Webinar by Clarke Ching Agile and ToC expert. Agile: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly. If your Agile is broken then this is how to fix it! Your Agile teams are busy. Busy delivering. Busy improving. Your quality is amazing. Rework is low. The product looks great. Your users love it. You are a high performing team! But your internal customers say your teams are slow. This session will teach you how to use the Theory of Constraints to figure out how to speed up, by finding the one thing that’s slowing them down. This webinar will cover how, in an Agile environment: - to better control scope creep, - to reinforce your relationship with the I.T. Development team’s client, - to be able to make commitments and honour them and - to decide where your bottleneck should be. About the speaker Clarke Ching is a computer scientist with an MBA who discovered Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints (ToC) in 2003 and has been using it ever since to accelerate Agile initiatives. He is fascinated by Agile and obsessed with ToC. He wrote the amazon best-sellers Rolling Rocks Downhill and The Bottleneck Rules. Rolling Rocks Downhill teaches 3 things: the fundamentals of Agile combined with ToC; how to use those fundamentals to deliver big projects faster and on time; and how to deliver quietly huge transformations. It’s been featured in The Guardian newspaper and The Spectator magazine. It was one of Barbara Oakley’s top 10 books of 2019. It was the #2 best-selling Leadership book on amazon.com, just behind Steven Covey’s 7-habits book. He has been Agile / Lean / ToC expert in: GE Energy, Dell, Royal London (life insurance & pensions), Gazprom and Standard Life Aberdeen among other organizations. He is the past Chairperson of Agile Scotland. He is a lecturer at Victoria University School Of Management in New Zealand where he now lives. Today he is the founder and Chief Productivity Officer of Odd Socks Consulting

1. #AgilePlusToc with Clarke Ching
Agile - Good, Bad,
Ugly
Agile teams’ view of agile Execs’ view of agile
“They promised me the moon
on a stick.
All I got was the stick.”
- CEO

2. Agile teams’ view of agile Execs’ view of agile
.
• We keep getting faster and faster!
• We’re delivering loads and loads of
features.
• We’re busy. We work very hard.
• We have very few defects.
• Our team has jelled.
• We constantly improve.
• Major complaint? Them. They’re not
“agile” and not engaged with Agile.
• That’s Nice! But: they’re slow.
• We want more.
• WE NEED MORE.
• They won’t commit to dates.
• We want them to hit dates.
• We NEED them to hit dates.
Major complaint: they’re undisciplined
AND SLOW.

3. Agile teams’ view of agile Execs’ view of agile
.
• We keep getting faster and faster!
• We’re delivering loads and loads of
features.
• We’re busy. We work very hard.
• We have very few defects.
• Our team has jelled.
• We constantly improve.
• Major complaint? Them. They’re not
“agile” and not engaged with Agile.
• That’s Nice! But: they’re slow.
• We want more.
• WE NEED MORE.
• They won’t commit to dates.
• We want them to hit dates.
• We NEED them to hit dates.
Major complaint: they’re undisciplined
AND SLOW.
Both Sides are Right.

4. #Agile + ToC*
* Theory of Constraints

5. share.toc.guide

6. Clarke’s Six Principles of Agile Development & Management
Promised
Shipping
Date
RELEASE
1 – 4 weeks
All
features
time
Working Software =
Potentially shippable
2: Deliver chunks of high-value, well engineered, Working software often
4: The Customer can add, delete or reprioritise features at any time.
i.e. this is how we “embrace change”
1: Customer lists known requirements (to a high level), then prioritises them.
prioritised
3: The Customer can release the software at any time they want.
££££££££££££££
learn from the market
5: We can (with planning) deliver on time, despite change
Backlog
6. We can review the project and the value it delivers at the end of each increment
Agile team

7. Bottleneck
Management
(Drum-buffer-rope)
Finance and
Measurements
(Throughput
Accounting)
Projects
(Critical Chain)
Thinking
Processes
Sales / marketing / change
What’s ToC?

8. Bottleneck
Management
100 / day
150 / day
30 /
day
500 / day
90 /day
Order
Delivery
Have a told you about
the buffalo?

9. Not Started Analysis Design Program Test
20/m 10/m
15/m
25/m
Have a told you about the
buffalo?
10/m

10. The Buffalo Story started
out as an email joke.
A conversation between Norm and
Cliff, from “Cheers”, the TV Show.
Music: http://www.bensound.com
image: wikipedia

11. Well, you see, Norm, it’s like this.
A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo.
The slowest buffalo stays at the back and the faster buffalo run
in front, but at the slower speed.
Otherwise, the herd would split apart.
slowest
fastest

12. Like this.
And when they were split apart they were prone to
attack by wolves.
Evolution favoured the herds that didn’t spread apart.
slowest
fastest

13. When these tightly packed herds were hunted, the
wolves killed the slowest and weakest buffalo.
The guys at the back.
That made the remaining herd stronger and faster.
slowest
fastest

14. In much the same way, the human brain can only operate as fast
as the slowest brain cells.
Now, as we know, excessive intake of alcohol kills brain cells.
But naturally, it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first.
slowest
fastest
Here’s the JOKE Bit.

