Domain VI: Problem Detection and Resolution:

Part 1

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 Learning Objectives

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to:

Identify the process and techniques of agile problem detection

List the steps of fishbone diagram analysis

Discuss the question set of 5 Whys technique

Monitor the process using control charts

Describe the Kanban technique and cumulative flow diagrams

Explain the concept of escaped defects

Describe agile problem-solving method and its best practices

Agile Problem Detection
 Agile Problem Detection

The success of any project depends on how quickly and effectively problems faced by a
team are resolved.

If left unresolved, the problem debt continues to mount over time leading to delays and
rework, thus derailing the project schedule.
 Agile Problem Detection

There are various ceremonies in agile to identify and address problems, however the meetings that
specifically focus on problem detection are:

Daily stand-up

Sprint review (Iteration demo)

Sprint retrospective meetings

Agile helps expose problems early and provides an opportunity to resolve them in a timely manner.
 Problem Detection Techniques

Some of the techniques to identify problems and determine root cause are:

Fishbone Diagram 5 Whys Control Charts

Lead Time and Cycle Work In Progress

Escaped Defects
Time (WIP)
 Fishbone Diagram

A fishbone diagram (Ishikawa or cause-and-effect diagram) is:

An effective way to
identify the root cause

Used in conjunction
with the 5 Whys tool

Applicable to any type

of problem

Used to identify
process areas for
improvement
Fishbone Diagram

The causes are derived from main categories.

These causes branch out from the main

problem or effect.

The resultant diagram resembles a fishbone.

 Fishbone Diagram Analysis

The steps in a fishbone analysis are:

Category 7 Category 5 Category 3 Category 1

Identify the
problem/effect and
place it in a box.

Category 8 Category 6 Category 4 Category 2

 Fishbone Diagram Analysis

McKinsey 7S
Framework
Determine the major categories of possible causes.

Staff Skill Systems Strategy 4Ps of Marketing

Category 7 Category 5 Category 3 Category 1
Price Product

Identify the
problem/effect
and place it in a
box.

Promotion Place
Category 8 Category 6 Category 4 Category 2
Shared Structur
Style
Values e
 Fishbone Diagram Analysis

McKinsey 7S
Framework
Determine the major categories of possible causes.

Staff Skill Systems Strategy 4Ps of Marketing

Category 7 Category 5 Category 3 Category 1

Cause 1 Price Product

Cause 1
Cause 2 Cause 2 Cause 1
Cause 2 Cause 3 Cause 1 Cause 2 Identify the
Cause 3 Cause 3
problem/effect
Cause 1 and place it in a
Cause 1 Cause 2 Cause 1 Cause 2
Cause 2 box.
Cause 2 Cause 1 Cause 3
Cause 3
Promotion Place

Category 8 Category 6 Category 4 Category 2

Shared
Style Structure
Values

Brainstorm and identify causes under each category.

 Fishbone Diagram Analysis

!
Identify and prioritize the major causes and take steps to resolve the problem.
 5 Whys Technique

• 5 Whys is a technique of identifying the root cause of a

problem by repeatedly using the question Why
• The answer for each Why becomes the driver for
5 Whys identifying the next Why

Technique • 5 Whys technique is used together with the fishbone

diagram
• 5 Whys technique provides a visual representation of the
problem being analyzed

It is not mandatory to use all 5 Why's.

 5 Whys Technique

Let’s take a look at the 5 Whys in action:

1 Why was the product not delivered on time?

The requirements were not delivered on time.

2 Why were the requirements not documented in time?

The product owner was not available.

3 Why was the product owner unavailable?

The product owner was pulled into a parallel project.

4 Why was there no substitute for the product owner?

This role was not defined.

5 Why was the escalation channel not used to identify a workaround?

The team was not aware that an escalation channel exists for this problem.
 5 Whys Technique

By repeatedly asking Why:

It is possible to pin down It is not required to use

the likely cause of the five whys to drill down to
problem the root cause

It is an effective technique to provide a visual of the problem

 Control Charts

Control charts are used to monitor the behavior of a process over time.

