For #futurefridays I was asked a question: “Does the Future of Work still need Lean Six Sigma?”

Well, based on my own personal experience, it’s a big YES.

You see, Lean Six Sigma is simply a structured problem-solving approach.

So if you have a problem that requires root-cause-analysis before you find the appropriate solution, then Lean Six Sigma’s DMAIC approach is what you need.

You can’t just implement some sort of software automation or that snazzy new technological tool just for the sake of it.

To put it bluntly, Automations and such Technologies are part of the Solutions. But to uncover the root causes of the problems that require these solutions, that’s where you would need Lean Six Sigma.

So if anything, Lean Six Sigma is actually becoming a foundational skill that continuous process improvement and innovation experts of today must master.

Let me give you an example.

Jay Arthur, author of 2 books on Lean Six Sigma, seems to agree. Based on this article that he’s written, he says that he has observed companies taking a more Agile approach to problem solving, and Lean Six Sigma is part of it all.

In the article, he shares the phases based on his observations:

• Prework (to me, this looks like the Define and Measure phases)
• 1 or 2 day training (this is where they undergo Lean Six Sigma Yellow Belt Training)
• Post-work (this looks like where the Analyze, Improve, and Control phases happen)
• Side benefits (apart from quantifying the benefits of each project, they are also able to identify participants who can potentially become the next Green or Black Belt candidates).

In case you haven’t noticed, Hackathons that are meant to solve problems loosely follow this approach as well.

But having the various Lean Six Sigma tools in your arsenal will ensure you are solving for the right root causes, and not implementing complex technological innovations just for the technical difficulty points and impressiveness factors.

So there you have it. I hope you learned something from this.

If you want to learn more, download a copy of my book for FREE (for a limited time only) – The Business Optimization Blueprint, and learn how you can improve your business process and take it to the next level.

The post Does the Future of Work need Lean Six Sigma? appeared first on Robbie Agustin.

It’s #transformationtuesdays and today we’ll talk about a Use Case of Lean Six Sigma being implemented successfully in the Technology industry.

Usually, Tech firms would default to the Agile approach and talk about how they can make further improvements during their Scrum rituals.

And non-Technology companies take best practices from Tech firms implementing Agile and Scrum, to see how they can work in a non-Technology setting.

But here you’ll see the opposite happening.

Lean Six Sigma, a methodology widely used in non-Technology settings, being implemented in the Software and Technology industry.

Today I’ll be showing you the entire Lean Six Sigma Green Belt Project Storyboard by Eduardo Torres, where he was able to reduce Software Bug Fix Lead Time from 25 to 15 days.

This not only improved Customer Perception in a good way, this has also increased Team Member Morale as they were able to free up some of their capacity for them to work on features, moving them in the right direction to become Best in Class.

Continue on to see the full project storyboard.

Click here to get the full project Storyboard on Reducing Software Bug Fix Lead Time from 25 to 15 days.

I hope you learned a lot today.

If you want to be like Eduardo, you’re in luck. I’ll be hosting a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt Flipped Classroom Training that’s coming up. Limited slots!

Click here for details. Enroll now, before slots run out: Lean Six Sigma Green Belt Flipped Classroom Training.

The post How Eduardo reduced Software Bug Fix Lead Time from 25 to 15 days (LSS Green Belt Use Case) appeared first on Robbie Agustin.

Time for some sharing on today’s #wisdomwendesdays.

Sometime ago I attended a talk on the 5 Dysfunctions of a Team:

1. Absence of Trust
2. Fear of Conflict
3. Lack of Commitment
4. Avoidance of Accountability
5. Inattention to Results

The talk was based on the book by Patrick Leoncioni.

Read on as I share with you my story on how we mitigated these through the implementing a methodology of how we do things in the team.

If you have experienced any of these disfunctions, you know that without trust amongst team members, you cannot establish a culture where it is safe to raise issues and concerns.

If it isn’t safe to raise concerns, there is fear of conflict, therefore people will be afraid to fully commit to getting things done.

If there is lack of commitment, then people will naturally avoid accountability.

Without a sense of accountability, people will no longer be looking forward to achieving results.

Ultimately, people will focus on their own self interests at the expense of the business.

It’s really a pyramid, where the foundation is trust, and results are at the top of the pyramid.

Years passed and I sort of kept these at the back of mind, making sure that I try and mitigate these 5 dysfunctions throughout my career, in whatever way I can.

