There is often a hidden barrier to flow in all of our work systems - decisions. An organisation's ability to make informed decisions quickly may be the difference between a successful product or project or a failure. In this session, I will take you through a technique often used for navigating the complex domain - decision mapping - and will demonstrate how this can be used. Building on this, you'll be taken through the process of translating the decision map into items in a kanban system. Ever wanted to better understand how decisions are made in your organisation, how they interrelate to each other? Do you get the feeling that decisions in your organisation may be slow or getting blocked - these techniques will help you better understand how decisions are made, and how you can change the way they get made to improve the flow of information in your organisation! LAST Conference 2016 - Melbourne

1. Visualising Decisions
Integrating Decision Making with Kanban

3. What is a decision

4. Why visualise decisions?
https://www.flickr.com/photos/emagic/56206868/

5. Time
https://www.flickr.com/photos/29233640@N07/8025277486/

6. Apply Kanban to Decisions
Practices
Visualise
Limit WiP
Manage Flow
Make Process Policies
Explicit
Feedback Loops
Improve and Evolve
Agendas
Sustainability
Service Orientation
Survivability

7. The Decision Map

8. Decision map components

9. The dependency
Shows
relationship
between items
Denotes input
flow direction

10. Ownership
Who in the
organisation
makes the
decision
Certain owners
may have
decision
making
cadences

11. Timing
• When do we
need this
decision made?
• What is the
lead time for
the decision
maker?

12. Decision Mapping Examples

13. The basic

14. The decision blob

15. Circular decision logic

16. Independent Decision Clusters

17. Translating decisions to
kanban

18. Mapping to cards
Timing can
relate to
class of
service
Fixed Date
Standard

19. Ownership
Can track
owners

20. Blockers
Things can
get in the
way of
decisions

21. Tracking flow
Are there categories of decisions you can track?
How long are decisions or their dependent inputs
waiting in queues?
What's the cycle time for repeated decisions?
How does decision making get expedited and what
does that do to overall system flow?

22. Decision Making
From discovery to Kanban

23. Listing

24. 4 Points
Contextualisation
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cynefin_as_of_1st_June_2014.png

25. The Decision Map

26. The Kanban Board

27. Notes
Often standard decisions already have a expedite pathway (eg offline
approval)
Don't forget to use WiP limits for decisions
Decisions may have a different flow than regular kanban items (may
need a specific board). There may be unique types of decisions that
need their own specific flow
Stakeholders & decision makers need to be able to access the
Kanban board
Combine with Upstream Kanban Board for "Decision Options" -
discard unnecessary decisions
Evolve your Kanban Board as you discover!

28. Backlog Replenishment
Use the decision map to
understand what decisions to
"pull" next
Dependencies can influence
risk and sequencing
What is the value of the
decision - what will it enable?
Decide which decisions are
within the team and which are
outside

29. Tracking
Standard Kanban tracking can apply:
Lead time / Delivery rate for decisions
Wait / blocked time
Cumulative Flow diagrams

30. We can now
Track Information flow / decision pathways through the
organisation
Optimise these in the same way we optimise work
flowing through the organisation

31. Common Improvements
Revisit necessary inputs & decision flow - waiting too
long for decisions can be costly
Establish alternate decision pathways to avoid blockers
or long wait times
Understand common decision patterns in the
organisation (eg at portfolio / program level)
Establish Cadences for common decisions

32. How do decisions flow in
your organisation?

33. Daniel Ploeg
@danploeg
dploeg@gmail.com
Daniel is an Agile & Lean/Kanban coach based in Melbourne,
Australia. This is a snapshot of my current state of thinking with
regard to decision making in Agile environments and as such will
continue to improve and evolve. If you have any experiences or
potential improvements with this that you'd like to share, please
contact me.