Optimisation of department management through the use of agile working methods

Complex tasks and complex structures often mean that transparency falls by the wayside. This vehicle manufacturer therefore decided at an early stage to use shop floor management to ensure transparency and therefore efficiency in the work of divisions, departments and ultimately more than one hundred teams. This goal was to be achieved at team level with the help of Kanban boards. The special feature in this case was that this agile tool was not to be used for the management of an agile project, as is often the case, but was to be implemented for the long-term management of departments and teams.

Even though the introduction of the new shop floor management was a top-down process and there were therefore clear guidelines from the top floor, it was clear from the outset that the introduction at team level would require a great deal of persuasion. This was one of the reasons why those responsible opted for the experts from CO Improve. In the tender and proposal presentation, the consultants were able to score points not only with their experience and expertise, but above all with their personal demeanour and their social and cooperative skills.

Once this decision had been made, the new project team, consisting of three CO Improve consultants and two internal consultants, immediately got to work. Firstly, they worked together to develop a standard procedure for introducing the Kanban boards in the teams. The next step was to get the managers of the main departments and divisions on board. It was clear that the introduction would not be possible without their support. Here too, the CO Improve experts focussed primarily on persuasion, which meant taking the reservations and concerns of the managers seriously and taking them into account during implementation.

The goal of converting more than 100 teams to the new working method in four waves of two months each was quite ambitious. In order to increase the willingness of employees to adapt to the new way of organising work, the team of consultants initially focused on raising awareness of the problem. When asked about this, it quickly became apparent that there were definitely areas for development in most teams: for example, team members did not always know exactly what was due today and what tasks were prioritised. Or they realised that things were not running optimally, but could not explain why. High stress levels and delays caused by others were also cited as problems. And many teams quickly set themselves positive goals in the preliminary discussions, such as learning more from each other in order to be able to stand in for someone else from time to time or taking more personal responsibility and problem-solving in the team.

On this basis, the consultants were able to clearly demonstrate the advantages that the new boards mean for the team and thus significantly increase the motivation to engage with them. With the help of Kanban boards, every team member can see at any time which tasks need to be completed and who is responsible for what. Typical Kanban elements such as the regular 15-minute stand-ups, in which a team comes together to make their own progress transparent on the board or to identify difficulties, were adapted to the needs of the individual teams. This resulted in cycles between twice a day and every two days. The decisive factor was that the team meetings were actually exciting for those involved because visible progress had been made since the last meeting.

The actual Kanban training of the teams, including an initial draft of the team-specific Kanban board, was usually completed in three hours, as the Kanban method is very easy to understand. It proved to be more difficult for many employees to realistically estimate the size of the individual work packages and thus take on the right number of tasks. This is crucial, as multitasking and overloading teams with tasks are prohibited with Kanban. The aim of this agile method is to cap the theoretical workload of the team at around 70 per cent of availability with the so-called "work-in-progress limit" (WIP limit). In this way, blockages in the workflow and unnecessary waiting times during task processing can be avoided.

The effectiveness of this approach has been scientifically proven. However, this contradicts the traditional view of many managers that a team will deliver better results if you just put enough pressure on it, i.e. if you put more tasks into the team.

Dealing with problems and deviations also had to be trained at the beginning. In most teams, supported by regular improvement workshops, so-called retrospectives, a very good culture of communication and cooperation developed very quickly, in which ideas for solutions were exchanged. The team leaders also had to rethink. As the interface to other teams and internal customers, it was their responsibility to provide all the necessary information and requirements for solving a task before a job appeared on the board. In special team leader meetings, it was possible to make interdisciplinary collaboration considerably more efficient and smoother.

In line with the objectives, the team of consultants also had the task of informing the management level regularly, in detail and clearly about the progress of the introduction. This included a two-part self-assessment (team view and consultant view) on the implementation intensity and effectiveness of the boards and regular on-site meetings with the managers. Fortunately, the vast majority of teams were motivated to adopt the method, so that it was very quickly put into practice and implemented. One reason for this was the use of physical Kanban boards, which were installed in almost every team. Although corresponding digital tools are available, the experienced CO Improve consultants in particular favoured the haptic solution in most cases. And indeed, physically taking on a task by writing a card yourself and moving it over the board yourself seems to anchor taking responsibility more firmly in the mind. Progress is also perceived to be correspondingly intense when task cards can be hung in the "Done" field.

"Mission accomplished, deadlines met" - this is how the managers and the team of consultants ultimately felt once the extensive task had been implemented effectively and on time.