15. In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker
brain cells, making the brain a faster and more efficient
machine.
And that, Norm, is why you always feel smarter after a few
beers.
slowest
fastest

16. Where is the bottleneck
in software
development?

17. IT starts as the bottleneck
bottleneck
But agile increases IT capacity … so
Customer
Users
fuel
IT

18. Customers soon become the bottleneck
Customer
fuel
IT
Users
So what?
• Customers can’t keep up.
• IT can’t slow down
• So customers feed lower-value and
lower-quality fuel … to keep IT busy …
bottleneck

19. Customers soon become the bottleneck
bottleneck
Customer
IT
Users
fuel
“make work”
requirements
So what?
• Customers can’t keep up.
• IT can’t slow down
• So customers feed lower-value and
lower-quality fuel … to keep IT busy …

20. Customers soon become the bottleneck
Customer
IT
Users
And:
• They start cutting corners
when preparing work, feeding
low quality fuel into the teams.
• Which causes enormous
rework … later …
• Which gets added to the Fuel
Tank
• (It’s not called “preventable
rework”, it’s called iterating).
fuel
REWORK
“make work”
requirements
bottleneck

21. Customer
IT
Users
• Everyone looks busy.
• Everyone looks productive.
• But being busy <> productive
AND: We keep getting faster!
fuel
REWORK
“make work” requirements

22. How can you lead, when you can’t see where you going because
the view is blocked by buffalo butts?
slowest
fastest
Where’s the Leader? Where should they be?
cliff

23. Agile teams’ view of agile Execs’ view of agile
.
• We keep getting faster and faster!
• We’re delivering loads and loads of
features.
• We’re busy. We work very hard.
• We have very few defects.
• Our team has jelled.
• We constantly improve.
• Major complaint? Them. They’re not
“agile” and not engaged with Agile.
• That’s Nice! But: they’re slow.
• We want more.
• WE NEED MORE.
• They won’t commit to dates.
• We want them to hit dates.
• We NEED them to hit dates.
Major complaint: they’re undisciplined
AND SLOW.
Both Sides are Right.
The problem:
we’re not managing the
bottleneck
of the whole system.

24. Software Development
The Agile teams are one sub-
component of the SYSTEM.
IT
customer
users
FOCCCUS FORUMLA
=
FIND
OPTIMISE
COORDINATE
COLLABORATE
CURATE
UPGRADE
START AGAIN, (STRATEGICALLY)
analysts
UX
developers
testers
Ops

25. U-shaped Team
customer users
analysts developers testers Ops
relative
capacity

26. • “My agile team was so TEAM focused,
they forgot I’m their customer.”
• “My requirement isn’t just stories. On
want my project delivered on or before
March 31st. If I can’t get it by then, I’d
be better off not doing it at all.”
• “They say, ‘We are AGILE … so … we
don’t do make commitments …’.”
• “They didn’t know when my project will
ship. Nor did I.”
• So I hired a Project Manager, put her in
charge, got some discipline in them …
and they didn’t like that.
The Ugly Side of Agile

27. Software Development
The missing capability in many Agile
rollouts:
IT
customer
users
FOCCCUS FORUMLA
=
FIND
OPTIMISE
COORDINATE
COLLABORATE
CURATE
UPGRADE
START AGAIN, (STRATEGICALLY)
analysts
UX
developers
testers
Ops
bridge builders

28. #AgilePlusToc with Clarke Ching
Agile - Good, Bad,
Ugly
Agile teams’ view of agile Execs’ view of agile
Questions?

29. Masterclass: Rev Up Dev Using TOC
— Mixed Format: Workbook, Online Recordings, and Live
— 6th and 13th of October,
— 400€ ex-VAT
• A simple, modern version of the Theory of Constraints, that’s
been specifically adapted to work with modern Agile teams.
• How to speed up your Dev teams, without hiring more Devs.
• How to use ToC strategically by creating what’s called a U-
Shaped team: a team built up around a strategically placed
bottleneck.
You cannot learn this by reading The Goal, or any other book.
https://www.marris-consulting.com/en/training-news/
training/training-agile-with-clarke-ching
Learn the secret to using Goldratt’s ToC in software development: