R Rajesh - Benchmark Six Sigma Forum (2024)

The Paradox of Excellence

R Rajesh replied to Vishwadeep Khatri's question in We ask and you answer! The best answer wins!

Definition of 'Excellence' : As per Oxford dictionary the meaning is "Quality of being very good" Definition of Paradox: A Cambridge dictionary meaning of that is "Seeming impossible or difficult to understand because of containing two opposite facts or characteristics. What is about this "Paradox of Excellence": “The Paradox of Excellence”, is a book written by David Mosby and Michael Weissman. The general norm is that when an organization provides a superior performance/service to its customers, there is supposed to be a high customer loyalty and an increased brand value. But the reality often is different: The superior performance/service of the organization is taken for granted and undervalued by the marketplace. This makes the organization cold-faced many a times and can make their reputation damaged and can bring down their business to a loss as well Adverse Effects (due to the 'Paradox of Excellence' phenomenon) on the excellence journey of an Organization: 1. Customer (over)Expectation not met: Human beings go by beliefs. If an organization is providing consistently a good performance/service, people will go with that belief and expect that to be the same always, irrespective of the situation. Does it sound odd ? No. Think of Kano Model where "Delighters" category goes to Basic(Must have) expectation, over a period of time. For instance, you are being served a juice every 2 hrs on a flight from Chennai to San-Francisco journey, say on two occasions. Next time when you board the same flight operator, and go from Chennai to Dubai (which is probably say approx. 1/4th of the travel time to Chennai-San-Francisco distance) you would still expect multiple juices to be given to you!! That is because of the high expectation you had, as prior experience with the flight operator. There could be such experiences other passengers might have with that same flight operator. Not every time organizations can necessarily meet the customer expectations 2. Reputation Loss/Brand Image impacted: Understanding customer expectation is the key. If that is not understand then organization will have its brand/reputation impacted. An organization may not be even aware of the expectation that its customers have on it. That can be much more damaging. 3. Loss of Customer Confidence/Customer Dissatisfaction: Delaying to meet the customer expectation or not understanding that, can result in customer dissatisfaction and customer getting frustrated and loosing confidence and shying away from the organization's services/products 4. Potential Employee Disengagement: When employees are not engaged properly, there can be a slow but steady decline of performance/service degradation. Remedial Measures: 1. Retrospect: Do a retrospection as where the gap is and see if there is any trend if there are multiple feedbacks. Try to understand the nature of the problem and include right stakeholders to discuss on the issues observed. Come out with relevant action item(s) and implement them as per priority with a SMART approach 2. Employee Engagement: A key stakeholder in any organization is people (the workforce) who can shape or make a product!! If employees can be satisfied, then every change is possible!! Happiness index of the employees is therefore a key metric for the success of an organization. Therefore getting the employee feedback/ideas/challenges.. can help in overcoming challenges. 3. Continuous Improvement: Finding ways to improve the existing product/processes that have helped in achieving the customer satisfaction(during the past). Experiment with some ideas, inspect if that works and adapt your system/process accordingly. Example: While telecasting Cricket, the technology got improved day-by-day and year-by-year. As more and more cameras got placed at various vantage points on the ground, the expectation amongst the fans(the 'customers' for the game) grew up for the technology to show right-decisions to help the standing umpires. There was a challenge when close run-outs and faint edges came into picture, which those cameras could not pick, in several cases. So the Cricket governing body (ICC) latched on to a new technology - Decision Referral System(DRS),that helped the third umpire to provide a more closer look and improved the right decisions on close runouts and faint edges. The expectation only increased from the customers(fans). Still few other challenges remained. Getting prompt LBW and how about hair-line decision of runouts. So, the ball tracking technology came to decide whether a batter is out or not. Then for hair-line runouts, as soon as a bail lifts from the stumps, the LED light would display. So these technologies ensured that right decisions always given to the maximum hilt. This is what the fans wanted!! With continuous improvement, the ICC has been able to address their customers' expectations and therefore sustain its performance/service. 4. Customer Feedback: 1. Getting feedback from customer after a service is done is always a good option to understand customer pain points, emotions, mindset 2. For Key customers, focused interviews, face-to-face meet.. can be better Having the customer feedback can provide great insights for the betterment of the service/performance provided by the organization, to its customers 5. Knowing USP: An organization has to see how it can further leverage its Unique Selling Proposition(USP). Accordingly it has to harness its strength. It also should try to see how to expand its business on that area to see if that can put a positive spin on addressing customer expectation. Conclusion: As a Six Sigma BB consultant, this can be a perfect situation to help an organization facing this sort of challenges. Understand the issues. Decide upon if the problem is perennial (if the organization is suffering for quite some time). If this current process/setup cannot be improved upon, then go for DMADV/DMADOV, Else DMAIC. As we seen, it is essential to understand the implicit and explicit expectations of the customers and address them at the earliest possible time to avoid the ignominy of not meeting customer expectation Reference: https://scottpublicrelations.com/the-paradox-of-excellence-high-performance-low-respect/

SIDDHESHWAR JANGID started following R Rajesh July 22

80/20 Rule

R Rajesh replied to Vishwadeep Khatri's question in We ask and you answer! The best answer wins!

The Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto stated that 80% of the wealth of Italy was owned by 20% of the population of Italy. IMHO, this became such a hit that the thought leaders cutting across many industries, started applying this in a business context, as a rule and proclaimed that 80% of the issues/problems in their ecosystem, are created by 20% of the causes. The idea was not to proclaim the exact numbers or percentage. But to portray the fact that the majority of the issues/problems are created by few of the major causes. That's how the 80/20 rule is applied in the business context. Conclusion: In reality, this is how the pattern looks in a typical data distribution Reference Link: Wikipedia.org (for ascertaining the actual fact)

Specification Limits

R Rajesh replied to Vishwadeep Khatri's question in We ask and you answer! The best answer wins!

