Principle 1: Base your management decisions on Homes England’s long term philosophy
Have a sense of purpose and direction that supersedes any short-term decision making. We should work, grow and align the our teams to this end. This means understanding our Minimum Viable Product (MVP) or Minimum Viable Service (MVS) and ensure that our roadmap for delivery and our backlogs are geared towards this end, by focussing on what is the next immediate priority
Focus on generating value to our end users – demonstrating value to our end users and our wider organisation is our starting point, for example this could be highlighting and demonstrating the benefits of a GDS approach to delivery whilst supporting the Product Managers as they grow into their roles, or by showing and telling the end product or service your team is building for them, on a regular basis
Be responsible. Our teams should decide their own course of action with regards to delivery. Act with self-reliance and trust in your own abilities, this in turn feeds into the wider Agile principle of acting like a self organising and autonomous team
Principle 2: Create continuous process flow to show problems/progress
Redesign work process to achieve high value-added, continuous flow. Ideally we need to cut back to zero the amount of the time that any work item is sitting idle (not being started but accepted into your team) or waiting for someone to finish it, this isn’t easy and will be heavily reliant on not bringing in work that “isn’t ready” - and ensure that we have a defined “Definition of Ready” to ensure that our work items/PBI’s are mature enough to be pulled into your team
Create flow to move material and information fast as well as to link processes and people together so that problems surface right way - this can be done by ensuring the right ceremonies, with the right people (who are aware of their responsibilities) are involved regularly
Make flow evident throughout your team’s culture. It is the key to a true continuous improvement process and to developing people within your team - this view of the flow is managed mainly on your board and from your backlog, supported by WIP’s (Work In Progress) limits
Principle 3: Use “Pull” system to avoid overproduction
Provide your end users with what they want, when they want it and in line with their user needs. Work items initiated by consumption is the basic principle of just-in-time and this approach is very well suited to teams that are very responsive in their work, e.g. WebOps, DevOps engineering teams that aren’t always aware of what work they will be doing on a day to day basis
Minimise your work in progress and focus on the highest priority (this could be financial ROI, user needs, regulatory/legislative changes, SLA agreements to respond to “Live” issues) - this is how we ensure that our team isn’t overloaded and can support the delivery of ongoing quality work
Be responsive to the day-by-day shifts in end user demand and needs but balance that against what work you currently have in progress and how busy your team members are
Principle 4: Level out the workload - “Work like a tortoise, not the hare”
Eliminating waste is just one element for making lean successful in and around your team. Eliminating overburden to people, equipment and eliminating unevenness in the delivery approach is just as important – waste can include having work items accepted into your team that are unworked on for a long period, or having work items sat in a particular column for a lengthy period with no progress made on it
Starting too many work items simultaneously and not getting them to “Done” is also a waste and will result in work building up, your developers and testers should start, work on and finish their work before picking up a new piece, unless it is currently blocked
Work that is “Blocked” for a long period can also be wasteful as it represents something that isn’t able to be completed
Work to level out the flow of the processes that feed work into your team as an alternative to the start/stop approach of working on projects in batches that is typical at a lot of organisations. Understand the stakeholders and Product Managers around your team, understand their priorities and support your Business Analyst (BA) in their role
Principle 5: Build a culture of stopping to fix problems, to get quality right the first time
Producing quality services for your clearly defined user’s needs as well as the wider business areas is absolutely key
Use all available modern quality assurance methods available, automated test tools, retrospectives, clear Bug/Issue escalation routes and prioritisation ability
Build into your technology stack the capability of detecting problems as quickly as possible. Use your board as a visual system to alert your team and Product Manager to any issues or bugs that arise, be it flow of work, or technical
Build into your team’s ethos systems to quickly solve the problems and put in place countermeasures
Build into your culture the philosophy of stopping or slowing down to get quality right the first time to enhance delivery - take a zero tolerance to bugs, they should not be allowed to knowingly go live, if they do this can drastically and negatively effect both your team and organisation’s reputation
Principle 6: Standardised tasks/processes are the foundation for continuous improvements and employee empowerment
Use stable, repeatable methods/processes throughout your delivery approach to maintain the predictability, iterative (repeated) and regular output of work items. It is the foundation for the flow and pull
Document the learning about the processes you use up to a point in time by standardising them as your team’s best practices. Allow creative and individual expression to improve upon the standard however; then incorporate it into the new standard so that when a person moves on you can hand off the learning to the next person. This supports the notion of evolutionary change as espoused in Kanban
