Oka_Flow Team_Flow Facilitator_Guide V1.0 2b. Oka Flow Team Facilitator Guide V1.01 20170808

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TEAM FLOW MODULE

June 2017
Version 1.0

WELCOME

Get a first
impression

Thank you very much for acquiring Okaloa Flowlab to experience flow in a realistic but safe-to-fail
work environment!
This slide deck contains following sections that will help you understand how to best use the
material to get the most value out of Okaloa Flowlab when facilitating a workshop:
•

Introduction – explaining the why and philosophy behind the simulations

•

The material – overview of material included in the set

•

The quick, standard and advanced simulations – background information and explanation on
how the simulations work (set-up, rules, policies); guidelines on how to introduce and debrief
the simulations

•

Questions and answers – examples of typical questions participants could ask with suggested
answers, list of Q&A asked by other facilitators

•

What’s next – description of the extended “Enterprise” Okaloa Flowlab set and examples of
more advanced simulations and options

•

Acknowledgement

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

TEAM FLOW - OBJECTIVE

TEACHING
FLOW
THINKING
© Okaloa bvba, June 2017

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

INTRODUCTION

Watch our
intro video

Agility is a mindset. It is not a set of practices that can be installed. But how do you get out of the
practices trap, especially when you have to mobilize not just software development and IT teams
but the entire organization towards business agility where value is created through meaningful
work? How do you engage business teams, users and customers? How do you enable higher levels
of collaboration, not just within teams but also across teams? In other words, how do you get
individuals, teams and even the entire organization into a flow state where everybody is doing the
right thing at the right time by having the right conversation? Rational explanations and models of
agility will only go so far. To be truly effective, the agile mindset needs to be experienced, which is
exactly the purpose of Okaloa Flowlab.
Through simulating a conventional work environment that reflects a mechanistic mindset

characterized by a focus on resource efficiency, command and control and specialist workers,
participants experience which roadblocks need to be overcome. As the team is taking its first baby
steps into agile, they will experiment (in 2 or 3 rounds) with policies and practices (e.g. pull of work,
cadences, limiting WIP) that enable collaboration, get the team into flow, and allow an agile
mindset to emerge. Weaved into the simulations they will discover the fundamental difference

between resource efficiency and flow efficiency.
© Okaloa bvba, June 2017

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

SIMULATIONS, NOT A GAME
By using Okaloa Flowlab, you step into the flight simulator for experiencing and
practicing agility in a safe-to-fail environment. It differentiates itself from other
lean agile games by the fact that the focus is on learning and not on winning a
game. Okaloa Flowlab is a learning tool that should be weaved into your course
material so that practice and theory can interchange. Built on the premise that

experience must come before theory, with Okaloa Flowlab you do experiments
through board-play style simulations that reflect real work environments.

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

Thinking

ACTIVE LEARNING

Active
experimentation

Action
Results

Reflective
observation

Every set of Okaloa Flowlab is played in different rounds of simulations. The standard play typically exists out
of 2 rounds of simulation. The 1st round simulates the current way of working (starting from a pre-defined
business scenario); in the 2nd (and 3rd in case of an advanced play) round, the participants will define under the
guidance of the facilitator an experiment to improve the current situation.
The goal with Okaloa Flowlab is to let participants discover a new way of thinking integrating science and
experience. Our aim is to provide a learning tool that allows participants to learn new techniques to handle
change and adaptation:
•

reflective observations (Observe–Orient-Decide-Act) – after the 1st round participants will be asked to
make observations in order to analyze what impedes flow

•

active experimentation (Plan-Do-Check-Adjust) – based on these observations, participants will then be
asked to define experiments and hypotheses

