Leading Continuous Improvement Flashcards
Continuous improvement
This is a process in which actions are taken to identify deficiencies in performance, goals are set for improvement, and continued actions are undertaken to meet those goals.
Failure Modes and Effects Analysis
(FMEA)
Primary tools for process analysis and begins with the largest failures and works towards the smallest. This requires identification of all steps in a process and then examines everything that could go wrong at each point in the process.
Feedback loops
Describe the phenomenon of an entity, system or person that gives an output which will cause an input to the same entity. Ex. The project team gives an update to the product owner, which causes them to speak to the project manager which causes the project manager to coach the project team on the next iteration of work
Introspectives
These are ad hoc team meetings focused on resolving a roadblock or other issues. These are an opportunity to have a series of process analysis techniques ready and waiting for any time your team needs them
Kaizen
Japanese for “change for the better”
A continuous improvement approach that requires small, incremental steps that accumulate to broad changes over time
PDCA cycle
Plan Do check act
Based on Japanese quality initiatives known as the Deming cycle. It’s widely associated with quality assurance and quality control. PDCA prompts the project manager and the team to complete the actions of plan, do, check, act to improve and control quality within the work
Process
Set of actions we follow to reach a predefined result
Process analysis
Involves studying the processes of your project and how the project team gets work done. Process analysis takes the process flow, breaks it down, and identifies what items are needed for a process to work properly
Process cycle efficiency
Is a metric in value steam analysis that is calculated by dividing the amount of value added time by the total cycle time. The higher the process cycle efficiency value, the more successful the project is. Lower values indicate a high amount of non-value-added activity and waste in the project.
Project pre-mortem
Is an event that happens before any delivery occurs on your project. It’s the earliest opportunity for your team to consider improvements to their software process. This event produces a detailed look from your team at all potential causes of failure on the project ahead, ranked by priority.
Shore’s self-assessment chart
This calls for the team to plot scores across the areas of planning, developing, thinking, collaborating, and releasing along a radar diagram
Systems thinking
Is a structured approach to do the work and includes analysis of the system’s processes to reach the defined result
Tabaka’s assessment model
Allows teams to score themselves on questions on self-organization empowerment and participatory decision making. With data in hand, teams can then focus on the areas with the lowest scores for improvement.
Value stream analysis
Is a lean manufacturing technique that begins with identifying the product or service to analyze. Value stream analysis studies the current state of a process and then designs the future state for the process with a goal of efficiency and improvement. Value stream analysis gathers data across at least one iteration on what your process includes and determines the overall efficiency for each iteration.
