Spike

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Spike

A task particularly aimed at collecting information or answering a query instead of delivering shippable outcome. Sometimes user story that is generated and cannot be properly estimated until a development team executes some actual works geared towards resolving design problems or technical questions. The solution is to actually make a “spike” wherein some work have the purpose of providing a solution or answer. The word “spike” comes from Extreme Programming or XP wherein this means “A Spike Solution is an ultimately simple program for exploring potential solutions”.

Spike in Agile Software Development

In the agile software development, architecture actually evolves in order to address the needs of Product Backlog Item or PBI’s forecasted on the given Sprint. This is lean. Unlike a skyscraper or a bridge, establishing business software does not really require defining the entire architecture upfront. Remember that spikes are invention of XP and are considered as special types of stories that are used in driving out risks and uncertainties on project facets or user story. It might be necessary to spike on the perfect persistence option however, implementation of spike must be wrapped to a PBI.

Spikes by definition got maximum time box sprint size. That tends to be your upper bound. At the sprint’s end, spike is either done or not really done same as other stories. Spike is the technical investigation to produce answers with regards to certain criteria on PBI prioritized on upcoming sprints. This is an excellent way of mitigating risks earlier and promoting fluid iterations later on projects. This also allows team to ensure feedback and develop clearer understanding on upcoming complexity of PBI.

Why Doing It?

Spikes are done for the following reasons:

  • The group might not know about another area, and spikes might be utilized for fundamental research to acclimate the group with another domain or technology.
  • The story might be too huge to be estimated accurately, and the group may utilize a spike to analyze suggested conduct, so they can part the story into respectable pieces.
  • The story might contain essential technical risk, and the group may need to do some examination or prototyping to pick up trust in a mechanical approach that will permit them to commit the client story to some future timebox.
  • The story might contain noteworthy functional risk, in that while the purpose of the story might be comprehended, it’s not clear how the framework needs to communicate with the client to accomplish the implied benefit.

Just like other common stories, spike is actually put on backlog, sized and estimable to fit perfectly in iteration. The spike results vary depending on the type of the story as this generally produce information instead of working code. Spike can be used and can result to decision, proof of concept, prototype and other partial solution which tends to help in driving final results.  In an instance, spike must be developing just the sufficient information to be able to identify and size stories concealed beneath the spike.

— Slimane Zouggari

Lean Coffee

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Lean Coffee is an agenda-less and structure meeting wherein participants are tasked to gather and build an agenda. They will also have to start talking to each other. As per the conversations, these are entirely productive and directed due to the reason that the agenda is mainly and democratically generated. In fact, a lot of Lean Coffees are now happening around the world including Stockholm, San Francisco, Seattle, New York City, Boulder and a whole lot more.

History

In regard with the history of Lean Coffee, it actually started in the year of 2009, in Seattle. Jeremy Lightsmith and Jim Benson initiated of starting a group that will focus on the discussion of Lean techniques. In this organization, it is to be started without speakers, steering committees and such. They only desire for a group that only relies on people who show up and who want to create and learn.

In terms of how to exactly do it, the format followed is usually simple. It is intentional and it is designed to be necessary for productive and coherent meeting. Setting up a Personal Kanban, Citing the things that need to be discussed and voting and talking are among those steps to be followed.

There must be a list of topics that need to be presented in order for them to get motivated and interested in it. For those people who are interested to begin with a Lean Coffee could just do it the simple way.

Especially if you have started one, they would be happy to help you set up a subdomain on the site. They will also find ways to work with you in the future for the best and most interactive map.

Application

As per the application or the management of Lean Coffee with a distributed team, it is highly emphasized that a tool is needed. You may make use of an online whiteboard. But, it is better to make use of a tool that is built for Lean Coffee.

One of the valuable tools to use consists of Retrium which is a set of facilitation techniques. This is specifically designed for all agile retrospectives. They have their template called Lean Coffee which proved to be incredible and easy to use. This can also be effectively utilized for more applications and not only for retrospectives. This is a lot better to use by enterprises and companies. The good thing about it is that it is free for you to try. But, later on, it will demand for a paid subscription.

Lean Coffee Table is also another simple website designed for the application or distribution of Lean Coffee. This is impressive because it can be used for free. In addition, it is best for casual use and for meetups.