I strongly believe there are exceptions to the belief that "Process Improvements do not result in a change in Specification limit". Let me explain this, with a couple of examples: Imagine a software team developing a product. The team is doing unit testing manually. Soon, the team decides to have automation testing and proceeds with that. This is certainly a Process Improvement that is happening because this will have - a reduced manual effort from the developer, quick identification of issues, easy repetitiveness of testing(all scenarios and with different set of data), improved development cycle time,etc.... As soon as there is an automation testing(Process Improvement) involved, the customer may talk about 'Code Coverage'. The customer might say that 'Code Coverage' should be 80-85% which is your customer specification limits for your 'Code Coverage'. As your automation process gets more mature, the customer might be forced to change it a more rigorous Specification limit say to >=95% (lower limit). Therefore it is possible that doing the Process Improvement can result in changing the Specification limits. Another Example with a different flavour that i want to highlight: Consider 'Definition of Done'(abbreviated as DOD) in a Scrum environment. DOD is akin to being a quality checklist. When a product backlog item (a simple explanation - that can capture a product requirement) is to be considered as 'Complete', it has to meet the DOD [For eg, in a software product development, the DOD may have steps that can be like say coding, peer-reviewing, unit testing, system and integration testing, pre-prod testing and deployment...] While the DOD is owned either by the Scrum team or by the organization that develops the product(service providers), the customer who also may be part of the Scrum Team(say a Product Owner) can have a say in the DOD. Now the steps in the DOD are like the Specification limits. Imagine(a hypothetical scenario) Now that you have a Continuous Integration process, which is usually capable of automating your process till your Code is put in the Quality Assurance(QA) environment(if there is one such environment or any environment where all kinds of testing can happen) where functional testers would be able to test your code and afterwards the code will be manually deployed to say a pre-production environment and tested and then it is manually deployed to Production. Assume the customer says that the Specification limit for deploying all product backlog items(chosen In a Sprint) is 3-5 days (1 week Sprint). Now after some time, the team gets matured process-wise and technolgy-wise and implements DevOps pipeline and exhibits CI-CD Process Improvement. They first do the Continuos Delivery part in the CD Section. Now the automation gets extended from QA environment till the pre-production environment. This is a Process Improvement from manual to automatic. Now the customer revises the Specification limit and set the limits to <=3 days. Now again the team works on the second part of CD section - Continuous Deployment. This will ensure the deployment from pre-production to Production automatic. The customer now again changes the Specification limits to <=1 day. Thus it becomes possible to change the Specification limits due to process Improvement Conclusion: We have seen with couple of examples that how it's also possible that making Process Improvements can result in a change of Specification limits.

Risk Priority Number

R Rajesh replied to Vishwadeep Khatri's question in We ask and you answer! The best answer wins!

A RPN score of 1000 means that all the three parameters of Severity, Occurrence and Detection need to be at the maximum. That means a catastrophic failure of or on something has to happen, that cannot be detected or very difficult to detect and it will happen routinely. Imagine if this can happen in the current world with all the technology development and Infrastructure!! Let us try how things could have been in the past for some of the below scenarios, that probably could have their RPN as 1000 1. Volcano Eruption 2. Wars due to differing ideologies... 3. Viral diseases Let's take the example of Volcanic eruption. For Volcanic eruptions, people never knew when a Volcano would erupt. It was always a matter of running for dear life and staying out of sight till the Volcano subsided. Therefore major volcanoes that had a history of frequent eruption and that had the capability of inflicting heavy sorts of damage in any means, were a source for RPN, having a score of 1000. Now with the advent of modern technologies and infrastructure, we would be able to predict the volcanic eruption to a great extent. Because the eruptions can be predicted and tracked,the detection and occurrence are known and hence you may not get a score of 1000 Conclusion: As we saw here, with the advent of modern technologies and sophisticated Infrastructures, every problem/issue or challenge if put under a FMEA may not get a RPN score of 1000. The Severity of the issue may still be there. But the detection of the issue might be easy. or The Severity of the issue might get lowered than what it was. Thus I would conclude by saying IMHO, a RPN score of 1000 may not be possible

Importance of Lean concepts and principles in a transformation program

R Rajesh replied to Vishwadeep Khatri's topic in General Discussions

Lean is a key and versatile approach in any transformation IMHO. Have seen in my experience as how Lean has helped organisations in saving effort, time and cost. Just to point out few examples, Lean principles and concepts play an important role in the agile world today. Scrum has rewritten it's framework (it says Scrum is based on Empiricism and Lean Thinking from being 'Empiricism based' in its previous version). Scrum is one of the most popular agile frameworks used by teams. The fundamental aspect of SAFe (one of the most popular scaled agile models at this point of time, used by many large enterprises) is Value Stream Mapping which focuses on waste reduction. SAFe 6.0 has more focus on Lean approach Therefore, every organization (irrespective of the industry that it belongs to) is making effective usage of Lean principles and ways of working.

darryl collins started following R Rajesh August 31, 2021

PEST Analysis

R Rajesh replied to Vishwadeep Khatri's question in We ask and you answer! The best answer wins!

A PEST analysis brings together four environmental scanning perspectives which serve as useful input into an organization’s strategic planning process: Political: This looks at the political stability, war threats, tax related issues, regulatory issues,labour problems etc.,. Economic: This perspective looks at exchange rates, market conditions, inflation factors… Social: This focuses on health indices(factors), demographics, cultural aspects etc.,. Technological: This provides a view at newer technology developments, rate of technological change, technology cost impact etc.,. Eg1 : An Insurance company in USA makes a PEST analysis for implementing its changes in its product. Eg2: Let us see a hypothetical example. In lieu of the upcoming Olympics, a country’s Olympic committee wants to build an Olympic village which will have accommodations for athletes and several new stadiums for playing various sports / games. Let us see with a PEST analysis as how the committee would strategically plan. Conclusion: PEST analysis can be useful for an organisation, in any industry. It helps in providing a holistic approach to the strategy being devised by the organisation. Source: The CERTIFIED Six Sigma Black Belt Handbook (second edition) by T.M.Kubiak and Donald W.Benbow

Change Effectiveness Equation

R Rajesh replied to Vishwadeep Khatri's question in We ask and you answer! The best answer wins!

