Lean Development & SAFe

 

The digital world is changing at an ever-increasing pace and Scaled Agile is committed to the evolution of SAFe to help organizations achieve business agility. Relentless improvement is central to this mission, this is going to help us improve the Framework based on experiences from our customers and partners.

Well known mentor of SAFe, Dean Leffingwell, talk about what inspired his agile journey and how the Agile Manifesto influence the most widely used scaling framework. About how Lean Agile & DevOps clubbing together to build a new flexible framework

The Lean-Agile mindset is the combination of beliefs, assumptions, attitudes, and actions of leaders and practitioners who embrace the concepts of the Agile Manifesto and Lean thinking and apply it in their daily lives.

This mindset provides the foundation for adopting and applying Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) principles and practices, as well as an enhanced company culture that enables business agility. It offers leadership the tools needed to support a successful transformation, helping individuals and the entire enterprise achieve their goals.

Lets remove mind blocks & accept new flexible approach. For example, many beliefs are developed from the great business or project management school and on-the-job experience that are grounded in waterfall, phase-gated, and siloed ways of working. Approaching this situation with a fixed mindset says the organization is the way it is, and no matter what you do it will never change. A growth mindset says you can create change if you work hard, adapt to feedback, and implement strategies for personal development.

Put simply, Henry Ford said, “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t— you’re right.” Adopting a new mindset requires a belief that new abilities can be developed with time and effort. In this case, leaders must remain open to the possibility that existing mindsets based on traditional management practices need to evolve to guide the organizational change required to become a Lean enterprise.

Thinking Lean and embracing agility combine to make up a new management approach, one that improves workplace culture by providing the concepts and beliefs that leaders need to guide a successful business transformation. In turn, this helps individuals and enterprises achieve their goals.

The first phrase of the Agile manifesto deserves emphasis: “We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it.”

 

We interpret this as describing an ongoing journey of discovery to increasingly embrace Agile behaviors, a journey with no end. SAFe is not a fixed, frozen-in-time framework. As we uncover better ways of working, we adapt the framework, as evidenced by more than six major releases as of this writing.

 

Mindset drives people’s behavior and actions. Moving to a Lean-Agile development paradigm will typically require a change in mindset. Not only are the practices different, but the entire belief system—including core values, culture, and leadership philosophies—is different as well. To begin the Lean-Agile journey and instill new habits into the culture, everyone must adopt the values, mindset, and principles provided by SAFe, Lean thinking, and the Agile Manifesto. This new mindset creates the foundation needed for a successful Lean-Agile transformation.

The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) is based on a set of Lean-Agile principles—the core beliefs, fundamental truths, and economic values that drive effective roles and practices. It is based on principles because they are enduring. No matter the situation, they stand the test of time and can be applied universally. Principles inform SAFe practices—a specific activity, action, or way of accomplishing something.

 

But a practice that works in one situation may not necessarily apply or work in another. Therefore, before an enterprise can apply SAFe practices, it requires an understanding of its underlying principles. This chapter describes the following SAFe Lean-Agile principles:

1.Take an economic view.

2. Apply systems thinking.

3.Assume variability; preserve options.

4.Build incrementally with fast, integrated learning cycles.

5.Base milestones on objective evaluation of working systems.

6.Visualize and limit Work In Process (WIP), reduce batch sizes, and manage queue lengths.

7.Apply cadence; synchronize with cross-domain planning.

8.Unlock the motivation of knowledge workers.

9.Decentralize decision-making.

10.Organize around value.

 

Let’s try to understand one by one.

 

Economic View means Delivering the best value and quality for people and society in the shortest sustainable lead time requires a fundamental understanding of the economics of building systems. Everyday decisions must be made in a proper economic context. Two Lean-Agile practices are essential to this principle: to deliver incrementally, early, and often, and to apply a comprehensive economic framework.

SAFe’s economic framework contains these four primary elements

• ·         Understanding economic trade-offs
• ·         Sequencing jobs for the maximum benefit
• ·         Operating within Lean budgets and guardrails
• ·         Leveraging suppliers

Systems Thinking guides us on Deming observed that addressing the challenges in the workplace and the marketplace requires an understanding of the systems within which workers and users operate. Such systems are complex, and they consist of many interrelated components. But optimizing a component does not optimize the system. To improve, everyone must understand the larger aim of the system. In SAFe, systems thinking is applied to the solution being developed, and the organization that builds the system. Each value stream produces one or more solutions, which are the products, services, or systems delivered to internal or external customers.

 
1Introducing the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)
2.      Becoming a Lean-Agile Leader
3.      Establishing Team and Technical Agility
4.      Experiencing Program Increment (PI) Planning
5.      Releasing on Demand with DevOps
6.      Building Business Solutions and Lean Systems
7.      Implementing Lean Portfolio Management
8.      Leading the transformation

Sophia, Drivelers Cars

Stratyges LLC Big Data Introductory Session

Robotic Process Automation

Robotic Process Automation is the technology that allows anyone today to configure computer software, or a “robot” to emulate and integrate the actions of a human interacting within digital systems to execute a business process. This is primarily to reduce or eliminate errors altogether. RPA robots utilize the user interface to capture data and manipulate applications just like humans do. They interpret, trigger responses and communicate with other systems in order to perform on a vast variety of repetitive tasks. Only substantially better: an RPA software robot never sleeps and makes zero mistakes.