Only recently did it dawn on me, upon seeing a post by a gentleman named Bhanu Pratap Singh, that I have already unknowingly mitigated these through the implementation of the Agile methodology!

Let me share with you why that is so.

If you want to find out how Agile works, I talk about it in detail in Chapter 6 of my book – The Business Optimization Blueprint, where I lay it down step-by-step how this works.

The reason why it mitigates the 5 Dysfunctions of a Team is as follows.

Dysfunction #1: Absence of Trust

Telltale signs: People are afraid of sharing weaknesses, admitting mistakes, or asking for help.

With Agile: The daily standup is designed in such a way that it will encourage team members to reach out to each other and discuss stuff like what they already completed, what they are going to work on next, as well as what their impediments and challenges are so that the Product Owner and/or Scrum Master can act on it accordingly.

Dysfunction #2: Fear of Conflict

Telltale signs: People are afraid to raise risks, issues, concerns, or even suggest better ways of doing things.

With Agile: The sprint planning, sprint review, and retrospective meetings are designed to encourage team members to talk about what needs to be worked on, what they think they are capable of working on, issues, concerns, and how the team can be better at doing things.

Dysfunction #3: Lack of Commitment

Telltale signs: People not committing to decisions and timelines, they feel there is lack of direction.

With Agile: Sprints are run in as short as 1 week to as long as 4 week cycles. Tasks for the duration of the Sprint are prioritized before beginning each Sprint, picked up by each team member, and they commit to completing the tasks by the end of the Sprint.

Dysfunction #4: Avoidance of Accountability

Telltale signs: People not holding each other accountable for their commitments.

With Agile: The daily standups ensure tasks are moving accordingly, impediments can be cleared, and team members can pitch in to help each other as needed. The sprint review ensures the minimum viable product committed collectively by the team is as what was discussed at the start during Sprint Planning.

Dysfunction #5: Inattention to Results

Telltale signs: Team members put their own selfish pursuits first over business results driven by team effort.

With Agile: Continuous Iteration and shipping a Minimum Viable Product each sprint is what the Agile methodology is designed to do. It’s as if you have no choice but to deliver results. That’s the Agile way.

And that’s it!

I wouldn’t say that Agile is the only answer, and that it will remove all dysfunctions per se.

But if you successfully implement Agile in your organization, you stand a greater chance at success.

I hope you found this to be of value.

Feel free to check out more articles that I’ve written about my experiences with the Agile Methodology.

The post How implementing Agile can solve the 5 Dysfunctions of a Team appeared first on Robbie Agustin.

It’s time for #futurefridays and today we take a peak into the future of Travel Management, made possible, and constantly improved thanks to Agile.

Let me ask you this. How many apps do you use when you travel?

Like from the time you research for a location to go to, until you book everything, do the actual traveling, get back home, and reminisce and ponder on the recent events?

You would have probably used a variety of different apps, and you had to piece everything together and do a lot of planning and travel management.

Now imagine, what if you instead had a travel assistant app that helps you out end-to-end.

From pre-trip research, forecasting, risk assessment, to booking, and then trip management during the journey, to post-travel reporting and Analytics.

And as a user of the app, it allows you to give constant feedback on how the app can be better for you as a user?

That’s exactly what CTM Technology has done.

And they release enhancements on 2-week cycles, which means they have 2-week Agile sprints.

Check out the video below.

At the moment, they have done this for Corporate Travel, but most likely this will pave the way to transforming how Tourists will travel in the near future.

And I’m willing to bet that it will happen in this lifetime.

Ending note

Now if you want to learn all about Agile, then here’s how you can take action:

• Learn Agile today. Go to https://robbieagustin.com/courses for more information
• If you haven’t yet, download a copy of my book for FREE (for a limited time only) – The Business Optimization Blueprint, and learn how you can improve your business process and take it to the next level.

The post The Future of Travel Management with Agile appeared first on Robbie Agustin.

For #thankfulthursdays I would like to give gratitude to Jeff Sutherland.

If not for him, I wouldn’t have had the tenacity to experiment on how the Scrum Framework can apply outside of the Software Development industry, for businesses to become more Agile.

In today’s post I will be sharing with you 3 videos that I learned a lot from, and that led me towards this path of exploring the Agile framework.

