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Popcorn Flow
Continuous Evolution
Evolve Fast
So what is it
Popcorn Flow is a simple tool to help team establish a continuous flow of small, traceable, co-created, explicit change experiments.
Why
Making changes is usually thought of a big, hard and scary.
Popcorn flow tries to help the team simplify and focus on small simple experiments.
It's one approach to getting continuous improvement as part of the culture
It allows changes and experiments to be visible.
Not just for process changes use for all types of changes: process, technical, architectural.
Benefits
Benefits
A simple framework that encourages teams to make lots of small changes over time.
Easy and intuitive to implement. A Kanban board and good facilitation is all you need.
Helps the team gain momentum and confidence.
Principle #1
If change is hard, make it continuous (aka. "The virus" principle)
Principle #1
Problem
This is where it all starts
Prioritized list of problems or observations that the team identifies.
Facilitate the team to find their own problems and issues, don't define them for them.
Principle #2
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but ... a shared opinion is fact (aka. "The kaizen urgency" principle)
Options
The team brainstorms a list of options that may solve the problem.
Raw ideas that will be fleshed out if chosen for an experiment.
Facilitate the need for simple small options.
Try and focus to 3-4 options per problem
Possible Experiments
Options the team has chosen to do
Refine the option by adding more details and expected results
Teams can usually handle 3-5 changes an iteration (maybe more!)
Experiment Template
Template
Action:
Reason:
Expected result:
Duration:
Review Date:
Example
Committed
Experiments the team has selected to work on.
Think of this as the Planned column.
Keep WIP low, 1-2 to start and then increase as the team gets comfortable and in a flow.
Ongoing
The experiments that are in progress
Again, Keep WIP low.
Review
After an experiment is over the team reviews its results
Goal is to understand if the experiment has achieved the expected results.
Doesn't have to be end of sprint/iteration.
Answer the following
Questions
What experiments did we agree to do?
Which ones did we actually do?
What did we expect to happen?
What actually happened?
What did we learn?
Based on what we learned, what are we going to do next?
How can we enhance this experiment?
Should this be a permanent solution?
Principle #3
Its not "Fail fast, fail often", its "Learn fast, learn often" (aka. "The skateboarder" principle)
Next
Now that the team has finished the experiment and analyzed the results ... what should come next.
A place to remind the team to make sure they look at what to do next.
Facilitation
Facilitation
Remember you are to help facilitate not identify or solve issues for the team.
Your goal should be getting the team to own and run their own CI process.
So with what:
How do you help the team come up with the list of problems and observations?
How do you allow everyone on the team to participate?
How do you let the team take ownership of continuous improvement?
Goto Retro
Go To Method: Start, Stop, Continue
This is the usual go to for a team when running a retro
Can fall into treating the symptom
Can be hard to dig deep into the issue and find the root cause.
Typically results in a large take away focused on one person.
1-2-4-All
Alternative: 1-2-4-All
You can immediately include everyone regardless of how large the group is.
Helps include all people regardless of their personality.
Allows the team to identify and analyze the problem.
Ideas and solutions are sifted quickly.
http://www.liberatingstructures.com/1-1-2-4-all/
Focused Topic
Make sure there is a focused topic and not a general "What can we do better"
Examples:
What observations or problems do you see with Cross-Team dependencies?
Deployment takes 4 hrs how can we decrease this?
There are a lot of defects that need to be fixed before release, how can you decrease this?
Remember
You are not always coming up with the questions to focus on.
The team should be owning the processes so seed the topics initially but find ways for them to come up with the areas of focus.
Individual
Have everyone silently write observations and problems based on the topic.
This allows everyone no matter on personality to self-reflect on the topic.
Time Limit: 1-2 minutes
Individual
Pairs
Generate ideas in pairs, building on ideas from self-reflection.
Time Limit:
Pairs
Foursomes
Share and develop ideas from your pair in foursomes (notice similarities and differences, find the patterns).
Time Limit: 4 min.
Foursomes
All
Ask, “What is one idea that stood out in your conversation?” Each group shares one important idea with all
* repeat cycle as needed.
Time Limit: 5 min.
Mix it up.
Don't get stuck in
a rut
Focus on facilitating a safe, blameless meeting.
Make sure to mix up your facilitation techniques.
The team will naturally take to certain types of facilitation.
To help the team take over let on the team members run the meeting.
Keep it fun!
Resources
Other Resources
Liberating Structures: http://www.liberatingstructures.com/
Retro Ideas: https://trello.com/b/40BwQg57/retrospective-techniques-for-coaches-scrum-masters-and-other-facilitators
Facilitation Tips and Tricks By Jim Janlen: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1IMXozj-GgyX8rywJl2XoMW0R6xszGnSG8mTljOTvU7A/edit#slide=id.g9a3dc90cb_217_86
note: This is a WIP book so may not be available forever
Flow
Wrap-up
Popcorn Flow:
Helps the team gain momentum on change.
Helps the team create a culture of Continuous Improvement.
Helps make a lot of small changes over time.
Teams can usually handle 3-5 changes a week (maybe more!).
The experiments don't have to follow the Sprint cadence.
Allows visibility into the change progress.
Credits and Resources
- Popcorn Flow: https://popcornflow.com/
- https://www.slideshare.net/cperrone/popcornflow-continuous-evolution-through-ultrarapid-experimentation
- Background Photo by Charles Deluvio on on Unsp https://unsplash.com/photos/I6mx55jXOvMlash
- Trello Board Template: https://trello.com/b/f9bXy87c