Our ‘Value in Action’ series shares case studies that demonstrate the real value of our partners’ digital solutions in aviation. Read on to find out how flow of work accelerator Project4 Learning Lab accelerated their client’s workflow through a large, complex product development programme whilst improving team engagement.
Project4 Learning Lab’s client was a large aerospace company that invests heavily in developing new products for commercial transportation. Their main challenge was that one of their in-service products was not achieving the required installed life as measured in flight cycles. This led to increased maintenance at shorter intervals, leading to a significant increase in costs for the business and operational disruption for the customer. Consequently, the client had agreed with their customer to implement a large and complex product redesign programme.
Project4 Learning Lab was approached to support the client to plan the complex work required to address the problem and to work with the globally distributed teams to deliver their work faster to minimise the product lifecycle costs.
Project4 Learning Lab navigated through the challenges associated with the scale and complexity of the programme using their unique Release Valve® approach to accelerate flow.
They worked to understand the activities that had been completed so far and to engage the extended team in an activity to define the key elements of the Programme Master Schedule, the linkages between them and to try to surface some of the problems and impediments that might be affecting the flow of work.
Eight key challenges were identified that needed to be addressed, such as:
- Early Starts, Late Finishes: Starting work too early, generating work for other teams, choking the programme, preventing valuable work happening.
- Problem Percolation: Problems are known by teams, but they are not addressed quickly enough, often because they aren’t well described or routed to the right people.
- Assumed Accountabilities: People aren’t clear on their roles or assume the accountabilities of others (can lead to a lack of ownership).
- Learned Helplessness: Teams are used to either problems not being fixed or leaders taking problems away from them, and develop a habit of accepting problems or waiting for someone to fix them.
The Project4 Learning Lab team needed to deliver at speed with ways to overcome those challenges and create flow in product development without sacrificing quality.
Throughout the engagement Project4 Learning Lab worked with the client to reconfigure their programme plan to remove the biggest sources of uncertainty first, to organise their teams around the delivery of value, and to implement a cadence of planning, delivery, reflection and improvement cycles. They also made the work and potential problems clear and transparent by implementing their Rapid Risk Removal, Collaboration Cadence, Team Tetris and Tiered Visual Performance Management solutions respectively.
Project4 Learning Lab introduced the following programme to address the eight key challenges identified in the Finding Flow phase before scaling across the extended team.
- Applying Agile: A tailored approach to deploying agile methodologies, emphasising the customisation of agile rituals, behaviours, and mindsets. It utilises specialised coaching to guide teams through the learning and adaptation of agile principles, ensuring they are seamlessly integrated into specific work environments.
Results
Through the engagement, Project4 Learning Lab and their client were able to address the key challenges that were preventing work from flowing smoothly, and the teams produced some impressive results.
- A Shorter Programme (31% decrease in the schedule overrun): The forecast programme completion, which was characterised as the introduction of the modified product into service operation with the customer, improved in each time box with corresponding increases in the confidence level of the forecast. “More than 12 months’ reduction in the forecast entry into service.”
- A Significant Return on Investment (a return on investment in excess of 100:1): The cost of delay on this particular programme was extremely high and the net effect of the outcomes described was an extremely positive return on investment.
- Boosting Productivity (39%increase in output in a sprint): The teams working on the programme became significantly more productive as the system was deployed. The key drivers for this were the effective prioritisation, which reduced job juggling and context switching, the alignment of the planning with other teams that they were dependent upon to reduce waiting time, and the increase in speed to identify and remove issues that were preventing delivery. “A 30% productivity improvement was seen in the first 100 days.”
- Predictable Delivery (29% increase in on-time milestone completion):The delivery performance of the teams improved as well as the consistency of delivery, which made delivery more predictable, which in turn increased trust with parties outside the programme. This made it easier to obtain resource and made discussions with customers and partners significantly easier too.
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