! Agile projects experience different velocities and varying amounts of defects between iterations.
 Control Charts

Setting control limits helps detect whether signals lie within or outside the limits. Therefore corrective
measures must be implemented to bring the project under control.

• A process is considered out of control, if the

signal is outside the limits
• A process is also considered to be out of control
if either of the Rule of 7 conditions occur
• A process is also considered out of control if
there are seven consecutive points
 Control Charts

11.0

Upper Control Limit = 10.860

Quality characteristics

Ranges where a
10.0 data point will fall
Center line = 10.058 within six sigma
or 99.9997% of
the time
Lower Control Limit = 9.256
9.0

3 6 9 12 15

Sample
 Lead Time

• Lead time is number of days between feature specification and delivery for production
• It is an amount of time stakeholders must wait for their requirement to be captured, designed,
developed, and made ready for production

Lead Time (LT) = CT X WIP

or
Lead Time = WIP/T
Where,
WIP = Work in progress
T = Throughput or the rate of output
CT = Cycle time
 Cycle Time

• Cycle time is the amount of time required to convert a requirement into a

working solution
• It starts when the team takes a requirement from the backlog for
development
• It stops when the software is accepted and deployed into production

Overall lead time can be reduced by keeping the cycle time at a minimum.
 Kanban

Kanban is a Japanese term for signal board that was Invented by Taichi Ohno in the
Toyota Production System.
It is based on the principle that the work must flow smoothly across the process.

Kanban achieves speed-

Kanban focuses on flow Kanban applies just-in-
to-value by aiming to
rather than iterations time principles
reduce the lead time

• Kanban relies on just enough buffer in front of each step to ensure continuity
• A Kanban system is highly effective, especially in scenarios where the nature of work is repetitive and the
flow of work is highly unpredictable
 Kanban Process

There are three easy steps to achieve a Kanban system:

Improve process
by applying
Kaizen
Manage flow by principles.
minimizing the
work in progress.

Visualize workflow
by creating
columns for each
step.
 Example of Kanban Board

Kanban asks you to focus on bottlenecks and resolve them progressively.

Ready Ready Ready Ready Ready

Under For Test For Deploy
Approved For Analysis For Design For Coding
Review Test Deploy
Development Design Code

Brainstorm and take concrete actions to reduce the bottleneck.

 Work in Progress

Work in progress or work in process (WIP) refers to those requirements the team has started working on, but
are not yet complete
Lean principles recommend limited requirements to be WIP

A long list of WIP results in:

Sunk cost or invested money that is not

producing any returns

More rework, if business Hidden problem areas, making it difficult

expectations suddenly change to diagnose the issue
 Work in Progress

Kanban boards are used to visualize and limit the amount of WIP to avoid efficiency
issues that result from:

Teams being tempted to

pick up more Difficulty in identifying

requirements than can persisting blockers

be handled
 Cumulative Flow Diagram (CFD)

On a cumulative flow diagram diagram, you look for widening areas in the WIP colors to identify bottlenecks.
 Cumulative Flow Diagram (CFD)

A detailed CFD identifies the bottlenecks in a process.

A widening band is created above

an activity that is progressing at a
slow rate.

The activity below the widening

band is the bottleneck.

User stories are being created but

not being worked on.

There is a risk of a growing time

lag.
 Managing Constraints

Let's look at the steps for managing constraints

Subordinate
Identify Exploit Elevate Kaizen the
to the
Constraint Constraint Constraint Process
Constraint

• Detect • Ensure • Help the • Add resources • Prevent inertia

problems existing constraining and increase from
through resources are step bandwidth as becoming the
visualization fully utilized • Don’t push necessary process
more work into • Impose and
the constraining progressively
step reduce WIP
limits
Little’s Law
 Little’s Law

Little's law correlates the lead time with the inventory (work-in-progress) and the throughput or the
speed of working.

Amount of time
it takes for a
work item to be
processed from
Little’s Law Lead Time (LT)
start to finish
(time from
inception to
value delivery)
 Little’s Law

Cycle time is the average time between two successive work items coming out of a system.

