Joe Justice on Agile Manufacturing Learning Consortium Webinar Q&A October 21, 2105 1. How do you deal with certification cycles of federal authorities such as the FDA, FCC, etc., in the context of an Agile manufacturing approach? I would highly recommend the Scrum Inc. webinar “Agile Testing” to take you through the best we’ve seen so far. http://www.scruminc.com/scrumlab-prime/ 2. XMfg - How different is it from the factory model followed in batch jobs production in the manufacturing industry? XMfg practices reduce the cost to make change to the line and the product. This can support batch jobs or one-piece continuous flow. The fastest manufacturing method we’ve seen so far is massively parallel concurrent manufacturing, which funnels work more like a current- generation hyper-threading CPU than a traditional line flow such as batch jobs or one-piece continuous flow. And ultimately XMfg allows the company to affordably iterate more towards this pattern each sprint, again by lowering the cost (in time and money) to make change. 3. Can this be applicable for a nonprofit, high-scale contemporary art exhibition (50-plus projects, two years)? If there is a clear vision (which is encouraged to evolve, but clear at any given point in time), these approaches will apply. And I’d love to see it; please email [email protected] if you try it! If you would like help getting started, I’ll invite you to attend a Certified ScrumMaster class: http://www.scruminc.com/scrum-training/scrum-courses-list/ 4. How long did it take to "print" the carbon car you witnessed at the trade show? Cincinnati BAAM completed the Local Motors DDM (direct digital manufacturing) porotype car during the two-day exhibition. I’m not sure if they ran the machine the entire time or not. While I’m immensely impressed with the speed and flexibility of the BAAM, after holding pieces of the car I was underwhelmed by their significant weight increase relative to other composites. In my own company, we continue to manufacture by subtractive rapid prototyping foam blocks, then wrapping them in carbon fiber for same-day unique structural assemblies. To get hands-on with this, I’d like to invite you to any of the Scrum Inc. Certified ScrumMaster classes hosted in Seattle, which include a Thursday after-class opportunity to build part of a WikiSpeed car with us. http://www.scruminc.com/scrum-training/scrum-courses-list/ 5. Some industries have very stringent configuration control requirements (e.g., aerospace). How can you maintain these requirements and execute this iterative/Scrum approach? I’d recommend the “Agile Testing” webinar to you: http://www.scruminc.com/scrumlab-prime/ 6. How are hardware and software teams melding their Scrum teams? The fastest I’ve seen are cross-functional teams of hardware and software, where the product owner owns the budget and ROI for their module of the total solution. A set of cruise missile teams I’ve worked with is doing this to great effect. Many companies find good gains by having an engaged PO of a software team and an engaged PO of a hardware team, with a Chief PO grooming the backlog from which both those POs pull. These teams aren’t quite as fast as the cross-functional hardware and software teams, but still multiples of speed over traditional silos and a non- team-based approach. For more on that, you may want to watch any of the five webinars on “Scrum at Scale.” http://www.scruminc.com/scrumlab-prime/ When you are ready to implement it, I’ll invite you to a “Scrum at Scale” class: http://www.scruminc.com/scrum-training/scrum-courses-list/ 7. Could you also provide an example from medical devices industry? Philips MRI, Tecan automated and semiautomated lab equipment, have done a Scrum launch, but I haven’t been back to see if they have maintained it. The companies I mentioned in the webinar, parts of 3M medical, robotic pharmacies at MedCo, divisions of GE Healthcare, and GE FastWorks. That’s to name a few. Feel free to attend a Certified ScrumMaster® class and work with the team, and me, through your team learning log, to explain your context. http://www.scruminc.com/scrum-training/scrum-courses-list/ 8. Please explain the Delphi estimation method mentioned. I’d like to invite you to one of our Certified ScrumMaster classes, where the technique is presented and practiced on the second day of the class. http://www.scruminc.com/scrum-training/scrum-courses-list/ 9. With a different product, such as PHP, will Scrum always be the best methodology? Scrum’s super power is that it is a framework for identifying what is slowing you down from reaching your goal and removing those things slowing you down or making the journey less happy. In