What is Change Acceleration Process (CAP)? A change management framework with a set of tools to assess the political/strategic/cultural environment in an organisation and plan for action which can eventually decide how much success a change initiative can bring in within the existing operating boundaries. Backdrop (CAP Origin): Jack Welch understood the fact that his company GE was entering an era of constant change and realized the fact that those who adapt to the changes only will be able to survive. Therefore he wanted his team to acquire best practices on change management and come back with a tool kit that can be easy to implement in the organisation. The end result of the exercise was Change Acceleration Process (CAP) Change Effectiveness Equation Jack's team had studied innumerable projects and business initiatives and got quite a handful findings. One such finding was that having a high-quality technical strategy alone is not suffice for getting success. Lack of attention to things like cultural factors can deeply affect a project outcome. The team found this in a hard way. Many a project faced this. This was the time, when the team decided to bring in a formula(read equation) deemed as Change Effectiveness Equation. The equation is determined as follows Quality of the technical strategy * Acceptance of that strategy = Effectiveness of an initiative i.e. Q * A = E, where 'Q' represents Quality, 'A' represents Acceptance and 'E' represents Effectiveness This tells the fact that however superior be the quality of a technical strategy (solution), still it has to be accepted by the people who use or work on it. Else it(strategy/solution) is deemed as a failure which means that the benefit planned for that initiative through that technical strategy cannot be achieved. Let us now see how we can make the mindset change to ensure the 'Acceptance' factor (in the above equation) is obtained, with the help of the CAP model The CAP model This is a 7-step process 1. Leading Change 2. Creating a Shared Need 3. Shaping a vision 4. Mobilizing Commitment 5. Making change last 6. Monitoring process 7. Changing Systems and Structures Let us deeply dwelve on these steps involved in this model. 1. Leading Change - As the name says the leadership team in an organisation should be committed to any initiative being taken. Only with the explicit support and commitment from the leadership team(or management team if you want to call as per your organisation culture :-)) then an initiative can move flow through the hierarchy in the organisation. Otherwise it would be a failure 2. Creating a Shared Need People whom we (as a leader of the initiative) want them to be involved as part of the initiative and whom we think would be using the initiative should be agreeing to the need for this initiative. There has to be a justification as why we are going for a change. The reason for change has to be propagated across these stakeholders at a convenient pace. 3. Shaping a Vision There has to be a clear-cut agenda (vision) and that needs to be shared across and be properly understood by everyone.The resultant state should be observable and measurable in terms of individual behaviour. 4. Mobilizing Commitment After doing the aforementioned steps which includes the commitment from leadership team, your reason for putting this initiative with a proper vision, we try to leverage with an influential strategy to build momentum by roping in with some supporters(those who want to adopt our initiatives/thoughts) to pilot our initiative and then learn from the lessons that the pilot implementation teaches. Because we are dealing the initiatives with the 'supporters' or early adopters, the shortcomings from that pilot work is noted down with a tinge of acceptance (which can be later useful for improving the initiative or the implementation of that-wherever it is failing) 5. Making change last While steps 2,3 and 4 are for making us to adopt to new changes and accelerate towards that, starting from this step till the end step , its all about making the change persistent. Here we tend to take advantage of the gains that we got from our piloted implementations and take the learning and best practices into our wider rollout of our initiative. We get to know what is helping and impeding the initiative and how that can be overcome and also look out for how to integrate our initiative with other existing ones, wherever required 6. Monitoring Process How do we know the initiative that is being brought in newly is working or effective ? Well, there has to be a measurable mechanism for that. Set it up (Own it). Measure and celebrate when it becomes a success. In case it is not measuring upto the expectations, then we need to have the accountability for the lack of progress. 7.Changing Systems and Structures An initiative will make some kind of impact in a business process. When there is a change being made in the business because of this initiative it impacts also the supporting systems and structures, in which the business operates. Therefore, in order to make the initiative a successful one, we need to understand how the systems and the structures get influenced by the initiative. Otherwise, our initiative can become a failure. Let us see some examples of how implementing initiatives through CAP model resulted in unprecedented success 1. Streamlining of 'Continuous Integration' process in Software Development In one of the projects that i was aware of, there was a constant challenge. The developers were not regularly updating the changes that they made on the local workstation(machine). As a result of that, the developed codes grew in size and whenever the developers tried to push their code into the Source Code (version control system for maintaining the various versions of the developed code), there were so many code conflicts and this created software build failures.Moreover, the Continuous integration Server used on the project, Jenkins, provided several reports and it threw lot of coding standards errors Primarily and few critical performance(Memory) errors and all the errors varying from 'low' to 'high' category. The leadership team of the project was worried pretty much and did not have too much control on how to arrest this deteriorating situation at the earliest. Every day the issue was galloping as team kept on developing the code amidst the problems and the woes kept on increasing. Because this was running in managed services mode, the extent of the damage was not fully realized by the customers yet and as such there were no impact to the expected behaviour of the features, but it was a probable question of time that such a thing would happen . I Suggested this CAP approach to the person in charge of the project and it was done as follows and the rest was history :-) ... a. Leading Change: The Group Leader (GL) of the team unanimously agreed to this approach and was wholly committed to this. With the help of a Plasma Screen TV(big size-visible to the whole floor), he made sure that the Jenkins tool's code analysis report is displayed on it, thereby showing the coding standard errors & performance errors for all the files that are developed on a daily basis. This was a big shot in the arm for the initiative owner b. Creating a Shared Need: As the initiative owner (who is a process-savvy person) explained the nitty-gritty of this initiative to the GL, by explaining the proposed steps and how to achieve each one, the GL included the other stakeholders who will help the developers in shaping up this technical journey and all stakeholders such as Technical Architects, senior/key developers,Product Owners and Scrum Masters. The Senior/key developers took this to their respective teams. For implementing the initiative a team was formed with one Technical Architect, 2 developers and a Scrum Master... All of them volunteered themselves to do this activity, apart from their regular work. c. Shaping a vision: It had a straight-forward agenda 1. Improve the Continuous Integration process and ensure developers check in their codes into the version control system (GIT) on a daily basis 2. Minimize the