what do making cars and writing software have in common?

1CONFIDENTIAL – Not to be distributed

What do making cars and writing software have in common?

February 11, 2014

Tim DybvigDirector, Product Management

2CONFIDENTIAL – Not to be distributed

What do making cars and writing software have in common?

• What is Agile?• Manifesto for Agile Software Development• An unlikely history: cars and supermarkets• Becoming agile: Toyota Production System• What do making cars and writing software have in common?• A note about output: how to measure software• Agile at PayPerks• How can you use Agile?

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What is Agile?

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What is Agile?

• The old way: Waterfall methodology

weeks / months / years

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What is Agile?

• The new way: Agile development

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What is Agile?

• The Agile movement came about in the mid 1990s as a reaction to waterfall and older, ineffective methods

• Several versions and names over the years:• Unified Process• SCRUM• XP (Extreme Programming)• Adaptive Software Development• Feature Driven Development

• February 2001 in Snowbird, Utah: 17 notable software developers gather to create: Manifest for Agile Software Development

• Principles and guidelines; not prescribed process

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http://agilemanifesto.org/

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An unlikely history: cars and supermarkets

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An unlikely history: cars and supermarkets

“Catch up with America in three years. Otherwise, the automobile industry of Japan will not survive.”

- Kiichiro Toyoda, President of Toyota Motor Company, 1945

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An unlikely history: cars and supermarkets

• Early automobile manufacturing: “mass production” by Henry Ford, in 1913• efficiency of batch production by way of standardization (no more colors!)

• Taiichi Ohno was a plant manager, decided to improve Toyota process• Inspired by a visit to US supermarkets in the 1950s• He noticed a supermarket customer gets:

• What is needed• At the time it’s needed• In the amount needed

• Became obsessed with “just in time” delivery• Only make what is needed, when it’s needed• Decrease waste• Lower cost• Increase meaningful output

• The result?• Toyota Production System (…..after many, many years of trying!)

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Becoming agile: Toyota Production System

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Becoming agile: Toyota Production System

“Just in time”

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How did Taiichi Ohno implement “just in time” manufacturing at Toyota?

A: 15 years of continuous improvement

Becoming agile: Toyota Production System

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Becoming agile: Toyota Production System

Flow & Management by sight• Machines are moved to accommodate actual workflow• Floor managers in factories should be able to clearly see all processes• Allows for easy spotting of blockages and interruptions

Orders made using Kanban (“sign board”) cards• Piece of paper with order information, travels with the requested parts• "simple and direct form of communication always located at the point where it is

needed"

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Becoming agile: Toyota Production System

Cross functional workers• “many skilled” workers• workers learn how to operate many machines, not just one type

Small lot sizes, and quick setups• New part setup can be performed in minutes, not hours

Production leveling• Break down monthly production levels into weekly, monthly pieces• Prevents waste and burnout

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Becoming agile: Toyota Production System

Elimination of waste• reduce repetitive work• reduce over-production: stop making what is not needed

Five “why”s• Ask why five times to get to the root cause of a problem• "5 why's equal one how”

Kaizen: continuous improvement• Iterative improvements over time as the production process changes

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So….

What do making cars and writing software have in

common?

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What do making cars and writing software have in common?

Making cars Writing software

Old way

“Mass production”

• efficiency of scaled processing• highly standardized• lack of variation and options• “push” system based on static

assumptions: make as many cars as possible

“Waterfall planning”

• performed in discrete, batch phases• projects last months or years• poor communication between phases• also based on very static view of the

world – business requirements often out of date by release

New way

“Toyota Production System”

• “just in time” delivery of cars• allows for flexibility of products• constantly changes and evolves• “pull” system based on actual

customer requirements

“Agile development”

• “just in time” delivery of software• software is delivered in days/weeks• flexible and iterative• creates a system that allows for

constantly changing business and customer priorities

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What do making cars and writing software have in common?

Flow & Management by sight• Machines are moved to accommodate actual workflow• Floor managers in factories should be able to clearly see all processes• Allows for easy spotting of blockages and interruptions

Orders made using Kanban (“sign board”) cards• Piece of paper with order information, travels with the requested parts• "simple and direct form of communication always located at the point where it is

needed"

“Kanban board” showing all development work in progress• Each story, bug or chore is written up on its own index card• A card has the story title, lookup ID, and points (if a feature)• As the development work moves through the process (backlog, in process, in

QA, delivered), the cards are moved across the board• Allows us to clearly see blockages, backups and interruptions in our process

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What do making cars and writing software have in common?