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

1ST ROUND – REFLECTIVE OBSERVATION
OODA LOOP
Orient
Implicit
guidance

Implicit
guidance

Observe

Decide

Unfolding
events

Habits, experiences and dispositions

Act

Rational choice

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

2ND ROUND – ACTIVE EXPERIMENTATION
PDCA LOOP
Do

Experiment

Plan

Hypothesis

Results

Check

Learning

Adjust

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

FLOW AND CAUSAL LOOPS
Flow and organizational resilience are the foundation for business agility. Flow, in one sense, is the
creation of value through meaningful work. In another sense, it is the state that is characterized by
clear purpose, total engagement and great situational awareness. Resilience is the study of how a
system responds to a perturbation. Organizational resilience is the study of how organizations
respond to change. The essence of resilience is to understand the causal loops that keep the
system self-organizing. Causal loops can keep a system in an undesirable state, or they can keep a
system in a desirable state. They are important to understand how to bring a system from one state
to another. Flow - or the absence of flow - can be understood through a set of causal loops.
Understanding of these causal loops can help to understand how to bring people, teams or even
entire organizations into a state of flow. With Okaloa Flowlab you will be able to explore these
causal loops.

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

rational
brain The rider

OKALOA FLOWLAB

Watch our
intro video

Because Flow must be experienced

Engage the intuitive as well as
the rational brain
Quickly iterate between theory
and practice

intuitive
brain The

Explore current and future
way of working in a safe
environment

elephant

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

LEARNING THROUGH SIMULATION
The winner is
who has learned
the most

Purpose is learning

Labs notes

not winning

to reflect on what
has been learned

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

OKALOA FLOWLAB APPROACH

Okaloa Flowlab is a simulation environment that forms the backbone of your own workshop(s)
whereby practice/experience comes before the theory. With Okaloa Flowlab, we are offering the

material with which you can define your own workshop. In this guide we provide two scenario’s of
how to use Okaloa Flowlab. You are welcome to produce your own slides out of this guide provided
that you respect the copyrights. Read our terms and conditions for more information.

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

LEARNING GOALS FOR PARTICIPANTS
Typically you run the simulations with 3-5 people around the board (ideally 4 people and 1

person taking up the role of project coordinator or leader). You can either run 2 or 3 rounds
of simulation (i.e. quick, standard or advanced play) depending on how much time you have
and what exactly it is that you want the attendees to experience.

• Standard play learning goals
• Additional specific learning goals that you
want to address

Advanced
Play full day
Standard
Play 3h

•
•
•

Quick
Play
90’
• Quick play learning goals
• Flow metrics and Little’s law
• Causal loops that underlie the
organization of work
• Active learning loops (OODA and PDCA)
and doing sound experiments

Basics of flow thinking
Understand the difference between
resource efficiency and flow efficiency
Understand how to improve (business)
agility

The quick play and standard play can also be
used during a coaching session; with the
advanced play you could run a full day workshop
that is tuned towards your own needs.

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

ADVISED LEVELS OF EXPERTISE FOR
FACILITATION
As a facilitator of Okaloa Flowlab we expect that you are comfortable with facilitating workshops.
To run a quick play you need have experience with Scrum and/or Kanban and it is advised to have an understanding of
flow thinking. We recommend to get familiar with the work of Niklas Modig: “This is lean”. We belief that this is key in
order to be successful with using Okaloa Flowlab in your workshops. Here is a link to an introductory Ted talk of him
about “The efficiency paradox”.
For the standard play you need to be an active lean agile practitioner. You need to have decent knowledge of flow
metrics and know how to use them in practice: leadtime, CFD, Little’s Law, flow efficiency (reference work: “Principles of
Flow”, by Donald Reinertsen). We also recommend to familiarize yourself with causal loops (Systems Thinking; Peter
Senge). Furthermore, having knowledge about how to define and validate hypothesis as part of active learning
(OODA/PDCA) is required (ref. John Boyd and W. Edwards Deming).
In order to run a full day workshop (advanced play) with Okaloa Flowlab you need to be able to embed the simulation
material into your own course material whereby simulations and theory interchange with each other. This might require
the ability to tune the simulations to your own needs. In this case, we encourage you to familiarize yourselves with the
different simulations and extensions* so that you can broaden your experience and extract your own workshop
material out of it.
* e.g. quality simulation, bottleneck, and capacity allocation – will be made available Fall 2017; some variants are
developed by our contributor’s network; we encourage you to participate in that network.
© Okaloa bvba, June 2017

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

ADVISED LEARNING PATH
Custom workshop cocreation
Facilitator workshop

Online session (3h)

