How to Improve

• Identify a problem
• Make a change in process
• See if it worked
• What's so hard about this?
• Everything

• "Our meetings are too long"
• "Meeting attendance sucks"
• "We're not on the same page"
• "We aren't testing"
• ...
• So what?
• These are observations.
• Why are these problems?

• "We're too slow"
• "Our code has too many bugs"
• ...
• Do you have data?
• Do you have a target value?
• If not, how do you know you have a problem?

• "We need to meet more"
• "We need to test more"
• "We need to communicate more"
• ...
• ... and you know you should eat better and exercise more
• Don't fix symptoms. Address causes

• Start with specific examples where things could have gone better
• Do a root cause analysis or 5 Whys Analysis of that example
• Find the easiest to fix link in the causal chain

• Agile is a toolbox of lightweight solutions to common development problems
  • A starter list of agile ideas
• Choose the simplest tool that is relevant to the root problem.

• Baseline: record the metrics you are using as evidence of a problem
• Do the new process
• Measure: record the metrics
• Better?
  • If yes, has something else gotten worse?
  • If no, is the process not working, or are you not doing the process?

• 5 Whys Analysis
• Process Change
• Metrics
• Target goals, Danger signs

Thanks to Hakim El Hattab for RevealJS