Productivity! what a charming word!

Productivity!What a charming word!

Yuichi MORIWAKI

17 March 2016 (C)2016 Yuichi MORIWAKI 1

Productivity! What a charming word!Considering about productivity in software development, how do you imagine to realize high productivity?

Or Someone may consider higher productivity can be brought by automated testing tool.

Someone may consider higher productivity can be brought by super programmer.

Or Someone may consider higher productivity can realize by bringing enough number of

engineers.

Those ideas are correct, if we focus only on a certain process. But does this idea really brings high productivity?


Productivity! What a charming word!Here’s an example of total through put.

Even if you can get higher productivity in breaking eggs, if there is a only pan available, and you only can get an omelet after 5 minutes cooking. What is the productivity of this “omelet cooking process”?

You can break 60 Eggs in one minute. You can cook an omelet in every 5 minutes.

1 omelet/5 min

Does this egg breaking productivity be effective to entire through put?

60 eggs/min

High productivity Low productivity

Even we have high productivity process within an entire throughput process, the total throughput becomes equivalent to the lowest productivity.

INPUT OUTPUT

Productivity 60 Eggs / 1 min.

Even the 60 eggs can be prepared in one minutes, cooking an omelet requires 5 minutes, the output of

a plate of omelet is 5 minutes.

1 plate / 5 min.

This productivity expects the output of 60 plates of omelets per

minutes based on a simple calculation.

1 plate / 5 min.


Productivity! What a charming word!

Wherever the low productivity process locates in the entire process, the total throughput will become the productivity of the lowest productivity process.

INPUT

OUTPUT

High Productivity

process

High Productivity

process

A huge downtime

A huge downtime

LowProductivity

process

Huge amount of parts in progress.

Utilization ratio becomes low, due to the small input.

INPUT OUTPUTHigh

Productivityprocess

High Productivity

process

LowProductivity

process

High Productivity

process

High Productivity

process

How about this case?

100 pcs / min. 100 pcs / min. 100 pcs / min. 100 pcs / min.

20 pcs / min.

How much will be the total throughput (productivity) ?

?? pcs / min.

20 pcs / min.



This idea is productivity against time.


Productivity! What a charming word!Here is another story. To obtain the higher productivity we always consider like this...

INPUT OUTPUT

As there is a delay in development schedule. A project prepared 100

programmers to catch up the delay.

Coding CheckingTesting

Initial Plan

Actual

As delay occurred at the start of project, 100 programmers worked to meet the initial mile stone.

FortunatelyThe project

could recovered the

delay.

But cost overrun has occurred



This idea is productivity against money.



There is another example which loses the productivity.

lotsof tests

CodingDebugging Higher quality

To obtain the quality, many developer spend on testing, recoding and debugging.In this case even 100 programmer worked the project won’t meet the schedule.



This idea is the worst case.No assurance on schedule, deliverable and quality even lots of time and money are spent



How we don’t lose both time and money in productivity?

To not to lose time in productivity, the “sync” in processes is necessary.

If each processes are operated at the same tempo. The input and output become equivalent.This means the number of notes becomes the output of product. Thus they call the interval of each notes “TACT TIME”.

INPUT OUTPUT

This becomes the idea of “KANBAN”, the TOYOTA Production system.




To not to lose money in productivity, the accurate schedule planning is necessary.

Initial Plan

The schedule planning should include every task, events, consideration. Not only developer’s task but customer’s task should be included. And prepare the customer’s schedule and task list.

Once the customer understand what they themselves need to in a certain time, the customer and developer can share the difficulty of “keeping schedule”.

Plan agreed by customer

Negotiation of schedule

rearrangement becomes easier.Sync in every

process can help the project.




To organize “sync” process within your company.To share task & schedule with customer and make plan together.

Internal External


Software

Productivity! what a charming word!