[#ALM] Working with teams elastics (IMHO)

Hello.

AGILE, SCRUM and almost all the methodologies (or guides of work, or as it is trendy call today) tend to try to be predictive in a very coherent way.

Clarification: the next few lines will try to define what the experts have analyzed until the bones for years. I will do it in 4 lines and the way in which I explain it to the Valentino.

Estimating or Adivinado which are gerunds

The way to be predictive in relation to the work to be carried out based on experience on work performed! So simple! If for example, you dedicate yourself to the baking and you take 30 minutes to make 6 muffins (denomination hispter for a cupcake), it is likely that afternoon 60 minutes to make 12, 90 minutes to make 18, and so on.

When you have a little experience in the world of pastry, you probably add about 15 minutes between round and round for mundane tasks such as the preparation of the materials. Then also add about 60 minutes a day to prepare materials, clean the kitchen, etc. At the end everything is often reduced to a simple formula for estimating work.

Care! at this point it usually appears a lit that thinks that if a person makes 6 muffins in 30 minutes, then 2 people make 6 muffins in 15 minutes! Here touch arm themselves with patience, explain to the enlightened only there are 1 oven, baking is fixed time and that by putting more hands will not be faster work. But if it is true, you are two people may begin to work in parallel and they can perhaps lower the 15 minutes of waiting between round and round. If in addition we buy a 2nd oven and put one more person to help, we have a “complex” equipment that can give us (good) surprises when they begin to work.

After some time working together, Is the team that best can be estimate a task. Here we go a little to the world AGILE, where estimates we make them based on the experience and the team. As we also incorporate the concept of iterations or sprints, it is easier to guess or estimate how many muffins can make in a week.

I am sure that in this stage of work with 3 people and 2 ovens, after a couple of months, if anyone says “today we’ll 176 muffins”, is the end result that will. The Burndowncharts Sprint will be book!

Elastic equipment

However, what can we do when we work with elastic equipment? With teams where there is a constant flow of people going in and out of the team. The thing is quite complicated if we want to be predictive.

Suppose that we bring the best pastry chef in the market along with a couple of more people and a pair of furnaces more. Based on the results of previous weeks we can estimate the capacity of creation of our baking muffins. However, in the way we realize that the pastry chef major uses a special flour that we do not possess;you have to buy it. Then we have to take into account that one of the ovens is “special” should be treated with affection, because but does some slightly strange… anecdotal temperature rises as these can make the initial estimate is go us for the week adrift.

That Yes, after 2 weeks cooking muffins, sure that the pastry already dares to give a number of muffins per week that could engage. However, if one week leave people in the team, enter new and have a high turnover, they have complicated in this regard.

Clarification: I am simplifying enough to think a bakery they just do muffins. If in addition to muffins, this pastry that he ordered order with products that do not know… maybe now you can imagine.

Returning, you can what the pastry to be consistent with its capacity in this scenario?

A recommendation is to stop thinking about the bakery as “a whole”, and create small, almost autonomous teams. Each team will be responsible for defining its capacity. Eye! I’m not talking about creating teams Rangers of 1 person, but rather balance the people in a way such that it is possible to have a predictable target.

Another recommendation, is forget about the duration of the sprints, stop work oriented to fixed sprints and work objective-oriented. What do I need to know how many muffins can deliver every week, if what I have asked is to have 200 muffins for Thursday? Facing this scenario, all pastry must take a decision: if and are facing the challenge; or not and passes page.

And finally, you try to create a scenario of cooperation that does not depend on people. We return to the scene of the oven that must receive a special treaty. If every 15 days when I change people at the bakery, the ‘new’ lost time until they realize how the oven; as this is production time that has lost (less muffins are less €uros). Imagine that everyone who learns a lesson of this type, shares it a slate with PostIts, or leave a super PostIt next to the oven with the detail of its operation. As this collaboration sure it saves many headaches to new generations of patissiers.

Clarification: super post-it is not by the size… just think that happens if you hit an element that heats up and heats up and heats up and heats a PostIt and…

Surely there are many other considerations and tips that take into account; I from my pastry I’ve pointed these 3 during these last 6 months. To see if I dare down to paper some remote work, imagine a pastry shop in a place prepares the dough, another baking and is decorated in a 3rd and prepares for sale… easy is not Image may be NSFW.
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