So if you’re looking to see WHY you should try to implement Agile and Scrum outside of Software Development, assuming you haven’t yet, then watching these videos will definitely be helpful to you.

The first video talks about The Art of doing Twice as much in Half the Time.

You see, while most people binge on Netflix or like to do movie marathons, I binge on educational courses, books, podcasts, and Ted Talks.

And being a Lean Six Sigma Practicioner, this video caught my attention when I first saw this, as it was all about productivity improvement.

Little did I know that it was going to be one of the most eye-opening Ted Talks I have ever watched, and has since changed the way I think about how I work.

In this video, Jeff Sutherland takes uks back in time as to how he came up with the Scrum Framework and later, the Agile Manifesto.

The Story behind Scrum

Now there are 2 things that struck me the most about this video.

The first is that Jeff talked about how he took the worst business unit in the bank, then divided it into teams such as sales, marketing, installs, engineering, and then he ran weekly cycles, and in less than 6 months, turned it into the best business unit in the bank.

This tells me that Scrum is applicable in a wide variety of process types and even outside of Software Development.

The second thing that struck me the most is where Jeff talked about how Scrum is being implemented in schools, that students did things in their own, and the teacher did not say a word.

How profound is that?

So I dug deeper into these, and out of all the research that I did, the following 2 videos summarize my findings best.

Scrum outside of Software Development

In this video, Jeff talks about Scrum’s roots, and how even a farmer was able to implement it to earn 4 times as much money after implementing Scrum.

Scrum in School

This is what Jeff was talking about the implementation of Scrum in schools in the Netherlands.

Final note

I hope you learned a thing or two from Jeff Sutherland, just as I did.

Now if you want to read more about what I’ve been doing in the Agile world, click here: https://robbieagustin.com/category/blog/agile/

The post Did you know – (Agile) Scrum’s roots are from more than just Software Development? appeared first on Robbie Agustin.

It’s #wisdomwendesdays once again so it’s time to share something I learned.

Have you ever taken interest in seeing how the Agile methodology can be of value in other areas, such as the operations side of the business?

I have. And the first time I proposed this to certain business leaders, I’ve been shut down.

I’ve been told that it will only work in the software development industry, or that we’ve been successful at doing project management the current way (waterfall) so it doesn’t make sense to try something new.

Have you ever experienced the same thing?

If you have, then I’m here to tell you that it will work.

Eventually the business leaders whom I proposed this to recognized the shift in industry practices, and started to accept Agile more and more.

I guess I was just ahead of my time.

That being said, I’m here to share with you that I learned that it does indeed work. You just need to experiment with it and apply it where it fits.

Apparently I did a similar approach to how Barclays did their Agile Transformation, though on a smaller scale.

And at that time, I didn’t know that other organizations such as Barclays were already ahead of the game terms of deploying Agile outside of Software Development.

But you’re in luck, because you get to learn from our mistakes.

The gist of it is that similar to Lean Six Sigma, these are tools that will allow you to get things done.

There is no single best way, you should try it out and see what works.

And in the example that I’ll be showing you below, you’ll see quite an extreme case, where this family applied Agile at home, and you’ll see how it helped strengthen their bond as a family.

Moreover, it helped the children to become more responsible, have better teamwork, plus they said it helped them with school!

Read all about it here (slides from PluralSight):

Agile for Families

Hope you find these to be of value. If you want more of these, feel free to check out my other articles related to Agile.

Now if you want to learn all about Agile, then here’s how you can take action:

• Learn Agile today. Go to https://robbieagustin.com/courses for more information
• If you haven’t yet, download a copy of my book for FREE (for a limited time only) – The Business Optimization Blueprint, and learn how you can improve your business process and take it to the next level.

The post How to use Agile outside of Software Development appeared first on Robbie Agustin.

It’s #transformationtuesdays once again and today we’re talking about Agile Transformation in one of the most regulated industries in the world – banking.

Here you’ll see some use cases talking about how Barclays Bank went Agile, and by doing so, achieved benefits such as:

• A 300% increase in throughput
• 50% reducuction in code complexity
• Less production incidents
• Shorter deployment cycles (every 0-4 weeks)
• Happier teams

Read on to see what Barclays has done to address some of the challenges.