— Slimane Zouggari

Unconference

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An unconference is known for its other term “open space conference”. This is actually considered as a participant oriented-meeting. In the complete understanding of its term, it is usually applied to a lot of gatherings that avoid 1 or more aspects that relate to conventional conference like sponsored presentations, top-down organization and fees.

History

Dating back in the history, unconferences were believed to utilize variations on the Open Space Technology method or format. This format was created and introduced by none other than Harrison Owen in the year of 1985.

In the book entitled “Open Space Technology: A User’s Guide” published by Owen in 1993, it simply discussed a lot of techniques usually linked with unconferences. However, in this book, it does not entirely make use of the term.

As per the first appearance of the term, it was witnessed in an announcement for the annual conference of XML developers. This was noted in the year of 1998. Lenn Pryor also used the term in the discussion of BloggerCon. Later on, it was then popularized by the organizer named Dave Winer. He was the reputable and trusted organizer of BloggerCon during a write-up event in April 2004. In regard with the first BloggerCon, it was held in 4th to 5th day of October 2003 at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society in Harvard.

As per the organizer of Foo Camp, Sarah Winge had drawn her experience of conversations and had opened space with Harrison Owen to further develop its format. It was in the 10th to 12th day of October 2003 that the first Foo Camp happened in California.

In the year of 2005, the attendees from the past produced their so-called “Bar Camp”. The three events; Foo Camp, BarCamp and BloggerCon helped in the popularization “unconference” as a term. Bar Camp and Foo Camp have popularized the form wherein there will be no agenda until all attendees have made one up.

Application

In regard with the application, the attendees usually start with the agenda at the very start of the meeting. For those who want to insist a discussion on a particular topic may choose to claim a space and a time. Actually, unconferences feature an open discussion instead of a single speaker placed in the front of the room for reputed individuals to give a talk.

This conference is found to be specifically useful especially when attendees have a high level of knowledge and expertise in the conference convenes. Nevertheless, it can be conducted and applied through the use of facilitation styles like:

  • Fishbowl
  • Ignite
  • Dotmocracy
  • Lightning Talks
  • Open Space Technology
  • Knowledge Café
  • World Café
  • Speed Geeking
  • PechaKucha

This has been found to be useful when applied to gatherings or conventional conferences established by organizations.

 — Slimane Zouggari

Pecha Kucha

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Pecha Kucha

There are some people who wants to provide impressive presentation that uses some music and animations to make their audience become active and don’t fall asleep. Due to this, the Pecha Kucha becomes very popular technique to the world of business and helps most of the professionals to present a powerful talk.

Pecha Kucha is a kind of presentation wherein it has 20 slides that you can present for about 20 minutes. With the use of this 20×20 format, you will have the opportunity to keep your presentation to be concise, powerful ad fast paced in your own event that is commonly called as PechaKucha Nights.

This amazing presentation format has been discovered last February 2003 by the expert Mark Dytham and Astrid Klein at Tokyo’s Klein – Dytham Architecture. With their remarkable creation, it serves as best way for lots of entrepreneurs to attract people. Their experiment creates big impact to Japan wherein they create space event called Roppongi and allow some young designers to attend and participate in exchanging ideas and showcase their own work.

The success of their experiment becomes widely popular wherein it reaches different cities of Europe and launched also same events. The Pecha Kucha becomes popular to almost 900 cities all over the world today.

The PechaKucha Night covers almost 8-14 presentations wherein in each presentation can be shown for 20 seconds. But some organizer from other cities add some variations of this format like some of their slots are provided for live band and the 20 seconds are consist of critique for the presentation of the host. Most of the audience may come from different kinds of industry such as creative fields, art, photography, architecture and design. Each presenter is professional who has the ability to showcase their works.

So if you want to start PechaKucha Night, you need to contact professional organization of Pecha Kucha and apply. Once you are done with the informal process of your application, you will be grant with handshake which means it is the good exchange for the agreement. In this kind of event, there will be no limitations and everyone is all invited to become a part of the presentation.

Since it is registered trade name of the Klein- Dytham Architecture, the presenter will use the terms of Pecha Kucha to have the rights and at the same time get the license in order for you to reproduce your appearance.

This 20×20 format is continuously supported by the global and movement network and has the ability to cover for the cost of the web development and staff. Aside from this, they are continuously looking for effective ways to maintain the good quality of their project to make it sustainable and expand their networks.

