Metrics
Derek Huether
Most Important Metric for an Enterprise

As an executive, you will be faced with the choice to do the pivot (if you can) or persevere (if you have no other choice). This will lead to a series of “bets”. You lead with a hypothesis that the things you change will allow you to operate at pre-event levels. But, how long will it actually take for you to validate your hypothesis and have a bet pay off with pre-event levels? If you run out of time to figure it out or run out of bets you can place, then you either lose your standing in the market or worse risk going out of business.

Derek Huether
How to identify dependencies with Tableau and ...

Regardless of the organization or institution, there will always be dependencies. The larger the organization, the greater chance of the existence of dependencies.
This template is available for download from Tableau Public

Video
Derek Huether
Value Stream Management

In the following interview (both video and audio), Dave Prior and I explore why Value Stream Management is so important, how it works, the connection to Value Stream Mapping, and how you can get started with it.

Derek Huether
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Key performance indicators (KPIs) are metrics that are used to evaluate the performance of an organization or individual. They are used to measure progress towards achieving specific goals or objectives and to determine whether an organization or individual is meeting their targets.

Enterprise Insights, Jira Align, Metrics, Tableau
Derek Huether
How Atlassian Jira Align Supports Flow Metrics

I keep getting asked, does Jira Align support Flow Metrics, as defined in the Flow Framework and SAFe? The short answer is yes. If you believe these metrics will help unlock the potential of your teams, use this community post to see working examples of Tableau reports I have created using Jira Align and Enterprise Insights.

How Atlassian Jira Align Supports Flow Metrics

Six Sigma

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PICK Charts and Kaizen

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I'll admit, I'm no Lean Six Sigma Black Belt.  But as I was sitting in a management meeting the other day, I was impressed by a vendor's Operations Manager, who was being touted as one.  The vendor has been running into some issues at the SOC (Systems Operations Center).  We asked the vendor to take a few weeks and do an analysis and then propose some improved processes.  I was apprehensive at first, being I've seen this vendor spend a lot of time and money to do an analysis, only to propose a solution similar to killing an ant with a sludge hammer.  That did not happen this time.  The Operations Manager offered a 15 minute presentation titled Kaizen. This caught my attention because Kaizen is Japanese for improvement or change for the better. I've heard the term used many times before, when referring to doing process improvement. A key component of this Kaizen presentation was a PICK chart.  What is a PICK chart you ask?  When faced with multiple improvement ideas, a PICK chart may be used to determine which ideas are the most benifitial. There are four categories on a 2x2 matrix; horizontal is scale of payoff (or benefits), vertical is ease or difficulty of implementation.    More expensive actions can be said to be more difficult to implement. By deciding where an idea falls on the PICK chart, four proposed project actions are given: Possible, Implement, Challenge and Kill (PICK).

Small Payoff, easy to implement - Possible Big Payoff, easy to implement - Implement Big Payoff, hard to implement - Challenge Small Payoff, hard to implement - Kill

You'll notice by my graphic below that we have 3 ideas to implement, 2 that are possible, 2 that are a challenge, and 1 to kill.  This was by far the best presentation I've seen in a while.  The entire executive team could visualize the recommendations on one screen.  All data supporting potential areas of improvement were on the other slides,  included assessments of cost (money or time).

All I can say is bravo!  When in doubt, use a visual aid.

PICK Chart

PICK Chart

HT: Wikipedia

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What You Need Is Some Kaizen

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Kaizen - Change Good

While sitting in a governance meeting the other day, I heard how (before I joined the team) a vendor brought in some high paid six sigma black belts to try to bring the vendor governance workflow in line with my client's governance workflow.  My client wasn't sure what they got out of the deal, but if you have a black belt in something, it should be good...right?  Because this venture proved fruitless, the vendor announced, "what you need is kaizen!"  That may be what they said, but it's not what my client heard. This was paraphrased by one of my client's team.  In trying to understand what she was saying, we had a quick back and forth that went a little something like this:

The vendor said there was something that would fix everything. Cry Pan or Pie Pan or something like that.I looked at her and asked, do you mean "kaizen"?Her eyes got really big and she then started to matter-of-factly point at me. That's it! That's it! Now, what does it mean?I said it just means improvement or refinement.She looked disappointed. That's it?Yep, that's it.

Now, I know it's not that simple.  There are no silver bullets.  I do believe in using refactoring or refinement to get you where you need to be, but that's going to be another post.  This post is more of a shame on you post.  Anyone out there who uses a new term, particularly one in a foreign language without explaining it first, shame on you!  Anyone out there who proposes there are silver bullets in project management, shame on you! And, anyone out there who proposes there are silver bullets in project management, uses a new term to label it, AND charges a lot of money for it, shame on you!

I strongly believe approaches like Agile, Kanban, and others bring a lot of potential value to programs.  Customers don't need snake-oil nor do they need silver bullets.  What we have here is, a failure to communicate.

I was thinking, maybe I should start a practice and say it will solve all your problems.  I can call it Verbesserung.

Any takers?