Continuous Monitoring (for Continuous Improvement)

Abstract

Most lean manufacturing system have some version of singnelling or notifications system that is used by the workers to signal issues and errors. Andon is a very important part of Lean Manufacturing process, but it's an often overlooked practice in the Agile Development process.

There are vast amounts of data produced out of an agile software development process, but most of it live in their own silos, where the access is available to only few people. The metrics on the process that are presented to the team are hard to understand, makes little sense and represents very limited scope. We champion the use of visually appealing and all round view of the development process. We also present a set of metrics that we build the andon process around, it breaks down the traditional data silos (includes source code information, deployment/bugs/story/application performance/build status) and makes information accessible to all people on the team. And when all the information is shared across the team in visually appealing way people feel empowered to detect and resolve the process problems.

Information radiators are widely used in development process.We will also present our version of the information radiator that's based on these ideas.

Description

• Andon
  • Philosophy
  • Implementation
  • Examples of Andon in Lean Manufacturing
• Current State of affairs in agile team
• Examples of Andon in teams
  • Big Visible charts
  • Build status
  • Deployment Status
• Exploring Andon on existing projects
• Using Continuous Monitoring as software based info radiators.
  • Pros & Cons
• Demo of the software

Format

90 minutes Tutorial with demos

Bio

Sreekanth V
Developer (with Thoughworks for 6 years) working with large agile teams across continents with multiple roles.

Nilakanta Mallick
Developer (with Thoughtworks for 7 & 1/2 years)

Conclusions

• Information wants to be free
• Free information brings incredible insights from unexpected sources
• Information want to be available all the time
• Information is useful when it's represented meaningfully