And great news about Pecha Kucha is that, it can now also be used in some offices and schools. You are free to use this kind of format and make it open to the public. These are the reason why this Pecha Kucha becomes highly recognize by the public because you will be provided with very concise and short presentation that will be love by your audience.

— Slimane Zouggari

Yokoten

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Yokoten is a Japanese word, which is roughly translated to “best practice sharing.” In Yokoten, the terminology Toyota is adopted to capture an idea of a horizontal transfer of knowledge and information across the certain organization. It encourages the idea to share information across the organization. Yokoten is also one of the winning behaviors of Toyota, which copy and improve on Kaizen idea that really works. Toyota is calling Yokoten as part of the business philosophy since it is precise compare to the ‘sideways expansion’, ‘horizontal deployment’ and ‘copy’.

How Yokoten is done in Toyota?

Instead of waiting for the Kaizen information to get up to the chain of command, by which it can be sent back down into another location to copy and learn from, the Toyota members are encouraged to go and see for themselves, and then return to their respective area to add their own idea to the information that they acquired. The role of the senior executives is to make the members aware of the existence of a good example of Kaizen, so that they can see everything for them, gain knowledge about the learnings and enhance that idea even further.

Simply by telling the subordinates to copy it can be like Kaizen a little, but it will not serve as second important factor of Toyota Production System, a respect for and the development of people. Toyota has learned that is not enough to just copy the result of a good Kaizen, but they must also copy the thinking that is resulted in a good Kaizen.

The Business Practices of Toyota

Within the eight practical problems solving procedures, which are known as Toyota Business Practice or TBP, the activity in Yokoten happens in eight simple steps.

  1. Clarify the existing problems
  2. Break down the existing problems
  3. Set a target
  4. Analyse the problem root cause
  5. Develop a countermeasure
  6. See the countermeasure through
  7. Evaluate the process and the results
  8. Standardize the success and learn from the failures

Basic Yokoten Requirements

There is another phrase in Japanese that is associated of building the Yokoten culture, which is called as “kaze toushi” means “wind blowing through” or “ventilation,” but may also refer to the openness or easiness of certain communication process across the organization. Basically, when this ventilation or flow of information is poor at stage, Yokoten is not happening.

Whys Use Yokoten in Your Organization

Yokoten is an essential factor or part in a long-term success of a lean culture, but can also have a bigger impact for the short-term result. It is known as a success multiplier. Perform a good Kaizen and copy the results, then learn from it and adopt it whenever and wherever it is applicable. After you successfully done this in your organization, you can immediately duplicate or even multiply more the impacts. The same true thing in lean because there is no assurance that it will grow on its own on the future. You need to exploit Yokoten to help assure that you continue to become lean to the near business future.

— Slimane Zouggari

Konnyaku Stone

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Konnyaku Stone is considered as one of the tiny tools but very important in the production system of Toyota. It is commonly used to smoothen the body panels before you decided to get is painted that results to total eradication of the imperfections. Konnyaku Stone is sometimes called as “Devil Tongue” wherein its size can fist. It is not really actual stone rather it is a mix of gritty resins.

Once you apply the Konnyaku stone and brushed it across the surface of metal, you will notice that each tiny imperfections and dust marks will surely be knock off and make it feel smoother. The use of this is very important since it can help you make your Toyota vehicle become incredibly new. Because of this, most of the Konnyaku Stone becomes a part of most of the production line of vehicles including the paint shop.

Although it is not new concept to this kind of industry, it has been proven that it is effective method in the production of vehicle for more than century. That is why it is highly popular to the Toyota Production System in which it serves as the Lean Manufacturing. For many professionals, Konnyaku Stone is a kind of technique that can be employed by all the workers at all kinds of levels in order for their operations to become efficient and effective.

It has been used for many years wherein you will have the assurance that it suits for manufacturing industry that is proven successful for some quite years. Through the use of Konnyaku Stone, your vehicle will create true value that will make your customer to become highly satisfied and not a waste of investment.

Because of the best result it can provide in one vehicle of Toyota, many of the car manufacturers can ensure to you that they can provide you perfect body panels with super smooth surface. There is no doubt that this Konnyaku Stone serves as the best solutions to the manufacturer of Toyota and compromises the best results.

Konnyaku Stone will help lots of workers of Toyota to prevent mistake to their production process and avoid any error. Upon its application before the car painted, it will help to prevent some imperfections and arrange the possible mistakes to cars metal surface.

Most of the Japanese car manufacturing company use the application of Konnyaku Stone and make it as their effective method to create amazing and perfect Toyota car without having any imperfections. Since they do understand what kind of expectations their customers will provide, they ensure that all of their customers expect beyond expectations. Currently, most of the car manufacturers have now better understanding on how to make the Toyota Production System become efficient and it is by adopting the use of Konnyaku Stone.

Konnyaku Stone is the best solution for many car manufacturers when it comes to the creation of perfect vehicles. It can guarantee you that it will deliver high quality cars that you can be used for your daily transportation.

— Slimane Zouggari

Kaikaku

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Kaikaku

Are you looking for a best way to improve your own business cycle time, reduce unnecessary waste and minimize the customer response time? Do you need to maximize your own business operational efficiencies in order to save amount of money and available resources? Then it is the right time to engage in lean Kaikaku for your organization. Lean was known as a methodology that helps eliminate the categories of any waste in order to maximize the business efficiency.

Kaikaku is a Japanese word, which means “radical change” in English. Kaikaku is a business concept that is concerned of making a fundamental, as well as radical change to the system of production, unlike Kaizen that has a focus only on incremental minor change. However, both Kaikaku and Kaizen can be applied to the activities other than the production. These Japanese philosophy have relation with each other, which known to have origin and part of the lean management of Toyota Production System.

In-depth Idea about Kaikaku

Kaikaku means a radical change at limited time during the production system. On the other hand, Kaizen is known as a continuous minor change in a certain area of a production system, which often comes with a primary goal to solve any problems that relate to the team. Kaizen is a philosophy based on all employees’ involvement, as well as individual activities, which is generally reaching an improvement of less than 20 percent. The cross between the Kaikaku and the Kaizen is called Kaizen Blitz or Kaizen Events that implies radical improvement to a limited area like in the product ion cell during the intense week.

Kaikaku simply means that a whole business is radically changed, which normally always in a form if a project. It is often initiated by the management for such changes and the result will impact to the business significantly. Kaikaku is regards to introduce new idea, new method, new approach, new techniques for production and new equipment to be used. Kaikaku can be initiated when the management had seen that the ongoing Kaizen work starts to stagnate and is no longer giving an adequate outcome related to efforts.

The Kaikaku Project Types

Kaikaku projects are often resulting to the improvement to the range of 30 to 50 percent and the new base level of the continued Kaizen. In addition, Kaikaku may be call as System Kaizen. The projects for Kaikaku can be manifested in four different types:

  • Radically Innovative – a capital intensive

Example: The introduction of innovative production technology

  • Radically Innovative – an operation close

Example: The introduction of innovative solutions, which is new to the industry

  • Locally Innovative – a capital intensive

Example: The installation of robot automation to a certain factory is generally not new to the industry, but can be new to a certain company. The decision is grounded strategically and can be higher in costing.

  • Locally Innovative – an operation close

Example: The introduction of a conventional method TPM or Six Stigma may be new to a certain company. The direct costing is relatively small.

Engage your organization with Kaikaku today.

— Slimane Zouggari

Heijunka Box

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Heijunka is considered as a very important management concept that is created by Toyota Motors. It refers to the smoothing of the production for the purpose of eliminating stress in the system being caused by the spikes and drops in production. This also enables the company to apportion the resources evenly all throughout the year and it also put less stress on people and on machinery as well. Production takes place within small batches in order for the fluctuations to be easily controlled.

What is Heijunka Box?

There are also indeed tools that should be used in order for Heijunka to be successful. And one vital tool used in Heijunka would be the Heijunka box or also called as levelling box. It is referred as visual scheduling tool being used in Heijunka and is the name of the specific tool used in order to achieve the goals of Heijunka. It is generally a wall schedule that is divided to a grid of boxes or a set of the pigeon-holes or rectangular receptacles.

Every column of the boxes represents a specific period of time and lines are drawn down the grid or schedule or grid in order to visually break the schedule to columns of the individual shifts or the days or weeks. Colored cards represent individual jobs which are referred as the Kanban cards and are placed into the heijunka box in order to provide visual representation of those upcoming production runs.

This heijunka box makes it easy to see the types of jobs are being queued for production and when they are being scheduled. Workers on the process remove the Kanban cards as for the current period from the box as for the purpose of knowing what to do. The said cards would be passed to another section once they process the said related job.

How about the implementation?

This Heijunka box allows easy as well as visual control of the smoothed production schedule. A common heijunka box would have horizontal rows for every product. It has vertical columns for the identical time intervals of production. Production control Kanban are being placed into the pigeon-holes being provided by the box in proportion to the number of items that should be built of a given type of product during the time interval.

To make it a lot simpler, the cards are being fitted in every slot according to the work plan for the certain period. These cards would be colored based on the code. Workers arrive and make their way to the said Heijunka box wherein they draw the cards for a certain period. This enables them to do their job based on the plan therefore making sure that the work would be completed within correct manner.

The said management concept can definitely be useful in the manufacturing industry because it eliminates the stress due to drastic fluctuations into the production through the year. Companies that would use the said concept not need to pay overtime to those employees within certain times of the year.

— Slimane Zouggari

Heijunka

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What is Heijunka?

Heijunka is known as a Japanese tool used in order to balance production. It is also popularly known as production levelling or production smoothing. Heijunka is the process of reducing the Mura or unevenness wherein in turn it would reduce the Muda or the waste. The said technique is important to the development of production efficiency in lean manufacturing and Toyota Production System. It has this goal of producing intermediate goods within a constant rate in order for the further processing might also be carried out into a constant as well as predictable rate.

Indeed, Heijunka is a vital technique in order to reduce waste and improve production efficiency through levelling the fluctuations in performance into the assembly line. Fluctuation would normally occur within the production or through the demands of the customers.

Toyota Production System would use the Heijunka in order to solve the demand through assembling a mix of models in every batch and would ensure that there would be an inventory of product proportional to the variability that is in demand. In addition, the disruption of the production flow would be minimised through ensuring that the components are being sequenced in order to be available into the right quantity and at the right time. At the same time, changeover periods for important processes like die changes into the steel presses are indeed short or most of the time as little as three minutes.

Five Elements of Heijunka

There are five elements of Heijunka and they are the following:

  • The interval wherein all products would be produced
  • Fixed sequence of the products
  • A pre-determined inventory policy
  • Variable number of items for every product
  • The direction for improvement

Benefits of Heijunka

The biggest benefit that could be observed out of implementing Heijunka would be the stability of the manpower and also the reduction of the unneeded overtime. Based on the current situation, reduction in the inventory level would be due to the control that you will be able to maintain with the use of kanbans.

The consumption of raw materials must also be improved since you would only build which is needed and when it is needed. Building up too much of a certain product as well as consuming components which are needed for another is considered as a thing of the past.

And another major benefit that you might observe with Heijunka would be a reduction of stress levels within the production area. This production schedule must no longer be a guessing game since they would know each day whether how much product is being expected of them and would be able to accordingly plan. And this could go a long way towards improving the morale.

Indeed, there are numbers of advantages or benefits that could be gained by companies that would consider the application of Heijunka. It would be able to service orders without having any problem and also within the committed time frame at the same time offering goods of high quality. And as a result, companies that are both small and large could follow the said management technique.

— Slimane Zouggari

Nemawashi

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If there is one thing that human beings do all the time is fail to make the right decisions. This happens in our personal lives, it happens in professional environments and it happens in politics. We learn by making mistakes and we learn by trial and error. The truth is that this is a process that seemed to be essential for our growth, but there is a way around this and the Japanese have called it Nemawashi.

The words Nemawashi basically means that you should consider as many alternative solutions to anything you are planning to do before you make a decision. You need to have a set-based approach if you want to get the best results. You start by finding out the customers needs. Then you do some competitive benchmarking and we learn as much as we can about the competition that is out there.

The Toyota production system has been using this method with amazing results. Nothing that they do comes from assumptions. All of their decisions are made after those steps have been taken and a solid and effective decision can be made.  They verify everything and they make it their priority to get things right from the very first try. This eliminates trial and error, but it does require patience and a great deal of knowledge on how to properly research both the customers needs and the competitors.

You can think of this as the ultimate method to enhance your business and create the perfect product launch or the ultimate service. If Nemawashi is implemented in your business, you will see the incredible benefits that come with it because you will be eliminating the uncertainty of assumptions and creating a very efficiency and accurate work environment.

— Slimane Zouggari