Cross functional workers• “many skilled” workers• workers learn how to operate many machines, not just one type

Small lot sizes, and quick setups• New part setup can be performed in minutes, not hours

Production leveling• Break down monthly production levels into weekly, monthly pieces• Prevents waste and burnout

Common Agile practices:• cross functional, self organizing teams• break down features and products into smallest working pieces for delivery• create and maintain a consistent “velocity” that allows for a better business

planning with a sustainable pace of work

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What do making cars and writing software have in common?

Elimination of waste• reduce repetitive work• reduce over-production: stop making what is not needed• produce less defective parts

Five “why”s• Ask why five times to get to the root cause of a problem• "5 why's equal one how”

Kaizen: continuous improvement• Iterative improvements over time as the production process changes

Common Agile practices:• Constant refactoring and DRY (“don’t repeat yourself”), eliminate code waste• Continuous integration and full test coverage• Dedicated QA teams focused on high quality output• Regular retrospectives and showcases to improve the team and process

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A note about output: how to measure software

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A note about output: how to measure software

It’s easy to see how many cars you just made, but how do we measure the “output” in software?

A: Points

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A note about output: how to measure software

Points• An estimation of complexity, not time, assigned to each feature• People are bad at estimating, but we’re at least consistent• Points assigned to user-facing features that create business value

Velocity• The number of points a team can deliver in an iteration• Used for business and sprint planning• Thermometer for team health: if velocity drops, something is wrong• While not a perfectly scientific system, it gives a sense of "yesterday's weather”

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Agile at PayPerks

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Agile at PayPerks

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Agile at PayPerks: Week-long Sprints

• One week sprints, with weekly deploys• Initially tried two week sprints, but the bi-weekly rhythm was inconsistent

• Kanban board on the wall with index cards for all stories in progress• Features = yellow• Bugs = red• Chores / tech debt = blue• Use post-its on cards when a story is blocked

• Daily stand ups• PayPerks + Arbisoft team on Google Hangout• PayPerks team around the kanban board

• Other best practices:• pairing and cross functional teams• Constantly evaluate new tools for use (Boxen, Vagrant, Fabric, etc)

Daily stand up

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Agile at PayPerks: Weekly Sprint Meetings

• Pokering• Assigning point values to features in the backlog as a group• Using playing cards in a Fibonacci sequence (1, 2, 3, 5, 8)• Everyone shows their guess, group discusses to reach consensus

• Retrospective• Write up post-it notes for what went well, and what didn’t• Green = good; red = bad• Group the red post-its, and choose one “theme” to improve in the next sprint

• Showcase• Present the features that were completed that iteration to the business

• Sprint planning• Review the backlog for the next iteration• Make sure the team is comfortable committing to the work

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Agile at PayPerks: Development Tools

• Stack: Python/Django, PostgreSQL, Gunicorn, Nginx, AWS (Amazon Web Services)• Dev IDE: PyCharm• CI Server: TeamCity

• 4 cloud-based agents that run entire test suite in a few minutes• Integrates with PyCharm for ease of debugging broken tests, testing local

builds, etc• Code Repo: GitHub• Planning: PivotalTracker & Physical Kanban board

• User stories, requirements and sprint planning• Integrated with GitHub, so all Git commits are linked to each story• Stories are written by the product team, reviewed and pokered by

engineering• “vertically sliced” stories and features

• Comms: • HipChat to promote constant communication, even when remote• Google Hangouts

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Agile at PayPerks: PivotalTracker

High level story info- Title- ID / link- points- status- requester / owner

Story details- use cases- business requirements- acceptance criteria

Commits and comments- all Git commits- comments, questions,

clarifications

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Agile at PayPerks: PivotalTracker

Velocity

Automatically groups sprints based on the team velocity, and point value of stories; makes sprint planning very easy

Stories ready for QA

Work in progress Work not yet started

Hash marks are point values of each story

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Agile at PayPerks: Kanban boards

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Agile at PayPerks: Kanban boards

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Agile at PayPerks: Kanban boards

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How can you use Agile?

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How can you use Agile?

However it works for you!

Try our process to see if it works for you. If it doesn’t, change it until you find something that does.

“At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.”

- 12th (and final) Principle of the Agile Manifesto