·         Robotic process automation (RPA) is the use of software bots to automate highly repetitive, routine tasks normally performed by trained resources or workers.

·         Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is an emerging technology of process automation based on Software

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·         Robots or Artificial Intelligence workers. RPA is the significant technological innovation of screen scraping.

·         RPA provides new platforms which are sufficiently mature, scalable and reliable for use in large enterprises.

Understanding the difference:  In contrast to other, traditional IT solutions, RPA allows organizations to automate at a fraction of the cost and time previously encountered. RPA is also non-intrusive in nature and leverages the existing infrastructure without causing disruption to underlying systems, which would be difficult and costly to replace. With RPA, cost efficiency and compliance are no longer an operating cost but a byproduct of the automation.

Robotic process automation tools are not replacements for the underlying business applications; rather, they simply automate the already manual tasks of human workers.  They essentially look at the screens that workers today look at and fill in and update the same boxes and fields within the user interface by pulling the relevant data from the relevant location. 

This serves a couple of purposes: It frees humans from monotonous, low-value-added tasks like data entry and makes them available for higher-value tasks that require human creativity, ingenuity, and decision making.

·         It helps to ensure that outputs are complete, correct, and consistent between tasks and between human workers

·         It helps to ensure that tasks can be completed more quickly because the robotic process automation tool can find and retrieve any necessary data in the background

Automating repetitive tasks saves time and money. Robotic process automation bots expand the value of an automation platform by completing tasks faster, allowing employees to perform higher-value work.

Reduction of invaluable time Create, test and deploy new automation schemes in hours, instead of days or months.

 Remove or Reduce human error, virtually eliminate copy-and-paste mistakes from entering the same data into multiple systems.

Better Efficiencies Increase throughput, Complete automated tasks in seconds or minutes to deliver higher value for your customers.

RPA tools or robots are capable of mimicking many–if not all–human user actions. They log into applications, move files and folders, copy and paste data, fill in forms, extract structured and semi-structured data from documents, scrape browsers, and more.  Basic Requisite is any high-volume, business-rules-driven, repeatable process qualifies for automation.

For example A global retailer was using its store closing reports to validate closing information for each of its registers across hundreds of stores. The store’s employees used a manual and sluggish process to pull up these reports. By automating the process the store freed up its employees to now focus on more customer-centric activities. The RPA robots now move the closing reports to one server, then read and consolidate the needed information for the store’s closing reports.

All of this said, in practice there are severe limitations on what a robotic process automation tool can do – It has to be scripted/programmed to perform a repetitive task. To do that a subject matter expert

(SME) who really understands how the work is done manually must be employed to map out those steps.

In addition, the data sources and destinations need to be highly structured and unchanging – robotic process automation tools don’t deal with quirks, errors, exceptions or the normal mess of human interactions well at all. But even with these considerations, organizations are seeing tangible, concrete benefits from robotic process automation.

As these tools get more sophisticated they have begun taking on characteristics of business process management tools as well as artificial intelligence tools. This allows them to become even more efficient and could, for example, lead to a point where the tool could analyze the sentiment within a particular customer query or correspondence and make a recommendation about a discount.

Robots are here to stay. The faster you harvest their potential, the faster you create a competitive edge for your business. Robotic Process Automation delivers direct profitability while improving accuracy across organizations and industries. Enabling RPA to handle any processes will not only transform and streamline your organization’s workflow. It will allow for superior scalability and flexibility within the enterprise, doubled by fast, tailored response to specific needs. Software robots are easy to train and they integrate seamlessly into any system. Multiply them, and instantly deploy more as you go. They constantly report on their progress so you can go even bigger and better by using operational and business predictability, while improving strategically.

Impact on various Domains

1.       Banking and Finance Process Automation

2.       Mortgage and Lending Process

3.       Customer Care Automation

4.       eCommerce Merchandising Operation

5.       OCR Application

6.       Data Extraction Process

7.       Claims Processing in Insurance

8.       Employee On-boarding Process

9.       Vendor Payments Process

10.       Invoice Reconciliation Process

Academic studies project that RPA, among other technological trends, is expected to drive a new wave of productivity and efficiency gains in the global labor market. Although not directly attributable to RPA alone, Oxford University conjectures that up to 35% of all jobs may have been automated by 2035.

There are geographic implications to the trend in robotic automation. In the example above where and offshored process is "repatriated" under the control of the client organization (or even displaced by a

Business Process Outsourcer from an offshore location to a data centre, the impact will be a deficit in economic activity to the offshore location and an economic benefit to the originating economy. On this basis, developed economies – with skills and technological infrastructure to develop and support a robotic automation capability – can be expected to achieve a net benefit from the trend.

At India Training Services (http://www.indiatrainingservices.in/ ) we provide consultancy services for RPA needs and proof of concepts in various domains specialized in education, banking, insurance...Feel free to contact me at ravindrapande@gmaill.com for any needs or clarifications, Suggestions are always welcome.