coding standards(Primary) and few critical performance(memory) errors through proper usage of Static Code Analysis tool (which existed in the project but was not utilized effectively). For these 2 things to happen, it depended completely on the mindset of the developers. #1 required changing of the habits of the developers' day-to-day habits (as they have to do check-out or Pulling out of the latest code from GIT and then applying their changes on top of that pulled code and at the end of the day or at a logical point, they need to push or check-in their code into the GIT). #2 required that each developer integrate the static code analysis tool (which will help in proactively identifying coding standard errors and hence will prevent those errors from occurring while the code is compiled) on his/her own. So both these things required a mindset change in developers. These two things were measurable in terms of the number of code conflicts that each developer gets while trying to push or pull the code , in case of #1 and the number of coding standard errors/performance errors that is being thrown when the Jenkins report for code analysis runs for a developer's code (published through the giant plasma screen) in the case of #2. Note, in the case of #1, the more conflicts that a developer gets, the more likely is his/her delay in doing check-out / check-in and adhering to the continuous integration process. d. Mobilizing Commitment: The implementation team had tried to implement these things first in its own sphere of work and implemented it with a fair degree of success. It also identified that displaying the count of coding standards error/performance error for each of the files, along with the name of the developer who had worked on it , was not a great thing to do. Reason was that the report was producing the name based on whoever had worked last in a file. But that developer need not have produced the defect (because the file was there before this process got started and it was throwing all open errors.) So in some instances, the name displayed was not the actual developer who created the defect. This was a lesson learnt for the team. Nevertheless the team became optimistic of taking this initiative to the next level e. Making change last: The implementation team started to showcase the achievements made in the last one month since the initiative was started. It showcased to the senior/key developers first (with a separate session) on how the coding standards errors / performance errors got reduced because of the initiative. Then this was taken to the whole team and then explained in detail as how this can be done effectively. The performance expectation of this initiative was also explained succinctly. By having a proper Continuous Integration process, the team had reduced its build failures and because the software build was integrated with other automation tools like Selenium, all of those tools got regularly triggered. The test case results were also displayed on the big plasma screen f. Monitoring process: As every team in the project started to implement this and each developer started to inculcate this change in his/her DNA, the result was there to be seen in the dashboard created by the team and was very much visible in the giant plasma screen.The coding standards error was very much less and no performance errors and code conflicts were happening very rarely only. g. Changing Systems and Structures: The new codes being developed were not having any errors. But the old codes developed earlier (prior to this initiative start) had lots of errors and had there were too many file dependencies with other systems. So those files had a considerable chunk of code which had to be compliant with standards. Those files in this system and other systems had to be changed as well. The outcome was spectacular. All were changed in 3 months time and the quality of the system was really good in every aspect. The developers were happy to be part of this initiative. The icing on the cake was the CI process that the team had put in place (the team did create a pictorial view of what they had done) became the talk of the town in the entire vertical within the organisation. 2. Let me show another example of how CAP process was done in another project. Agile Transformation for a customer relationship: The projects were running in waterfall model and that had to be transformed to Agile model (Scrum framework). An agile Coach's service was sought to do this transformation. The GL, leading the change, was committed to this cause. The agile coached formed a program transformation vision and developed Key progress indicators (KPIS) which were measurable and also laid out short term and long term agendas as part of this transformation. This was communicated to all relevant stakeholders. The idea was to have transform one line of business (LOB) into the Agile way of working , taking one at a time and then replicate for the rest of the LOBs. Few teams were formed after enlightening them, on the Agile transformation journey. All skepticism and fears were promptly addressed and the teams started to feel the positive impact as development life cycles became short and the interaction within the team and the stakeholders were quick and spontaneous, which was a new thing for many as their earlier model did not have this luxury. This increased the confidence of the teams to reach out to customers and business stakeholders for any business query. As the development cycles were shorter in period, the number of releases to production increased and slowly that line of business started to run using the agile way. This success was achieved relatively quickly and now the management was confident of replicating this in other LOBs. This was replicated in other LOBs as well and in 6 months time, the transformation had been done completely. Because the team had moved to Agile way of working, the team had to change some of the supporting tools that it was using earlier. The requirements were earlier being tracked through word documents and stored in version control systems. But with the introduction of Agile. the team relinquished that and started to use JIRA tool. Suddenly all the huge documentation work that was lying in the existing model was gone and the team now had to do documentation only at a minimal level and the team started to use slack channels for communicating amongst its team members working across the globe rather than doing email communication. Overall this initiative changed the way how the teams thought about software development approach and this transformation was a massive success Benefits of CAP: 1. It shows a systematic approach to make a cultural change in an organisation 2. Because an initiative done through this approach mandates the explicit approval/ commitment of leadership/management team , it gives confidence to the employees that their effort on such an initiative will get the due recognition from the leadership/management and that can help in their career growth 3. A personal feel good factor can occur across the employees when the expected benefit is achieved and when their work gets recognised Conclusion: In real life, every problem that we need to address , we need to take the human factor into account. Every change (read initiative) that we do or plan to do should pass through that 'human' aspect successfully . Else it would be deemed as a failure. CAP model provides a systematic way of doing that. How strong is the leadership/management commitment to the initiative and how clear is our vision and shared need shapes the success of the initiative, to a greater extent. Better they are, better will be the outcome(success). For the sake of understanding more about change management frameworks, similar to CAP, there are other change management frameworks such as John Kotter's 8-step change model which is also akin to this in terms of the implementation steps and that is also pretty useful. References : https://www.isixsigma.com/dictionary/change-acceleration-process-cap/, https://bvonderlinn.wordpress.com/2009/01/25/overview-of-ges-change-acceleration-process-cap/