Principle 7: Use Visual Control so no problems are hidden
Use simple visual indicators to help people determine immediately where they are in their delivery of an individual or set of work items
Have a digital board but perhaps consider maintaining a physical backup where possible
Reduce your reports to one slide whenever possible
Principle 8: Use only reliable, thoroughly tested technology that serves your people and process
Use technology to support people not to replace them. Often it is a good idea to work out the processes manually before adding technology to support those people in their roles
New technology can be unreliable and difficult to standardise and therefore endangers “flow”. A proven process that works generally takes precedence over new and untested technology, this is especially true when factoring in working in a GDS way. Although GDS doesn’t strictly regulate technology, there are constraints, your tech stack must support accessibility, follow GDS Design Patterns, etc
Conduct actual tests before adopting new technology in business processes, manufacturing systems or products
Reject or modify technologies that conflict with your culture or that might disrupt stability, reliability and predictability and ensure that you and your team bring accessibility to the heart of everything you do
Still encourage your people to consider new technologies when looking into new approaches to work
Principle 9: Grow leaders who thoroughly understand the work, live philosophy and teach it to others
Ideally we should grow our leaders from within, rather than buying them all from outside the organisation, though there are times when seeding new knowledge from outside is useful and needed
Do not view the leader’s job as simply accomplishing tasks and having good people skills. Leaders must be role models and be able to demonstrate servant leadership, transactional leadership and situational leadership too
A leader must understand the daily work to a high degree so that you can best support your team
Our teams should have a flat hierarchy in terms of leadership - we should encourage all members of our teams to have their say on any given topic and create an environment and team ethos that supports this. No one should be discouraged from active participation, regardless of age or experience, true leadership is about bringing out the best in others and helping them grow both as people and in their roles
Principle 10: Develop exceptional people and teams who follow Homes England’s philosophy
Create a stable culture in which Homes England values and beliefs are widely shared and understood clearly
Delivery Managers should develop their own coaching skills so that they might in turn develop exceptional individuals and teams to work within the Homes England philosophy to achieve high standards and quality user focussed services and products. Work hard to reinforce this approach
Use cross functional, multi disciplinary teams to improve quality and productivity and enhance flow by solving difficult technical problems on behalf of the end users and business areas
Make an ongoing effort to teach individuals how to work together as teams together toward common goals. Team work is something that has to be learned, but be aware that in new teams especially there is often a process of “Stormin’, normin’, formin’” - this is perfectly normal and to be expected
Principle 11: Respect your wider business areas and stakeholders by challenging them and helping them improve
Have respect for your business area and stakeholders, but be prepared to (professionally and courteously) challenge their initial assumptions and beliefs if you feel you can add to it
Bring them on your agile and lean journey and try to incorporate them in the work that you do, it could be via regular product manager engagement as well as Show and Tells
Principle 12: See for yourself to thoroughly understand the situation
Solve problems and improve processes by going to the source and personally observing and verifying data rather than theorising on the basis of what other people or your
Think and act based on personally verified data
Even high-level managers and executives should go and see things for themselves, so they will have more than a superficial understanding of the situation
Principle 13: Make decision slowly by consensus (in cross functional teams), thoroughly considering all options; implement decisions rapidly
Do not pick an immediate single direction and go down that one path until you have thoroughly considered alternatives
This is the process of discussing problems and potential solutions with all of those affected, to collect their ideas and get agreement on a path forward. This consensus process, though time – consuming, can help broaden the search for solutions, and once a decision is made, allows for rapid implementation
Once you have established a stable process, use continuous improvement tools or feedback loops (such as retrospectives or automated test tools) to determine the root cause of inefficiencies and apply effective countermeasures
Once waste is exposed, your team should use a continuous improvement process (kaizen) to eliminate it, this could be an improvement to your existing Definition of Ready, or by using Retrospective feedback or automated tooling to help you in the decision making process
Principle 14: Become a learning organisation through relentless reflection (hansei) and continuous improvements (Kaizen).
Lean principles should mean that you and your team are part of an ongoing search for improvement, both within your team and within the wider Homes England organisation
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