WHAT ABOUT 4X IMPROVEMENTS?
We often hear about incredible performance improvement achievements, like 3, 4 or even more times the baseline.
Proponents of #SAFe, #Scrum and #Kanban are know to purport such results.
Yet many are skeptical.
The question is: are they real?
There are plenty of anecdotes and even case studies presented at conferences and in papers and books.
But in all these cases, there is fact - or Pattern - that recurs very often.
While the result was achieved somewhere, it seems impossible to reliably reproduce it elsewhere.
The managers, consultants and coaches that were successful in one instance, try to do "exactly the same" in some other context.
And the results - while positive - are often disappointing compared to the high bar set by the successful precedent.
So what is missing?
If you do "exactly the same" things, it is reasonable to expect comparable results.
By then why are there such differences?
Are these just unique instances of happy chances, alignment of the Planets, and sheer luck?
Is it just all random success?
Or is there a method?
I'd claim that most of such reported cases are due mostly to luck.
They happen as the methods suggest actions that indeed increase the odds - but do not guarantee - a spectacular improvement.
There must be something more than just following a recipe!
As in the Story of the Egg of Columbus, there is indeed a secret ingredient to make such cases reproducible by design, and not by random chance.
As in that story, it is a matter of knowledge.
If you have the knowledge you can do it.
twitter.com/tendon/status/1523949167587905536
Would you like to know more?
Follow me @tendon for the next thread, where I will debunk the myth of the impossibility of 4X improvements.
And like the Story of the Egg of Columbus, you will realize it is obvious in hindsight, while not self-evident from the outset.
Steve Tendon
@tendon
I help executives achieve superior financial, operational, organizational and human performance by adopting the power of Flow@Scale™.
