STATIK

Systems thinking allows you to define specific steps to integrate Kanban into your company. The steps are often conditional, advisory and depend on the specific task to be solved within the organization. In addition, they are not always worth following sequentially. However, the information gained in one of the steps can be an excellent basis for mastering the next step.

What are these steps? We will tell you below.

In what cases STATIK will be useful

Despite the fact that STATIK is a popular and even trendy method of systemic thinking, it does not always make sense to apply it in a company. In some cases, it is not necessary at all. Most often, STATIK will be useful for:

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• Process improvement when a Kanban method is required.
• For example, in customer orientation, visualization, flow state management;
• Improvement of intellectual processes - when software or software solutions are created.

It is STATIK that allows to see the working system holistically and unified. For this reason, it is often used to organize the process of managing a new team, department or products. It is also used to adjust an already working process, making it more transparent, efficient and fast. Systems thinking also helps to solve current "pains" - overloaded teams, active prioritization, departmental fatigue, slow work and similar situations.

In summary, STATIK allows you to study and model your work environment to trigger improvements in the right processes. Now let's move on to concrete steps.

Step 1: What makes a service meet the client's goals?

There are 8 steps in system design. The first is to understand the customer satisfaction criteria. Simply put, by what indicators we can judge that the client is or will be satisfied. Usually such indicators are the time of work performance, quality, reliability - all this should be digitized and have specific values. Every business has different criteria. When you have clear metrics on whether the work performed is meeting the customer's goals, then the company will understand if it is moving in the right direction to solve its customers' problems. Without such criteria, it is difficult to conclude whether the organization is on the right path.

Step 2: Understand the sources of dissatisfaction with the current system

Here it is important to start collecting feedback. And do it from all sides - from both real customers of the product and from internal customers. As a rule, real consumers are your customers, and internal consumers are the people who created the product or provided the service to customers.

Many companies neglect feedback. They give the work and disappear without trying to understand if the customers liked the result. If we talk about internal customers, most organizations do not arrange any surveys and do not even try to get feedback. As a result, dissatisfaction grows both inside and outside. Such a business cannot survive for long.

The most interesting thing is that solving one problem often solves another. For example, employees complain of being overloaded and tired from a large number of projects. The result is that the customer gets a poor quality product. The solution is to give more time for employees to solve tasks. Problem solved: employees are happy, they don't complain about overload, and customers get better quality results. Win-win.

Remember that the sources of dissatisfaction are the "input" for the whole Kanban system.

Step 3. Demand analysis

In the third step, it's time to analyze demand. You need to understand who your customers are, what they want, what their behavior patterns, expectations and requests are. It's also worth evaluating the volume of demand and the potential risks that certain customer requests carry. This will allow you to create a more elaborate Kanban system, where the load will be distributed competently, depending on the type and category of service.

Here's an example. If your company has a seasonal demand, it is worth highlighting its share among all other requests. Set the dates when they are usually received to prepare the necessary departments in advance. Prioritize the processing of tasks and their solution.

Step 4: Analyze opportunities

In this step, opportunities should be analyzed. Both in general, the whole company, and individual departments in particular. For this purpose, it is recommended to take already available data in the company. For example, how much it took to work on this or that project. In what time the team or department copes with a particular amount and type of work. It will be especially useful to analyze data in projects where the team did the work quickly or, conversely, blew deadlines.

Step 5: Workflow modeling

This step involves creating a model of a standard workflow. Modeling allows you to understand how much resources are spent on solving the tasks. When creating a workflow model, it is worth remembering that each step gives certain knowledge and results. If there is no such useful knowledge, then this step may not exist.

Let's take the task of developing a banking service or any other software as an example. We analyze the problem and it gives us knowledge how to proceed in forming an architectural solution, creating code or testing. Each step gives us valuable information, which later becomes the basis for the next step. This is how we come to the desired result along the chain.

Step 6: Classes of services

Service classes are also known as "service classes". They represent a certain set of rules that describe the algorithm of working with a particular object. Such objects can be certain tasks, products or other elements.

If we talk about a Kanban system, here service classes usually describe the discipline of queues or the order of tasks according to their execution priority. But it happens that they also describe the workflow strategy. To put it simply, whether an element should be tested by one specialist or whether it should be checked by another employee for quality compliance.

All classes of services should be clearly defined and fixed. All classes, including hidden classes (such as tasks from the supervisor), should be made explicit and clear. The Kanban system should calculate all possible situations and emerging tasks.

Step 7: Kanban system design

Step 7 is the design of the Kanban system. To do this, it is necessary to understand the sequence of certain actions within the workflow in terms of each type of activity. We need to determine if we need to build a holistic board for all the types of work and classes of service mentioned above. Or, 2-3 or more boards will be needed. It is worth understanding how to competently form the columns that will characterize the algorithm of the work process. Including, work out the lines that will indicate the type of work or separate groupings of the company's activities. It is also recommended to add a certain color for stickers, which will show this or that class of service.

Remember that the Kanban method is about regular meetings at the board. For this reason, it is worth choosing a host, frequency and duration of meetings. Identify the participants and the information that each participant should give. Determine in advance what decisions should be made during the meetings and what metrics to look at.

Step 8: Launch and socialize

STATIK is a system that benefits from collaborative meetings to consistently analyze and improve the entire Kanban system. When there is collaboration, problems gradually surface. It becomes more obvious where resources are limited and where additional opportunities are hidden. Launching and socializing in Step 8 often reveals interesting insights into the internal workings of the company that sometimes executives were not even aware of.

During socialization it is worthwhile to talk about the peculiarities and nuances of projects, to convey the influence of each employee on the result. Show how this or that work has an impact on subsequent decision-making in terms of work elements or service classes. Providing more detailed information will help raise the value of each participant, as well as provide a full understanding of the work of each department on the way to the end result.

Conclusion

STATIK is an excellent solution for implementing systems thinking during the analysis and design of Kanban systems. Such a system will improve business processes and efficiency many times over. However, remember that STATIK will not solve all problems in a company. Each organization is individual and with its own approach to work. By going through all 8 steps you can get more detailed information about the real processes inside your company, and detailed analysis has never hurt anyone.