Advanced
Play full day

Co-facilitation

Standard
Play 3h
Co- facilitation

Facilitator workshop

Quick
Play
90’

Facilitator Guide

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

ONLINE COACHING SESSION
Through our slack channel you will be able to ask questions, receive and submit feedback or simply
get in touch with us, Okaloa Flowlab beta testers and other users. At the time of purchase you
should have been invited. If this was not the case, please send an e-mail to info@okaloa.com.
In case you need more elaborated assistance, we can offer you an online on-boarding session to get
you up to speed with the material and the approach. We will explain the simulations in detail and
answer your questions regarding using the material for facilitation purposes. Typically such a
session takes up to 3-hours (Price : see website).

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

OKALOA FLOWLAB FACILITATOR’S
WORKSHOP
To become more skilled and proficient with Okaloa Flowlab, we recommend to attend one of our
facilitator’s (train-the-trainer) workshops. We will shorten the time needed for you to:
•

become an experienced flow thinker,

•

learn all you need to know about causal loops (systems thinking), and

•

practice reflective observation and active experimentation (OODA/PDCA).

The Okaloa Flowlab facilitator workshop is run in the spirit of co-creation. Not only will you learn
from the creators of Okaloa Flowlab how to best facilitate Okaloa Flowlab, introduce and debrief
the different simulations and be creative with it, you will also be exposed to the “Enterprise set”
featuring cross-team, upstream and end-to-end flow. Participants are encouraged to jointly explore
workshop scenario’s and how to best facilitate Okaloa Flowlab workshops.
A list of facilitator’s workshops will become available after summer 2017.

Check some testimonials about the facilitator workshop.
© Okaloa bvba, June 2017

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

CO-FACILITATION
Co-facilitation is highly recommended as a means to get familiar with, or further hone your skills to
facilitate Okaloa Flowlab workshops. We recommend co-facilitation with peers as well as with
Okaloa Flowlab creators and/or contributors. In all cases you remain responsible for organizing and
marketing your workshops.

CUSTOM CO-CREATION
See slide p 160.

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

DOMAIN INDEPENDENT
Team Flow is created such that it can be used in any business domain; the simulations
lend themselves very well to be played with diversified teams (e.g. we have good
experience with IT and business teams participating the same workshop; it stimulates
a common language and allows them to reach a mutual understanding of underlying
problems).

Check out our user testimonials and reach out
to other users for more information (use the
Okaloa Flowlab Slack channel).

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

DO NOT FORGET TO READ THE

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS SECTION!
© Okaloa bvba, June 2017

Click
here
Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0 20

Material used for Team Flow
simulations

✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

What is in the box

Each piece of material will be
addressed in the following
section when the mechanism
of the simulations is explained.

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

What is in the box cont.
The blue and

purple marker

The included white board markers

appear almost the same when you

contain a wipe. This wipe works

tick off work on the cards so if

sufficient for wiping the cards.

possible

avoid

use

them

together.

The 2 set of blocker cards needs to be mixed
and shuffled very well (make sure that each
round they are well shuffled!).
The set includes 1 bloc note, if needed you can order
extra copies by sending e-mail to info@okaloa.com.
© Okaloa bvba, June 2017

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

Cleaning the board
If you want to keep your board clean, we recommend that after each usage
you immediately clean the board with a whiteboard cleaning kit.

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

Static labels
•

The boards are provided as blank boards so that you can map the
different steps of any business process on it. So the participants
need to define the labels of the columns themselves. For simplicity
we are working in 2 steps A and B.

•

Some would like to have a fixed labels on the board and that is
why we are experimenting with static, re-usable labels.

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

TEAM FLOW IS A STARTING KIT

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

QUICK, STANDARD AND ADVANCED PLAY
The Team Flow set supports a quick, standard and advanced play. The
standard play is explained in the next 2 sections; for the advanced play
go to here. The major difference between quick and standard play is:
1)

the level of tracking of metrics

the level of debriefing between the 2 rounds of simulation

Where relevant, differences will be indicated in the slides.

