Strategy Execution

Editor's Notes

1. IntroductionSituationInitial AssessmentIntroducing Kanban to the development organizationApproach to Achieving the Business ObjectiveIntroducing Kanban at the strategy execution levelCeremonies for the Strategy Execution KanbanResults of our effortApplication of Boyd’s O-O-D-A
2. merchandising offering went back in-house due to customer margin pressure and conflict of interest concerns; Remodeling and Construction were significantly down due to lack of investment by customers; leaving resets as the core business
3. NPD has since moved to an online board – not visible on our board anymore.Switched payment for Defects from hours committed to hours moved to Done-DoneCore system WIP is limited from the strategy board – that’s nextBy the time the developers delivered anything – the business had moved on. Either solving it with a spreadsheet or deciding it wasn’t actually that important to fix. The problems would then reemerge later – repeating the same crisis over and over.
4. Notice the result of the A3 shows three key standards to get work done.Outcome – Deliverables in the context of the problem & prioritized (isn’t this what we want from the business?)Sequence – what order do they need to be doneTiming – When will it be done (can be assigned at the last responsible moment)Owner - Coordination
5. Today, the line managers are more interested because they need to move their card to execution – defects often still linger in acceptance.
6. Development and deployment was iterative. Basics in place at kick off. Continued to refine and deploy enhancements in flight. Despite lack solid engineering practices. Aggressively followed up daily on use of the system.The engagement has been extended and the contingency will be paid
7. We use social pressure to move work – and this is an improvement – but explicit commitments would be better.One department snuck in an enhancement as a bug fix that impaired our ability to get management information. We still have to reel in the business owners from time to time – old habits die hard.
8. OODAMilitary strategist Colonel John Boyd described the OODA loop for fighter pilots. It has since been applied to define the Marine Corps Doctrine in Maneuver warfare. Chet Richards applies it business strategy in Certain To Win. The primary concept is to expend the least resource to accomplish the next objective and to operate at a decision cycle faster than your competition can achieve. This allows you to go farther and faster than your competition.Unfortunately, it can not as simple as “observe, then orient, then decide, then act.” In fact such a sequential model would be very ponderous and would not well describe how successful competitors operate.The key to quickness turns out to be the two “implicit guidance and control” arrows at the top. In other words, most of the time people and groups do not employ the explicit, sequential O-to-O-to-D-to-A mechanism. Most of the time, they simply observe, orient, and act. There is data coming out to support this (see Gary Klein’s book, Sources of Power.)The question, of course, is, “What action?” A thinking opponent doesn’t provide us with a laundry list of his tactics so we can work out responses in advance. The mechanism which handles this uncertainty and makes the loop function in a real world situation is “Orientation.”As we suck in information via the “Observe” gateway, it may happen that we notice mismatches between our orientation and what we’re observing in the real world. If we don’t spot these mismatches and correct our orientation, the actions that flow from it may not be as effective as we intend. This can open up opportunities for our opponents. Boyd’s concept of strategy places heavy emphasis on attacking the other side’s orientation to open up just these kinds of opportunities, and he suggests many ways to do this.Note that “OODA” speed is quite different from the speed of our actions. Doing something dumb or irrelevant, but doing it at high speed, may not provide much of a competitive advantage.The “Decision/hypothesis” block is the learning part of the loop, where we experiment and in the process add new actions to the Implicit Guidance and Control link. You can also think of it as programming orientation for future intuitive actions.