9 Windows

R Rajesh replied to Vishwadeep Khatri's question in We ask and you answer! The best answer wins!

A 9 Windows tool or technique is defined as a method for exploring issues and their potential impacts by examining the past, present, and future of a System and its Sub and Super systems. It is portrayed in the form of a 3*3 matrix and act as an idea creation tool. How does it work: As we saw in the definition, this explores the issues in the system and its associated Super or sub systems. So what each one means: a. System - The problem or the system in consideration b. Super System - The entity to which the system might be logically or physically connected to or can be correlated to c. Sub System - The constituents(components) of the system or things that could be part of (or associated with) the problem Purpose of the tool: This is akin to what we do in real life. Often we would be doing a self-retrospection after someone gave , say, a very good seminar on a particular topic. We might think "how i wish had done that well last week.This week it was ok and am confident of doing good in the future"... Same way what if something could have been done differently for an issue to get it addressed in the past and in the present and how to address that in the future.. This is what this tool will help you in achieving that Examples: Let us some examples attached here Example1: Nine Windows Matrix: Problem: Over the years, increased Cricket Bat dimensions (size) has given an undue advantage to batsmen Space/Time Past Present Future Super System Group(s) that decided the Cricket rules -Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) Group(s) that influences the Cricket rules- Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) and the group that implements it - International Cricket Council(ICC) Group(s) that influences the Cricket rules - Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) and International Cricket Council (ICC) – ICC Chief Executives committee , ICC Cricket Committee and Associates (Nations) representative committee System Cricket Bat’s impact in pre-80’s era . Batsmen by and large played with wood bats except for few Cricket Bat’s impact in Current Era since 1980s. Lot of batsmen used heavy bats than the stipulated guidelines Batsmen have to follow stringent guidelines as laid out by the Cricket rules Sub System Equipment –Wood usually (Willow wood, Kashmiri wood,…) but there was no specific restrictions (on the type of equipment to be used) till 1979 Bat Length - <=38 inches Bat Width <=4.25 inches Equipment – Willow wood usually and it should be made only in wood Bat Length - Can be bit higher than the usually designated length Bat Width - Can be bit higher than the usually designated length Bat Thickness - Can be bit higher than the usual thickness Equipment – Should be made only in wood Bat Length - <=38 inches Bat Width <=4.25 inches Bat Thickness <= 2.68 inches Bat Edge <= 1.6 inch Example2: Nine Windows Matrix: Problem: For office goers in big cities, precious time is lost due to Traffic snarls, on a daily basis Nine Windows Matrix: Space/Time Past Present Future Super System Limited Transportation Congested Transportation Robust Transportation System Less Vehicle population resulted in less traffic snarls Every day going to office takes time through own or company provided transport, due to heavy Traffic Seamless drive to office with minimal or no hassles. Sub System Less Vehicles Public Transport No special economic zones More Private Vehicles Rapid Urbanisation without adequate supporting infrastructure Clustered Special economic zones Encourage more public transport with good connectivity across places Provide good and sound infrastructure. Have Special Economic Zones in different parts of the city to de-congest traffic’ Encourage hi-fi innovative designs like Flying Car (make the infrastructure available for that) Benefits: 1. Transparency of the problem As we dissect the problem/issue across the systems and at various times using this exercise, we get a distinct representation of how a problem looks/looked like at any given point and what makes/made it to happen. 2. Inspection of the problem (RCA) As we get to know the issue on hand at the past, present and future, we try to see as why it happened, happens and think of how that (issue) can be prevented in the future. By getting to know the RCA or why the issue happened in the past or still happening in the present, we try to explore as what should be done to prevent it in the future. This exercise provides a systematic approach to resolve an issue which can be quite complex in nature and which is adaptive in nature(that which can vary over time) 3.Addressing (Attacking) the problem At each phase of time, we are putting the facts as what we had done, what we are doing and what will / should be we doing.. Based on the kind of solution that we are having at each phase of time(past, present,future), the solution for the subsequent phase gets shaped. The details of each phase might serve as a good input to the subsequent phase and can help (often it can act as a launching pad though not always necessarily) the solution providers to attack the problem with more vigour in the subsequent time phase 4. Continuous Improvement The result of #3 often means that you are improving your systems (with the implementation of those solutions) which is continuous. Thus, doing this exercise will more often than not, be, resulting in a continuous improvement of sorts. Conclusion: This is a wonderful tool/technique for idea generation and is often used in TRIZ, which itself is a powerful technique for problem solving. The technique uses a 3*3 matrix with the kind of systems involved in one axis and the time factor (past, present and future) in another axis and the objective is to see how an issue was/is/will be addressed. How these systems behave over a period of time is portrayed in this exercise, giving a good representation of that evolution References: https://asq.org/quality-resources/nine-windows . Nine Windows Matrix.doc

Merline NDEFO MATCHEME started following R Rajesh June 1, 2021

4-Eyes Principle

R Rajesh replied to Vishwadeep Khatri's question in We ask and you answer! The best answer wins!

4-Eyes Principle : A generic definition says that it can be a rule/requirement/activity by which decisions/business transactions need approval from two individuals. Advantage of 4-Eyes Principle: 1. It gives the confidence that more than one person (atleast two persons) have gone through the activity(can be artifacts/processes or anything) 2. It gives all the stakeholders the comfort on the fact that it was addressed properly since different persons have vetted something 3. It improves the quality of the activity, which is being scrutinized/examined Let us see examples across various sectors Software: In Agile world, there is a technique called 'Pair Programming' which is , i would say a version of 4 eyes. Here, while one developer writes the code, the other does an inline review of the code (and provide valuable inputs) and both will take turns to do these two activities (Coding and reviewing). It has been proven that it improves quality by 150%. Sports: While doing the talent scouting (when looking for the right players to play for their team), often a sports team will take its coach/few key personnel might look for the right players and once they finalize, then the team mgmt (selection board) will take a second look and confirm (even if this happens to be a customary one) Appraisal System: In Many IT companies, this is a prevalent process. The performance of a person(appraisee) is appraised by two persons, the appraiser(immediate supervisor of the appraisee) and the reviewer(appraiser's supervisor). This is to ensure that the performance of the appraisee is rightly evaluated and ensure that no human bias/inadvertent mistake is introduced in the process. Other Examples: 1. How many times, we would have seen in banking or financial sectors with two persons holding key positions, who would verify the transactional details or artifacts and then provide their signatures!! 2. Take DevOps / Business Process Management(BPM) tools - You can see human intervention with machines just to ensure that if machine is treated as one pair of eyes, then human intervention as another. This happens especially in BPM tools thereby stressing on this 4-eye principle. Is this principle, a Value Add or Non Value Add : It depends on the context in which this is being used. As stated in above examples, there are many instances where this principle is a real value add. But there can be some cases where it can be a non-value add or value enablers. Let us see such scenarios. Imagine in an IT company, a product is being developed.The customer is unhappy with the quality of the code being written and that is impacting the performance of the product . The IT service providing company is trying to improve its code review process (which it sees as the root cause for the poor code quality). Earlier it had only a self-review by the developer. Now it is introducing 2 pair of reviews(or 4-eye) which means a self-review and followed by a peer-to-peer or a SME(Subject Matter Expert) review, which will be done by someone within the team. This way the IT company feels, can strengthen the code review process and thereby the product's code quality!! But with respect to the customer, this process improvement does not mean anything as it is internal to the IT company. All the customer needs is a qualitative product. Therefore from that point of view, this is a non value added activity for the customer, whereas this activity(4-eye principle for code review) becomes a value-enabling one for the IT company. So it is the context that decides which activity can be value add, non-value add and value enabler and from whose perspective (Whether the service provider or from customer point of view) also matters. Let us see the same case , with a twist.These are the early days for the project team. The team does not know how to fix this quality issue. The management ropes in a developer(from another team) for 2 weeks, who knows few static code analyser tools which can automatically check the coding standards and suggest best practices and the developer also has knowledge on some design patterns. He parts this knowledge to the team before he leaves. Now every developer does a self-review before he/she builds the code. As soon as the code is built, the static analysis tools get triggered and the developed code undergoes a code review (4-eye principle now enabled). The results are now produced. If there are errors, then the build process is stopped, else it proceeds and build is successfully done. Now the customer is willing to pay for this process because it automates the code review process and quality is built into the system. Where 4-eyes principle may not be more useful? Its practically difficult to use this principle in every situation/scenario. This is what i feel!! To point out a few, 1.It may not be as useful as it may be, where time is a constraint (Eg: When you want to do a hot fix for a production environment issue) 2.When the cost of doing this exercise is more than the expected benefit 3.If the outcome is not sensitive to anyone, why bother verifying with 2 persons Conclusion: 4-eyes principle is an excellent principle which will act as a deterrence for making mistakes, especially human errors.It can be used anywhere where the right outcome (precision, accuracy) is required to the maximum hilt. There can be cases where the use of 4-eyes principle can be a costly affair.But the benefits outweigh the costs in most of the cases. Though it may seem that with the advent of technology, the 4-eyes principle might have lost its sheen, a bit, its not the case. Still human presence is required to oversee the process improvements as we have not completely moved to AI technologies.Earlier , it used be 2 human beings as 2 pair of eyes(4-eyes), now it is a machine and human being (though technically it may not be called as 4-eye) and in the future it could be machine and machine !!