These use cases talk about what Barclays Bank has done to:

• Redesign the workplace to make it more collaborative
• Provide extensive training, support, and Agile coaching
• Implement Lean across the end-to-end value stream including busineds, technology, operations, and all supporting functions
• And most importantly, how they got through the hurdle of having unique teams implement the same framework

As Jonathan Smart who was Head of Development Services at Barclays at the time said:

“We are not doing agile for agile’s sake. We are pursuing a strategy for the whole business to exhibit agility. When I say the whole business, I mean HR, auditing, security, compliance, the investment bank, the retail bank – everything.”

During the first 16 months of embarking on the initiative, the amount of “strategic spend” going into agile practices and processes has risen from 4% to more than 50%, and the company now has over 800 teams involved.

That’s more than 10,000 people. We have more than 30,000 training attendances, and – far as we know – it’s the world’s largest and fastest agile adoption.”

As promised, here are the use cases.

Agile Transformation at Barclays Bank

• The benefits of Agile for Barclays
• Disciplined Agile Business Analysis for Barclays
• Building Agile Pods at Barclays
• Barclays banks on Agile to tackle competitive threats in Fintech

Hope you find these to be of value.

Now if you want to learn all about Agile, then here’s how you can take action:

• Learn Agile today. Go to https://robbieagustin.com/courses for more information
• If you haven’t yet, download a copy of my book for FREE (for a limited time only) – The Business Optimization Blueprint, and learn how you can improve your business process and take it to the next level.

The post The Benefits of Agile Transformation at Barclays Bank (Use Case) appeared first on Robbie Agustin.

After all the feedback, responses, and inputs I got, I’m very close to finishing the long-awaited program which will be called TRAIN MY PROCESS IMPROVEMENT PERSON. I have been working on this for almost a year, and I’m planning to release it in the next few weeks.

This program will be entirely focused on how you or your process improvement person can acquire the highly-valued skillset of being able to find and solve for opportunity areas to improve, streamline, and automate areas in your business to reduce cost and increase revenue – skills that are absolutely essential in the field of Management Consulting.

It will include a private coaching community as an add-on, which will allow you to:

1. Get to talk to me, Robbie Agustin, the creator of the program
2. Get to connect with other people in the community to cross-pollinate ideas and share best practices
3. Get your specific questions answered

It will be a complete brain-dump of everything I know about Business Optimization. If only I can do a download straight to your brain like The Matrix, I would. But our technology today isn’t exactly there yet.

This program will cover all of the strategies I’ve used to optimize the Fortune 500 businesses I have worked with, where normally the opportunity to learn these skillsets are only made available to those who can be backed by large corporate funding.

But I would like to change all that by making all this available to entrepreneurs and employees like you, to help take your business and/or career to the next level, and get you one step closer to achieving the life you have always been dreaming of.

However, I need your help. Before I finalize everything for production, I would need to make sure I’ve covered everything.

That is where you come in.

Please take a few moments to answer this. We’ll, there is really just one thing I want to ask you.

When it comes to Business Process Improvement, what’s your BIGGEST CHALLENGE or FRUSTRATION that I absolutely need to answer in the program – TRAIN MY PROCESS IMPROVEMENT PERSON?

Reply with a comment.

The post I need your help – TRAIN MY PROCESS IMPROVEMENT PERSON appeared first on Robbie Agustin.

This post from Entrepreneur.com makes me feel as if I just got featured, even though it wasn’t about me, but rather, because it’s about what I do.

Yes, it’s no secret. I optimize businesses using Agile and Lean Six Sigma as some of the core methodologies that I use, and I teach others who are willing to learn how they can do the same.

In fact, I’ve written the book about it, which I’m giving away for FREE (for a limited time only) – The Business Optimization Blueprint, where I go into detail about how you can use both Agile and Lean Six Sigma together effectively, and help take your business to the next level.

So if you are a beginner at this and want to pave the way towards starting a lucrative career as an Agile and Six Sigma expert, here are some starter courses that you can take, based on the offerings in my courses page:

• Six Sigma Yellow Belt Training ($299 FREE)
• Agile Development Specialization (Enroll Today FREE Trial for 7 days)

After which, you can implement what you have learned by following the 5-step process that I lay-out in detail in my book – The Business Optimization Blueprint.

Do that, and you can be on your way to establishing a lucrative career as an Agile and Six Sigma expert.

The post What Entrepreneur says about Agile and Lean Six Sigma appeared first on Robbie Agustin.