March book review: Managing to Learn

John Shook
Managing to Learn. Using the A3 management process to solve problems, gain agreement, mentor, and lead

The term A3 refers to a size of paper defined by ISO 216. For lean organizations, A3 is also a problem-solving and improvement tool as well as a management style and process.

The A3 report is a standardized form for describing a problem on a single sheet of paper. The report communicates both facts and meaning in a commonly understood format. It describes a story behind a particular issue and is guided by PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Act), an iterative problem-solving process. The process guides dialogue and analysis of the issue by discovering answers to the following questions:

  • What is the problem we are trying to solve?
  • Who owns the problem?
  • What are the current conditions?
  • What are the root causes of the problems?
  • What are the countermeasures?
  • What is the implementation plan?
  • How will we know if the countermeasures work?
  • How will we capture and share the learning?

In John Shook's book "Managing to Learn", you will find an excellent introduction to the fundamentals of A3 analysis as well as easy-to-understand examples on how to apply A3 thinking to improve problem solving, decision making, and communication in business organizations. John also explains the underlying learning process for developing talent and touches on how A3 enables the right decision at the right time. This capability of A3 helps lean organizations operate pull-based authority (aka, kanban democracy), where authority is pulled where it is needed and when it is needed: on-demand, just-in-time.

The book is organized around two story lines running in parallel. The first story line reveals the thoughts and actions of Desi Porter, a young manager who gradually discovers the meaning of the A3 process. The second story line describes the thoughts and actions of Ken Sanderson, Desi's supervisor who mentors Desi Porter in a structured problem-solving approach. While Desi is primarily concerned about his project of improving the document translation process in the company, Ken needs Desi and his other direct reports to master A3 thinking.

The book is both thoughtful and entertaining. I highly recommend it. If you are interested in learning more about the A3 management process, this book is for you.

To order this book from Lean.org, click here. Happy reading! 

Modelus LLC mentioned in Twin Cities Business magazine

Aleh Matus was quoted in the March 2009 Twin Cities Business article, "Putting the Serve in Server. Service-oriented architecture can make your company's IT system function seamlessly for users" by Dave Zielinski.

Modelus Specification released!

Our new open source product went live this week: Modelus Specification. It is an implementation of a very powerful design pattern originally described in the Domain Driven Design book by Eric Evans as well as in this article by Eric Evans and Martin Fowler.

The library is written in C# using generic interfaces. The source code, binaries, and documentation are distributed under the Apache open source license, version 2.0. 

Give Modelus Specification library a try and check out our other open-source products. Let me know what you think or if you have any questions. Enjoy!

Practical Agility conference on Fri, March 27, 2009

Practical Agility, a local conference for agile practitioners, is scheduled for Fri, March 27, 2009.

What: Practical Agility conference
When: Friday March 27, 8:00am-5:00pm.
Where: University of St. Thomas, St. Paul Campus, McNeely Hall 100 Great Room
Cost: $50

Registration is required: http://devjam.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=29. The space is limited to the first 200 people. I plan on attending. See you there!

Introductory Windows Azure webcasts for developers

If you are new to Windows Azure and would like to get started, take a look at these introductory webcasts on MSDN: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/dd439432.aspx. Enjoy!

MSTest 2008 results file does not get refreshed when tests are executed in TeamCity 4.0

We run into a locking issue last week while setting up MSTest 2008 with TeamCity 4.0. We recommend using NUnit instead of MSTest, but MSTest 2008 is supported by TeamCity 4.0 and we did not anticipate any problems using it. The first build worked correctly as expected, but the second and all subsequent builds did not seem to execute any tests and did not overwrite MSTest results file created by the first build. All builds were displayed as successful and all included MSTest results from the first run!

I looked closer into the build logs and noticed the following entries:

  • "The results file 'C:\TeamCity\...\tests.trx' already exists. Please specify a different results file or verify the existing file is no longer needed and delete it."
  • "The command 'C:\...\mstest.exe' /testcontainer..." exited with code 1.

When I tried deleting the results file manually, I received the "Error Deleting File or Folder" exception. The file was locked by TeamCityAgentService-windows-x86-32.exe -> java.exe process.
 
To resolve this problem, we ended up naming our MSTest results file name as tests%env.BUILD_NUMBER%.trx. This way, each new build generates a brand-new results file. Note that this solution requires you to delete historical .trx files on a regular basis, which could be easily accomplished with a command line script.

Happy coding!

Welcome to ModelBlog

Thank you for visiting ModelBlog. We hope the time you spend with us will be both entertaining and worth your while. Have fun!

Authors

Search

Archive

Tags