CEDAC

R Rajesh replied to Vishwadeep Khatri's question in We ask and you answer! The best answer wins!

CEDAC denotes Cause and Effect with the Addition of CARDS Dr. Ryuji Fukuda. It is a problem solving tool . It helps in brainstorming the problem by encouraging participants to put forth their ideas and come up with solutions The ideas are written generally through cards or some sort of sticky notes. How does it work: 1. Ideas/Facts given by participants are placed on the left hand side of each of the categories and probable solutions are kept on the right side of each of the categories. 2. A colour code is provided to differentiate solutions and ideas. Let us take a practical example as how this can be made useful. Example1: Imagine a hypothetical scenario. An international cricket match is being played. The batting team management is trying to reason out the situation.The opponent team is asking the Umpire to declare the batsman out. In the above example, amber box highlights the facts and green coloured boxes provide the potential solutions Benefits of CEDAC tool: 1. With a systematic analysis of the problem we will be able to get valuable ideas from which potential solutions can be obtained quickly 2. As this tool supports an inclusive approach (of all participants), more ideas will be generated and there is no bias/favoritism shown, while providing/giving ideas 3. Provides Varying solutions often with Quality (as this is done by people who are actually working on the problem) 4. Can be cost effective and provide rapid potential solutions as problems are displayed on the board and against which solutions are being discussed Conclusion: By using CEDAC, there will be a structured approach in solving a problem. By using this tool, its easy to compare the problems at hand and come up with good and viable solutions at a rapid pace as ideas galore with no restrictions. Reference Site: For definition - https://www.leansixsigmadefinition.com/glossary/cedac/

Morphological Matrix

R Rajesh replied to Vishwadeep Khatri's question in We ask and you answer! The best answer wins!

Morphological Matrix is a good tool for generating a list of ideas and using them as a means to tackle your problem. Often there can be many ideas that can provide various solutions to a problem but we might be lacking the knowledge as how to provide. This is where this tool helps in. What is to be done ? The first step is to define an attribute/characteristic which is vital to influence the problem at handSecond step is to define the values/components for each of the attribute/characteristicThe third step is to randomize the values picked in each of the attribute/characteristic and combine them. This will help in generating a combination of values (ideas) from which we can pick the ideal one(s) that suits as better/best solution to our problems. How to do? All attributes/characteristics are to be kept as the column headers in the matrixPlace the corresponding values of each attribute under(beneath) the respective attribute’s column. Values displayed in one column does not need to have necessarily any correlation with values displayed in other columnsYou can randomize the values in the columns, by any means. You can use a software or by say, rolling a dice, or using same combination of custom defined means…The values that you give in each column can be generic or specific depending upon how you want to classify your ideas or provide your inputs. Benefits of using the tool: As you start jotting values/component under each attribute /characteristic , you tend to generate more ideas and by randomization of the values in each column, you get lot of combinations to tackle your problems.It helps in channelizing (organizing) your thoughts to tackle your problemIt helps in expediting(picking) the right solution(s) to address your problem, from a bunch of ideas Let us see some examples to understand this tool. Example1 – This is purposefully given for easier understanding of the Matrix To explain this concept, let us consider a hypothetical (J) problem: How to get better response/feedback to your article or make your article getting selected as the best answer (to the weekly question posed) that are posted in this site Article Presentation Content Supporting Artefacts/Relevant Examples 1 Business Excellence Forum Question Neat Slightly out of context Quotations from various eminent SMEs/scholars 2 Blog Moderate Highly Relevant No examples or any explanation given 3 Discussion on Topics Inadequate Relevant Provide multiple generic examples that may not portray a direct depiction of the problem 4 Interviews Improper Totally Irrelevant Provide 1 or 2 examples specific to the context Out of these various combinations, one could be, that a question can be answered with a neat presentation with relevance to the context with 1 or 2 examples to that context. Example2: A big IT team in one of the organisations was doing its agile work. It was going good until recently when it had its problems galore. It had a huge backlog of defects, incidents, end user queries/request and some proof of concept (Research kind of) works that need to be addressed quickly by the team. This backlog was an accumulation of all these issues over a period of time (the team could not able to finish the backlog items on time for whatever reasons). Now the team had to fix these issues. It sought the help of other teams as these work was in a managed services mode and the team wanted to leverage the help of other teams internally on this work. The team lead came up with Morphological matrix. She listed out 3 columns (as who can be the persons who are needed) and then listed down the potential helpers under each column. Once that was done, the random options were generated and when the entire random list was obtained, she got a very good idea as who can help on what category of work. Category of Work Developers Technical SMEs Business SMEs 1 Defects Junior Java Developer Solution Architect Experienced developer with very good domain knowledge 2 Proof of Concept (POC) work Senior Java Developer JEE Architect Business Analyst Probationer 3 Incidents Passionate (learning minded) - Junior Developer Enterprise Architect Experienced Business Analyst 4 End User Support Senior Full Stack developer Database Architect Product Manager For example, from the above table, the combination of Passionate Junior developer , JEE Architect and Experienced Business analyst was really helpful for many of the ‘Proof of Concept’ work which essentially was a research-oriented one and with the able guidance of the architect and experienced business analyst, the junior developer was able to go to the full distance to achieve the objective. Passionate people are required for such explorative activities. Same way, the lead was able to take better decisions in arriving at the right ideas and implementing them to tackle her problems. Conclusion: Often we may have a problem, for which there may be some ideas to address them. Sometimes a team may try to find best possible combination using this tool. There could be a scenario where more ideas could be generated and best possible combination(s) might be picked using this tool as per the laid out procedural steps. So what kind of situations, this tool can be used ? This tool can also be more useful when you want to have more ideas generated in a short span of time (which gives you a cushion with many ideas and addresses your problem permanently in the longer run), or say, in a new product or service as you want to have indigenous way of ideas, because of which you can get a foothold in a new market or establish you as a market leader in your industry. Thus here, we have seen how useful this tool has been when there was a problem and we had different ways to address it but how to address that was is a challenge. Then we derived combination of values using which we arrived at solution(s).