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

THE TEAM FLOW
THE STANDARD PLAY

VISUAL MANAGEMENT
Resource efficiency – round 1

BACKGROUND FOR ROUND 1

Set up video

Introducing visual management

CURRENT MINDSET

•

We are assuming a resource efficiency mindset

•

Players and roles:
•

Organizational &
People silos

3-5 players per boards with 1 (additional) player taking
up the role of project manager or coordinator (if not

Command
& Control

enough players a player plays double roles);
•

project manager or coordinator is a very traditional
project manager who is very focused on keeping the

Focus on
resource efficiency

team busy at all times; and has a strong command and
control mindset (he/she defines who is working on
what when).

KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATOR
Actual work time

•

Team members are specialists in their domain and
work in isolation (silo thinking).

Resource efficiency =
© Okaloa bvba, June 2017

Available work time

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

VISUALIZATION OF WORK
First steps into flow

Team Flow is created such that it can be used in any business
domain; the simulations lend themselves very well to be
played with diversified teams

IT Application development
Read for
development

Development
In progress

Testing

Complete

Done

HR Recruiting
Incoming
solicitations

1st
interview

2nd
Interview

Negotiation

Contract

User stories

(Work) flow

Candidates

Requests
Open positions
© Okaloa bvba, June 2017

(Work) flow

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

FOCUS ON WORK
State B

State A

The board shows workflow
steps: state A and state B;
The board shows workflow
state A is subdivided in 2
steps: state A and state B
states: in progress and
done.

These are items that are ready
for the next step in the
workflow
These are work items in progress.
They have an owner.

These are items that are ready, but not
yet committed (no owner yet)

Items move in this direction
Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

WORK ITEMS
Initials/color of owner.

This field can be used to
indicate Urgent, Fixed
date, Expedite, …

Date for when a fixed
date item needs to be
delivered.

Work to be done in
State A.

Work to be done in
State B.

We will explain later!

Ignore these for the moment.
© Okaloa bvba, June 2017

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

WORKFLOW
Our visualization is based on a workflow. We will show an example of
how work “normally” goes through the workflow on the board in the
next slides.

State A
Ready

E.g. Developing

Wait state

Done

E.g. Testing

Complete

Wait state

Wait state
Work state

State B

Work state

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

WORKFLOW – DAY 1
Starting work

State A
Ready

E.g. Developing

Wait state

Done

E.g. Testing

Complete

Wait state

Wait state
Work state

State B

Work state

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

DAY 1 – ASSIGNING WORK
State A

State B

The project leader assigns work to people (at
the daily standup). Once a work item is assigned
to a team member, this team member becomes
the owner of the work item. Mark the name of
the owner on the item and move it in the in
progress column.

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

DAY 1 – PERFORMING WORK
State B

State A

✔✔✔✔

1.
2.

Throw your die
Tick off the work

The die score represents variability of the
work; the number of check boxes on the cards
are the same but variability is introduced
through throwing the die.

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

WORKFLOW – DAY 2
Moving to the first “done” column

State A
Ready

E.g. Developing

Wait state

Done

E.g. Testing

Complete

Wait state

Wait state
Work state

State B

Work state

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

DAY 2 – DO MORE WORK
State A

State B

✔✔✔✔✔✔

Immediately move items in
the “done” column when
work is finished.

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

WORKING ON MULTIPLE ITEMS
State A

✔✔

State B

✔✔✔✔✔✔

You can tick off work on a
second item that has already
been assigned to you.

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

WORKFLOW – DAY 3
Moving to the next work state

State A
Ready

E.g. Developing

Wait state

Done

E.g. Testing

Complete

Wait state

Wait state
Work state

State B

Work state

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

DAY 3 – AUTHORIZE CONTINUATION OF
WORK
State A

✔✔

State B

✔✔✔✔✔✔

The project leader authorizes the
continuation of work on a work item by
moving it from “Done” to “State B”
during the daily standup.

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

DAY 3 – WORK CONTINUES
State A

✔✔

State B

✔✔✔✔✔✔
✔✔

Work items in state B can be
worked on.

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

WORKFLOW – DAY 4
Completing work

State A
Ready

E.g. Developing

Wait state

Done

E.g. Testing

Complete

Wait state

Wait state
Work state

State B

Work state

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

DAY 4 – WORK IS FINISHED
State A

✔✔

State B

✔✔✔✔✔✔
✔✔✔✔✔✔

Immediately move items in
the “complete” column when
work is finished.

