It might produce higher cost per passenger mile numbers but you can’t help wondering - will the ever more wealthy customer be prepared to pay more for a better experience based on direct flights over the next 40 years? Isn’t it trip lead time that ultimately defines the airline industry? How much are you prepared to pay to fly direct? Recently I paid almost 50% more just to fly direct from Seattle to D.C.!

My money’s on Boeing! Technorati tag: Lean, Aerospace