Minimum Viable Product

R Rajesh replied to Vishwadeep Khatri's question in We ask and you answer! The best answer wins!

Minimum Viable Product(MVP) - This talks about the essential features/functionalities that can be built into a product or an application. What to be built into aproduct/application depends on customer needs/demands in an existing market. In a new market, customer needs/innovations can decide the minimum viable product. Why MVP is important? You do not create a product/application in a monolithic way but rather produce the product on an incremental way. This ensures that you are building the right productat early stages of the product/application life cycle. The objective is that in case your assumptions about the needs of the customer varies or if the product is not meeting/satisfying customer expectations then this MVP approach gives a chance to quickly resurrect the product development into the right path. It gives early feedback to the business stakeholders, product developers. Products/applications built using agile and/or lean methods naturally tend to use MVP approach because of this. What are the benefits(things that can be accomplished) using MVP approach? 1. Reduced time to market(as minimal features/functionalities only are built into a product) 2. Rapid response to customer needs/demands. 3. Getting early feedback from the market which helps in shaping a better and accepted product/application(system) How to achieve minimum viable product(MVP)? As MVP is all about bringing onto the features/functionality of your product/application, how to decide the minimum viable aspect of a product/application will be the first one. There are several ways. An ideal way is to understand the customer needs by having a survey, focused interview, Questionnaire. Post such a discussion, prioritisation of features/functionalities can be done through techniques like Kano Model , MoSCoW(a popular Agile prioritization technique akin to Kano model,in principle). Conclusion: MVP saves a lot of time because you try to build the right product/application(system) at the first (or every instance when it is an incremental build) and get a rapid feedback thereby ensuring right product/application is produced in quick time.By doing an incremental build, you minimise the inherent defects in your product/application. In order to have rapid deployment of a product/application, building it through a MVP approach results in an incremental build at a shorter cycle - say Sprint or Iteration (in agile terminology). This gives focused attention on the product/application, qualitative product/application and the right product/application to the customer

Planning Poker

R Rajesh replied to Vishwadeep Khatri's question in We ask and you answer! The best answer wins!

Poker Planning is a consensus based popular agile estimating technique.It is used for estimating agile development work. This is highly used while sizing(estimating) the Product Backlog items(PBI-say requirements often conceived as user stories) How does it work: A set of planning poker cards are used for estimation. Each card has a value printed on the card. The values(numbers) displayed on the cards usually is made up of Fibonnaci series...0,1,2,3,5,8,13,20,40,100 (up until the value of '13') and beyond that it will be specifically have a value of '20', '40' and '100'. The values indicate the size of the story. Size of the story will be determined by Effort, complexity,Uncertainity. So beyond the value of '13', most organisations do not try to size a story. Beyond '13', it is too big to complete a PBI within an iteration/sprint. Therefore, rather than using a fibonnaci series as a value, the values -'20','40','100' are used. Poker Planning can be used for PBIs sizing (Where it may involve the entire scrum team) and also for sizing PBIs in sizing PBIs in a given sprint/iteration (where PBIs are refined and where Dev Team would be predominantly involved in estimation unless there are some outstanding queries which require Product Owner' help) Let us take an example of how this poker planning works in a Sprint/Iteration planning. During Sprint/Iteration planning, after first part of the planning is done(when the scrum/agile team picks the right amount of work), in the second part of planning, the team does the estimation on each PBI. Everyone in the development team does the estimation using Poker Planning. The Dev team discusses the PBI and once done, estimation process starts and 1 minute is normally used (or when all concur to show their cards). Every developer will choose one of the cards based on his/her understanding of the complexity of the PBI. The developer retains his/her privacy of the card(as what he chose). Once the time is up, all flip their cards and show their chosen values. If all of the developers choose same value, then that value becomes estimate for the chosen PBI. If there are discrepancy in values, it is being discussed and if required, another round of poker planning is done. In a team of 5, if 3 developers agree for a common value (say '8') and 2 developers have a low (say '3')and high value (say '13') respectively then there will be a discussion on the basis for such extremmes so that proper consensus reached. For all PBIs , this exercise is repeated until there is no item left Advantage of Poker Planning: 1. It takes a consensus from the entire team (Dev/Scrum team) 2. It is a better scientific approach and involves data on complexity, effort and uncertainty 3. Estimation techniques like analogous estimation , expert judgement require past projects experience or expertise. This is about the using of collective wisdom 4. Because it is input obtained from various cross-skiled persons, it eliminates bias and there is more accuracy Conclusion: Poker Planning serves as a great estimation technique. Because of the advantage that it has, it is used widely in the software industry

PICK Chart

R Rajesh replied to Vishwadeep Khatri's question in We ask and you answer! The best answer wins!

Wiki Definition: A Pick chart is a Lean Six Sigma tool, developed by Lockheed Martin, for organizing process improvement ideas and categorizing them Pick chart is a 2*2 matrix in which the vertical axis talks about the complexity/difficulty and horizontal axis talks about cost benefits. Easy Payoff Low Payoff Hard Possible Implement Hard Kill Challenge What does each of the Quadrant means? Possible – Low payoff, easy to doImplement – High pay off, easy to doKill – Low payoff, hard to doChallenge – High payoff, hard to doHow is it useful: Pick chart is pretty useful when there are many process improvement or problem solving ideas and we want to categorize them as per the 4 aforementioned quadrants. This will give an insight to the mgmt of an organisation where each idea is vis-à-vis its ROI and how much impact it can have on the organisation’s customer(s). Let us see what each of these quadrants means to an idea Possible: An Idea placed in this quadrant means that it (idea) will take less time to complete, either due to less complexity or less difficulty level, and implementation of the idea would result in a lesser ROI. Implement: An Idea placed in this quadrant, means that it (idea) will take less time to complete, either due to less complexity or less difficulty level, and implementation of the idea would result in a greater ROI. Kill: An Idea placed in this quadrant means that it (idea) will take more time to complete, either due to more complexity or more difficulty level, and implementation of the idea would result in a lesser ROI Challenge: An Idea placed in this quadrant means that it (idea) will take more time to complete, either due to more complexity or more difficulty level, and implementation of the idea would result in a greater ROI. Let us see examples for each of these quadrants. Examples: Let me provide examples from software industry. Possible: Imagine an excel sheet is used for PMO activities. Now a person with a VBA(a microsoft application language that can be used for MS products such as excel and actually good for writing macros) knowledge, writes a few lines of code and automates programatically some of the complex things in that excel in a short span of time. This speeds up the work for the PMO team and gives the customer a fool proof mechanism to look at the cost sheet and saves some time for all the stakeholders. Nothing more than that Implement: Imagine development team tinkers with an existing licensed automation testing or a custom automation framework to an open sourced automation framework which is relatively easier to do (than creating automation environment from scratch) and provides the customer a cost effective, end customer satisfying solution. Kill: Imagine development team does refactoring of an existing code which can help the support (maintenance) team to easily maintain the code in the future but does not provide any great tangible benefits/hard savings for the customer Challenge: Imagine a typical agile development team improves its unit testing, functional testing from being manual to automated testing. This will expedite the testing time of the application and can issues can be quickly found and addressed. This will result in more tangible benefits for the customer Conclusion: The examples given are just hypothetical to drive home the point as what each quadrant could have as ideas. (Same) Examples given above can go into different quadrants depending upon several parameters. Thus you can see how PICK charts help in categorizing the process improvement ideas.