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

EVENT CARDS
Draw the event card at the END of each day.

The event card will give
instructions that need to be
executed at the end of the
day to the team; it is typically
the project manager that
reads them.
© Okaloa bvba, June 2017

The number on the back of the
card gives an indication of what
day we are on.
Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

BLOCKER CARDS
The event card will
indicate when a blocker
card needs to be drawn.

Tip for the facilitator:
•

How work gets blocked.

No particular action
required. Put back at
the bottom of the
blocker cards stack.

Block the item for
which this blocker card
was drawn.

In reality work can get blocked because of many reasons. When introducing blocker cards, it is good to
discuss why work gets blocked in the participants’ work environment. Reasons may include:
• Dependencies
• Technical issues
• Waiting for input
• Not clear what must be done
• Interruptions

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

DRAWING BLOCKER CARDS
Draw a blocker card for each of your “active” work items.
Put the blocker card on the work item.
State B

State A

Not active
active
Not

Not active

Not active
Active

Active
© Okaloa bvba, June 2017

Blocker cards

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

TURN BLOCKER CARDS
Turn cards around and remove the green ones and put them
back at the bottom of the stack of blocker cards.
State B

State A

Orange blocker cards stay
on the work item
indicating that it is
blocked.

Green blocker cards are
put aside.

Blocker cards

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

BLOCKING AND UNBLOCKING
Blocked item

✔

Unblocking an item

✔

✔✔✔

•
•

No work can be performed on the item as
long as it is blocked.

Tip: Stress to the participants that on a single
day they can either perform work or unblock
but not both at the same time.
© Okaloa bvba, June 2017

•
•

An item can only be unblocked by
throwing a 4 or more during the normal
work-cycle.
Remove the blocker card to unblock (and
place it back at the bottom of the stack of
blocker cards).
No more work can be performed for the
day (die score is made void by
unblocking).

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

TEAM MEMBERS
Assign each team
member a color.

One team member plays the role
of coordinator who reads and
makes sure that the daily steps are
followed correctly, reads the event
cards and completes the lab notes.

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

LANES
State A

State B

Lanes can be used for
visual convenience

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

RULES – NEVER TO BE BROKEN!
1. Once ownership of a work item has been assigned, that
ownership remains unchanged until the item is finished
2. You can only throw your die once per day and use the
score to perform work



You can tick off work for the amount indicated by your
throw of die
You can tick off work from multiple work items if wanted

3. Blocked items can only be unblocked by throwing a 4 or
more


If you throw less than 4, then perform work on another
work item

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

POLICIES
 Try to finish work as soon as possible
 The team leader assigns work to the team members at the daily stand-up meeting.
 Once a work item has been assigned to a team member, the team member takes ownership of
that work item
 Work items can only be assigned during the stand-up

 You can only work on items that have been assigned to you or that the project leader has
authorized you to work on during the stand up

 Deliver work in the same order as it is started (in your lane)
 Delivery rate (amount of items delivered per time period) is measured in cycles of 5 days

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

STANDARD PRIORITIES
State A

State B

Keep items in your lane in the
priority that you have entered
them.

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

EXPEDITING URGENT ITEMS
State A

State B

URGENT

Urgent items immediately bypass
all the other items when you
enter them.

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

EXPEDITING FIXED DATE ITEMS
State A

URGENT

State B

Fixed Date 10

Fixed date items may need to bypass
the urgent items in order to meet
their due date.

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

PRIORITY FOR UNBLOCKING
State A

URGENT

State B

Fixed Date 10

Always give preference to unblock a
fixed date or urgent item over
working on standard items!

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

TRACKING WORK TIME (ACTUAL EFFORT)
State A

State B
Track the work time: put a
mark on the work item(s)
that you worked on that day.

