Progressive Lean: Strategy and Spread the Word: Part 3
Let's assume you have developed a set of measures you're happy with.
The next step is to develop a calendar.
Here's what's going to go on your calendar:
Regular day and time for Steering Committee meetings.
I talked about the role of the Steering Committee (SC) in another post. The SC needs to meet no less than every other week (or twice a month, whichever) during the startup of an agile implementation. You can move to monthly meetings after a year or so, when the program has momentum. Weekly isn't too often. You should meet for four hours each month. In other words, if you meet twice a month, meet for two hours at a time. Weekly, meet for an hour. Devote one of your meetings to reviewing metrics. The other meeting can focus on reviewing recent activities and planning for upcoming ones. That's pretty much the agenda for SC meetings:
Somewhere along the line, you need to announce to everyone what's going on. Some companies already have "all employee" meetings of one sort or another. This announcement can be made at one of those meetings. If you don't have regularly scheduled meetings with employees, you need to plan one.
The announcement doesn't have to be complex or involved. Twenty or thirty minutes should do it. This isn't the time to train everyone in agile concepts and tools. It will be enough simply to talk about what's been going on and what will be coming up in the near future. And make a pitch for their participation of course.
Deadlines for full development of the metrics.
During the planning sessions, you decided on what metrics you'd be using for the agile initiative. Now you have to make charts for all of them. You probably have some of the data ready to go and it's just a matter of making the chart. In other cases, there might be some "data mining" to do first. In still other cases, you might have to actually gather the data. Put deadlines on all these activities or you'll be twelve months into the initiative with no metrics.
Regular all employee meetings to keep everyone updated on the agile initiative.
If you already have a schedule of "all employee" meetings, you're set. If not, make a schedule. There...that was easy, wasn't it?
General time frames for the upcoming phases.
This is a hard one because you've never carried out the phases before and I don't know how large or complex your facility is. So, we're talking general time frames here, not hard and fast deadlines.
A few guidelines will help:
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The next step is to develop a calendar.
Here's what's going to go on your calendar:
- Regular day and time for Steering Committee meetings.
- An "all employee meeting" to announce the agile initiative.
- Deadlines for full development of the metrics.
- Regular "all employee" meetings to keep everyone updated on the agile initiative.
- Deadlines (albeit loose ones) for the upcoming phases
Regular day and time for Steering Committee meetings.
I talked about the role of the Steering Committee (SC) in another post. The SC needs to meet no less than every other week (or twice a month, whichever) during the startup of an agile implementation. You can move to monthly meetings after a year or so, when the program has momentum. Weekly isn't too often. You should meet for four hours each month. In other words, if you meet twice a month, meet for two hours at a time. Weekly, meet for an hour. Devote one of your meetings to reviewing metrics. The other meeting can focus on reviewing recent activities and planning for upcoming ones. That's pretty much the agenda for SC meetings:
First meeting each month: How are we progressing? (Review of metrics)An "all employee meeting" to announce the agile initiative.
Second meeting each month: What did we do last month? (Review of recent activities) and What's coming up next month? (Plan for upcoming activities).
Somewhere along the line, you need to announce to everyone what's going on. Some companies already have "all employee" meetings of one sort or another. This announcement can be made at one of those meetings. If you don't have regularly scheduled meetings with employees, you need to plan one.
The announcement doesn't have to be complex or involved. Twenty or thirty minutes should do it. This isn't the time to train everyone in agile concepts and tools. It will be enough simply to talk about what's been going on and what will be coming up in the near future. And make a pitch for their participation of course.
Deadlines for full development of the metrics.
During the planning sessions, you decided on what metrics you'd be using for the agile initiative. Now you have to make charts for all of them. You probably have some of the data ready to go and it's just a matter of making the chart. In other cases, there might be some "data mining" to do first. In still other cases, you might have to actually gather the data. Put deadlines on all these activities or you'll be twelve months into the initiative with no metrics.
Regular all employee meetings to keep everyone updated on the agile initiative.
If you already have a schedule of "all employee" meetings, you're set. If not, make a schedule. There...that was easy, wasn't it?
General time frames for the upcoming phases.
This is a hard one because you've never carried out the phases before and I don't know how large or complex your facility is. So, we're talking general time frames here, not hard and fast deadlines.
A few guidelines will help:
- Think in terms of months per phase rather than weeks, unless your facility is very small (20 employees or fewer). My present client has about 250 employees and a variety of operations. It's taking them about 8 months to get through Sort and Shine (the next phase). The original plan was six months. Another client with 400 employees and equally complex operations took about six months but they also had two full-time "lean champions" that I worked with to push things along. In general, it's going to take longer than you think.
- Be ready to be flexible. It's better to get through each phase well than quickly. As long as progress is being made and the effort is moving forward, don't get too locked in to specific deadlines.
- Monitor progress against the schedule at your Steering Committee meetings. You'll be able to adjust the calendar as needed before the deadline is hard upon you.
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