Scrumban

R Rajesh replied to Vishwadeep Khatri's question in We ask and you answer! The best answer wins!

Let us see some definitions for Scrum and Kanban from the official site of Scrum guide and few other good sites for Kanban Scrum: It is a framework for developing, delivering, and sustaining complex products. Kanban: Kanban (whose meaning is signboard or billboard in Japanese) originally was used as a scheduling system for lean manufacturing and just-in-time manufacturing (JIT) used to improve manufacturing efficiency by limiting supplies and resources to what was needed for the immediate task. As Kanban usage is spread across industries, it has become ubiquitous. From an agile perspective, Kanban is a continuous workflow management method designed to help in visualizing the process and the actual work passing through that process ScrumBan : Wiki definition: Scrumban is an Agile management methodology describing hybrids of Scrum and Kanban and was originally designed as a way to transition from Scrum to Kanban. Before we go into details of the why we need ScrumBan, let us see some fundamental characteristics of Scrum and Kanban and where they are stand with each other and how combining their characteristics (ScrumBan) could be beneficial Salient features of Scrum: 1. Scrum is based on Empiricism which relies on Transparency, Inspection and adaptation 2. Scrum uses inspect and adapt techniques to find if any deviation is there from the required levels of expectation. If there is a deviation, then the relevant team needs to adapt to doing the course correction 3. Scrum is a prescriptive framework. It tells what to do and does not tell the 'how' part and leaves the implementation to its users 4. Scrum is a process framework that has some well defined rules and time-boxed events and few roles. The Container event called 'Sprint' is also time-boxed. 5. Scrum is transparent and as a result it ensures work completion by having a definition for that (using 'Definition of Done'- a key aspect) Salient features of Kanban: 1. Visualization of the workflow 2. WIP Limit - which will limit the team to work only items which are in progress and thereby avoid overburdening 3. Workflow management - By having a smooth workflow and ensuring minimal average cycle 4. Continuous Process improvement - Review the effectiveness of the defined Processes and update them wherever required 5. Continuous Feedback and collaboration mechanism - Have a proper feedback system (like daily scrum call or scrum of scrum call) to provide the knowledge gained in the system and with respect to collaboration, share the views with everyone. Scrum Kanban Every Sprint will have a specific goal Here primary goal is to achieve continuous flow There are pre-defined clear cut roles (Development Team, Scrum Master and Product Owner) There are no such clear cut roles It runs on Empiricism It dwells on Visual workflow and WIP limit Velocity is a key metric Cycle Time is a key metric WIP Limit is not a mandatory It operates on WIP Limit Why do we need ScrumBan or what are the benefits of ScrumBan: Let us now see as how ScrumBan could benefit large Agile teams . Scrum being a prescriptive framework does not provide/tell any answers to some of the problems that a team which practices Scrum might face. Eg: In the case of an IT team, the team might have issue with a junior developer who lacks technical knowledge and he is not productive and this is hampering the team's overall delivery. Imagine the team is wondering how to resolve that . In such a case if the project is being run in Extremme programming(another Agile way of doing a project) then it would have team members of the project to do pair programming and do automation as part of its manifesto. But Scrum is lenient and does not emphasize anything like that. Remember the fact that as scrum does not tell about the 'how' part, we have the liberty to use anything without breaking the rules that govern the scrum framework. This is where a technique like Kanban can be used inside the Scrum framework to leverage its process improvement benefits. So let us see as how using the hybrid version, ScrumBan - the combination of Scrum and Kanban, we can get the benefits Benefits: 1. Using Scrum aspect will ensure that system is capable of addressing robust changes , where changes(requirements) are captured in with a proper priority plan 2. Using Scrum events which helps in inspecting and adapting the work, the progress of the work items can be measured and the status of each item can be identified as per that . That will identify the potential bottlenecks . This could point to the workflow movement in the Kanban board and can inform the probable risks / impediments to the customer management 3. Using Scrum Retrospective event in conjunction with Kanban effectively ensures that not only process for workflow improvement but also for process for tools, people, technology can be improved 4. Using Kanban's WIP limit can result in taking limited amount of work items (usually in the form of user stories for a typical IT Scrum project :-) ) and ensuring that you are on achieving to complete your items without overburdening yourselves and complete it on the time-boxed duration. WIP limit gives an opportunity to stay focussed as a team to complete the items that we pick (as a team) and then proceed to the subsequent items and then complete the iteration. It ensures that the planned goal/objective for that iteration(Sprint) is achieved. 5. For day-to day operations/maintenance activities, WIP limit in conjunction with Daily Scrum call can be quite effective[as daily scrum will be useful to see work progress and reassess the situation every 24 hours and WIP limit will set the work item limitation for working on that day] Conclusion: Agile as a way of project management has evolved a lot since its origin. The fact is that it has incorporated lot of lean principles into its scheme of things which is good news for all of its practitioners. ScrumBan is one such technique. This is not the only one though . SAFe is one framework which is being used at Enterprise level by large organisations. SAFe provides a clean structure having at Team level, Program level and Portfolio level and is highly lean oriented in its approach. So i personally feel that based on an organisation's size and its feasibility to operate in a given technique (in every sense) and its passion, knowledge and willingness to change itself to the technique, these techniques are being practised upon by those organisations. References: https://kanbanize.com/blog/kanban-vs-scrum-infographic/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrumban https://www.guru99.com/scrum-vs-kanban.html https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html(For Scrum Definition)