Average time
interval between
two successive
Little’s Law Cycle Time (CT) work items
delivered
through the
system
 Little’s Law: Example

If it takes (on average) five days to

deliver a work item after it was Lead time is 5days
raised:

Cycle time is 5/10

If 10 work items are delivered by
Throughput is 2 items
a team in a five-day week:
per day
 Little’s Law

Little’s law states that the lead time is directly proportional to the WIP and inversely proportional to
the throughout.

Throughput
(T) = Number
of work items Little’s Law:
Little’s Law LT = WIP/T or
processed per
unit time WIP X CT
T = 1/CT
Escaped Defects
 Escaped Defects

Defects that are not found by the Quality Assurance (QA) team, but spotted by end users after the release

• Escaped defects are the most expensive defects to correct

and must be avoided

• They affect the organization’s brand value and reputation

• They are captured and tracked over a period

An increase in the escaped defects in multiple releases means the current QA process is not effective.
Escaped Defects: Example
 Agile Problem Solving

Project success depends on the team’s problem-solving ability.

In agile, the levels at which problems can occur are:

Quality and
Process level Team dynamics
performance
How well is the level
level
team adopting How can the team
How can the
agile? work better
team perform
together?
better?
 Agile Problem Solving: Best Practices

Help the team in

reverifying their
assumptions.
Assist when you see
Focus on the main issue.
the team struggling.

Do not give ideas; wait for Problem-

Solving in Reiterate the issue and
the team to come up with
Agile push toward root cause.
ideas.

Encourage question answer

Paraphrase and
sessions and team
understand well.
discussion.
Knowledge Check
Knowledge
Check
What does Little’s Law state?
1

A. The amount of work expands to fit the available time.

B. Projects deliver little in the last two days of an iteration.

C. Inventory in a process is equal to the average flow rate, multiplied by the average processing time.

D. Project throughput diminishes with larger user stories.

 Knowledge
Check
What does Little’s Law state?
1

A. The amount of work expands to fit the available time.

B. Projects deliver little in the last two days of an iteration.

C. Inventory in a process is equal to the average flow rate, multiplied by the average processing time.

D. Project throughput diminishes with larger user stories.

The correct answer is c

Per Little’s Law, the work in-process inventory in a stable system is equal to the average flow rate, multiplied by
the average processing time.
Knowledge
Check
In a cumulative flow diagram, how can a bottleneck be determined?
2

A. A bulge appears in one of the process areas.

B. Begin the value points for the release start to increase.

C. Project velocity starts to decrease.

D. The team starts experiencing negative velocity.

 Knowledge
Check
In a cumulative flow diagram, how can a bottleneck be determined?
2

A. A bulge appears in one of the process areas.

B. Begin the value points for the release start to increase.

C. Project velocity starts to decrease.

D. The team starts experiencing negative velocity.

The correct answer is A

The cumulative flow diagram starts showing a bulged area in the process that is experiencing a bottleneck.
Knowledge
Check
What does a work in progress (WIP) limit reflect?
3

A. The number of resources available to work on a user story

B. The number of story points that an iteration can deliver

C. The point at which any more work items will cause a bottleneck

D. A customer imposed limit on the amount of time a work may require

 Knowledge
Check
What does a work in progress (WIP) limit reflect?
3

A. The number of resources available to work on a user story

B. The number of story points that an iteration can deliver

C. The point at which any more work items will cause a bottleneck

D. A customer-imposed limit on the amount of time a work may require

The correct answer is C

Work in progress limit reflects the point at which any more work items will cause a bottleneck
 Key Takeaways

Agile problem detection techniques include fishbone diagram, 5

Why’s, control charts, lead time and cycle time, Kanban, work in
progress, and escaped defects.

Little’s law correlates the lead time with the inventory and the
throughput or the speed of working.

Escaped defects are those identified by the end user during live
operations of the developed software.

In agile, problems can occur at the process level, quality and

performance level, and team dynamics level.