If you lie you have to have great memory Goldfish by josullivan.59 used under Creative Commons That’s a saying I’ve heard in a number of place. I have a terrible memory. Ah, it’s great and everything, but it’s sadly short. So I don’t lie. I’m to stupid I have to short memory for that. That’s such a relief! I know that going in. In everything I do. I don’t lie. I play it open. There - now you know too. In fact, I would go so far as to say that it makes me better. Because since I’m playing it open it puts the pressure on me to be great and make sure that my work can take to be scrutinised and reviewed by everyone that I share it with. It’s not scary - because that is how it is from the start. This is the same kind of thinking that...

One of the best and shortest explanations to what Lean really is about, I’ve found in the “This is Lean”-book by Niclas Modig and Per Åhlström. The thing that made it "click" for me was a diagram that contrasted Resource efficiency with Flow efficiency. I love it! Even though I might have talked about Efficiency versus Effectiveness... Well it's not my book - and that's why it's famous and I'm not, I suppose :). Basically; - scoring high on Resource efficiency, for example, is a melting plant for steel. You want that running all the time. You keep a lot of material ready to be processed, because the plant is so expensive to shut down - scoring high on Flow efficiency is for example the fire department. Most of the time they have enormous over capacity. Just sitting around waiting until they are needed. We want much less work waiting...

I hate fights. And arguments. Hey, even discussions sometimes I find uncomfortable or at least boring. Note that I try not to be a coward. I stand up for my beliefs and thoughts. But I don’t like to fight about them, that seems very common today. If you wanna pick a fight, just tweet any opinion under the #NoEstimates tag and you see what I don’t wanna. |:————————————————————————————-:| | | | From XKCD | From time to time I’ve withdrawn from blogging and social media. Just to get away. That might be cowardly, but I didn’t see the use continuing fighting about how to approach estimation, what JavaScript data access library is better etc. The world need you and me better elsewhere. I’ve stopped being the guy at the computer in the cartoon to the right. But I’m still expressing my views. In this blog post I’ll share how. I’ve...

The one talk that made the most impact of me have to be “Embrace Uncertainty” by Dan North. If you haven’t seen it… You’re dead to me Please view it now! Dan North - Embracing Uncertainty from NDC Conferences on Vimeo. The thing that stuck the most for me in there was the short, and depressing, sentence: We are rather wrong than uncertain. Meaning simply that we would rather run with something that we know for a fact to be wrong than to live with uncertainty. We are very uncomfortable with uncertainty. But for those that can embrace it there’s other type of control and “certainty” to be had. Now… I’m beginning to think that this comes to us from an early age. I’ve done studies… the last one was this Saturday at the mall, with Albert (6). Here’s the conversation we had at McDonalds: Albert; When is mum back? Me:...

I’m talking a lot about effectiveness and how it difference from efficiency. This probably have to do with two things; first - the difference between these two concepts is at the heart of the lean mindset. The second fact is that I’m Swedish. Swedish is a very poor language compared to, for example English, that is much richer. If I was to translate the first sentence of this blog post in Swedish you’ll get what I mean: Jag pratar ofta om effektivitet och hur det skiljer sig från effektivitet Ah, the poverty! It’s the same word. There’s no difference… in Swedish. I’ve still to understand if that means that Swedes are focused on effectiveness of efficiency. From drcliffordchoi used under Creative Commons But this poverty has been a trigger for learning for me. I’ve really tried to deep dive in this. To this date this is the best and hence simplest way to...

I’m working with vision statements and strategic planning right now. Man - this an area that is really misunderstood and misused I think. Also, and that’s what this post is about, I think it’s deliberately this way in order to get some wiggle room. I don’t understand that. We’ll get there. Definitions As always I’ve learned a great deal while diving into this area again and here are the definitions that we are using and that I think is clarifying: Mission statement - Why are we here? What is our purpose? For example; Why do the Salvation Army exists in Indonesia? Vision - when we are doing the mission perfectly - what would that look like? This is a dream, a target and something to aspire to. Strategic plan - how will we get from where we are today to the vision? Business plan - what kind of actions and...

We are working a lot with trust and transparency in my current team. Specifically on the transparency item one “trick” we have been using is to cc the entire team in as many conversations as possible. I picked this practice up from the Stripe company and specifically this article, which is a great read if you haven’t seen it before. Yes, they cc the whole company on everything. And I’ve seen this practice in action at Spotify to certain extent as well. By now some of you need oxygen; MY GOD! My inbox will be flooded. And how could anyone be expected to read all of that?! Do these people do any real work? There’s three comments that needs to be made here, that I have repeated a lot when trying to implement this in all kinds of teams; First; you are not expected to read or act on this. CC...

Every Lean practitioner goes through a phase of “waste elimination frenzy”. At least the ones I’ve met. Ah, well…. I did at least. This usually happen in the beginning of your Lean journey when you realise that if you can remove waste the flow would be improved and value will be created faster and more effective. Now we go out on a hunt to find that pesky waste. Kill it! Off with it head! We search for it high and low. “This is wasteful - let’s stop it!”, “This report is that really adding value… I think it’s waste”, “Why should have this meeting/function/role/process? WASTE!” I think this is where many Lean initiatives goes wrong. We’re so focused on removing things instead of adding value. It’s savings, reduction and removals where it should be improvements, values and focus on people. From time to time I see people myself try to define waste. So...

I added this line in a README file for one application I’m writing now. Like I have done before many times. However, for the longest time I have written my tests first, maybe not TDD or even unit tests, but I write the test first. Most of the times. But not this time. Because I was in a hurry and I didn’t think that this application would be something we’d use. And of course we ended up using it. And creates a financial record and prints a receipt. It’s kinda of important that it’s correct. It just struck me: how much harder it is to write the tests afterwards how much I change in my production code, that wasn’t in place, when I go through it and test it how much more boring it is to write the tests afterward how easy and tempting it is to “cheat” and not...

At my current “client” we have been employing a lot of activities to increase the number of customer we serve per day. I’ve blogged about this before. Now it turns out that we have succeeded. The customers are pouring in. And the staff finds themselves with much more work than they have experienced in about 5 years. Yesterday was our best day so far and it was amazing to see the difference from a normal day; Everyone was moving fast - compared to sitting around waiting Everyone was focused - compared to not really knowing what to do Everyone was excited - compared to disillusioned and bored Everyone was tired after the day - compared to feeling tired of boredom | | |:———————————————————————————————————————–:| | | | From Wikipedia | In the daily morning meeting the day after (today) we saw that people was tired and thought it was very stressful...