addition to that broad use, Scrum itself is continually refined as new audited data is published from the hundreds of thousands of Scrum teams in flight. Yes, like any construct I suspect there will be a limit to the applications of Scrum, but I suspect that will be after the sun has died. 10. What aspects do we need to consider to create a Scrum contract with a client? I would recommend the webinar “Agile Contracting.” http://www.scruminc.com/scrumlab-prime/ 11. Can someone talk about backlog refinement, sizing of work items, and demonstration in terms of Agile manufacturing? We have to in order to make evidence-based decisions. Please replay the slide on Boeing’s 737 manufacturing process, current challenges and next steps, from the Scrum Alliance Learning Consortium webinar: https://www.scrumalliance.org/why-scrum/learning-consortium/learning- consortium-webinars/joe-justice-on-agile-manufacturing The 45-minute webinar “Extreme Manufacturing” may also be useful to you in this case: http://www.scruminc.com/scrumlab-prime/ 12. How does Rocket bunny-scale their production to mass produce parts after the initial rapid prototyping? In this case, the rapid prototyping method is the mass-manufacturing method. In my own hobby car company, WikiSpeed, we use the same technique. If a machine can produce one foam mold a day, we add a machine in parallel. With ten machines in parallel, each run by a Scrum team, more parts could be made than cars of a given type Ferrari sells in a year. The machine used by team WikiSpeed to do this is $2,700. I’d recommend watching the “eXtreme Manufacturing” webinar to dive more deeply: http://www.scruminc.com/scrumlab-prime/ 13. Any examples of established automotive companies (OEMs) doing Scrum, e.g., BMW? I am not aware of any automotive manufacturer that doesn’t have at least some Scrum, in software or management or marketing. In manufacturing, Johnson Controls has it in their Seating division. Volvo does in their platform design. Tesla almost does, they are super-close with some known stable interfaces and modularity, but not across the entire product. To all Tesla employees: In my opinion your companies is inches from being even more amazing. I invite you to enroll in our CSM® class here: http://www.scruminc.com/scrum-training/scrum-courses-list/ 14. Have you seen distributed/remote Scrum teams in manufacturing companies, and if so what successes or challenges have they experienced? I have. The challenges are of the same variety as [for] software teams: having similar setups in each site aids remote pairing. Good video chat etiquette and a video chat portal that’s always on aids team building, which ramps up velocity. Version control of the CAD files to machine form is just as important as version control of the code base for distributed software teams, in my experience. I’d recommend the 45-minute webinar “Distributed Scrum” at http://www.scruminc.com/scrumlab-prime/. And, to implement it, I will invite you to attend our “Scrum at Scale” course. http://www.scruminc.com/scrum-training/scrum-courses-list/ 15. Changing the way we do things might be faster than changing the actual factory machinery having investment/ROI periods of years. What advice would you give to someone who defers Scrum introduction with the long ROI of machinery? The cost-of-delay calculation will of course let you know when it makes sense to invest in new machinery and disrupt competition versus the cost of being disrupted by a competitor who emerges having already implemented XMfg. If the time to invest is not yet, organizing management and Lean cells using Scrum still fits with no change in machinery. For that, I’d recommend starting with a “Scrum Leadership Workshop” to establish the beginning of your Scrum-in-hardware transformation. http://www.scruminc.com/scrum-consulting-coaching/ 16. How can a ScrumMaster with no manufacturing experience start working with manufacturing companies? We are asked this almost every week — the demand for hardware Scrum experts greatly exceeds the supply! To get started, I’d recommend our “Scrum in Hardware, Train the Trainer” course. I’d also recommend watching about eight hours of “How It’s Made” and touring as many factories as will entertain your request. While that’s happening, make sure you have a current CSM and CSPO® certification. Since the clients are going to ask you how the Scrum teams coordinate, also enroll in a Scrum at Scale class. Then start filling in, if you haven’t already, your CSC and/or CST® application, and come on in to our Scrum in Hardware Train the Trainer class. Then, I do believe, you will be well prepared to rock the socks off many types of hardware companies.