✔✔

✔✔✔✔✔ ✔
✔✔

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

ORGANIZE THE BOARD TO GET STARTED
State A

State B

Use one lane per
player; assign each
player a color

We have decided for simplicity
reasons to play the simulations in
lanes (a player both performs
work in state A and state B)

Put all your work
items in the “Ready”
column

Place the events card
here (or on top of the
board)
Shuffle and place the
blocker cards here (or
on top of the board)
Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

IMPORTANT NOTES
•

Start the session with 20 work items; keep the rest of the items and special
work items (e.g; fixed date items, expedite, …) separate; the event cards will
indicate when the players need to ask the facilitator for a special work item.

•

Track the work time: put a
mark on the work item(s)
that you work on that day

In this business scenario whereby focus is on keeping everybody busy we are
going to track our timesheets; as a facilitator pay attention that every team
does this correctly.
•

Use the special roster on the work item cards; we are not tracking ½
days so if a player is dividing the dice score over different work items

✔✔✔✔✔ ✔
✔✔

just tell him/her that they need to pick one of the work items
(preferable the item on which the highest score is added).
•

Ask people to strictly follow this scenario; some will be temped to start
working together or will argue that this is not the way they work but ask

them to play along and to be patient. This is very important to see the
effects and learn from it.

Work time tracking is not
applicable for quick play.

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

DO THE FIRST DAY TOGETHER
1.

Standup meeting
 Decide which items to take in progress (taking ownership)

Perform work
 Throw and process your dice

Take the event card of day 1
 Draw a blocker card for every active work item
 Put the blocker card on the resp. work item
 Turn blocker cards around and remove the green ones and put them at the back of the blocker cards
stack

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

CLOSURE OF DAY 1
COMPLETING THE LAB NOTES
✔

Mark day 1 as finished.

Log any exceptions such as rules or
policies that have been broken*.

*At

the backside of the notes you find a
dedicated section for this.

Complete the CFD** – use the 4-color
pen to draw the dots and lines.

CFD is not applicable for
quick play.

We noticed that completing the CFD can be confusing for some people who are not
familiar with it so make sure you explain this upfront. Ask the team members to divide
the work (the coordinator reading event cards and assigning work while another
person completes the lab notes and 3rd person handles the charts). Alternatively you
could skip this for the standard play.

Tip: mark a color to the column labels to make it more visible.
© Okaloa bvba, June 2017

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

ASK IF THERE ARE ANY REMAINING
QUESTIONS?

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

PLAY DAY 2 TO 5
1.

Standup meeting
 Assign work to the team members (team or project leader)

Perform work
 Throw and process your dice

Close the day (team or project leader)
 Draw an event card
 Mark the day as done, complete the lab notes
 Make sure that everybody has followed the rules and policies as agreed!
 Every 5 days, note down the amount of work items that have been completed (= delivery rate)

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

END OF DAY 5
COMPLETING THE LAB NOTES: METRICS
✔ ✔✔✔ ✔

Mark
delivery
rate (items
have
Mark
throughput
andthat
work
been completed in this cycle) and
items
in progress at the end of
work items in progress (WIP) at the
5. 5.
endday
of day

CFD is not applicable for
quick play.

Log any exceptions such as rules or
policies that have been broken.

At the backside of the notes you find a
dedicated section for this.

Complete the CFD – use the 4-color
pen to draw the dots and lines.

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

PLAY DAY 6 TO 10
Play 1 more cycle of 5 days:
1.

Standup meeting
 Assign work to the team members (team or project leader)

Perform work
 Throw and process your dice

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

ESTIMATION FOR REQUEST 1

At day 7 the players will be asked to make an estimate
for Request 1; use the dedicated roster on the lab
notes for this (same for request 2 during round 2 of
the advanced play).

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

END OF DAY 10
COMPLETING THE LAB NOTES: METRICS
✔ ✔✔✔ ✔

✔ ✔ ✔✔ ✔

Mark
delivery
rate (items
have
Mark
throughput
andthat
work
been completed in this cycle) and
items
in progress at the end of
work items in progress (WIP) at the
5. 5.
endday
of day

CFD is not applicable for
quick play.

Log any exceptions such as rules or
policies that have been broken.

At the backside of the notes you find a
dedicated section for this.

Complete the CFD – use the 4-color
pen to draw the dots and lines.

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

DEBRIEFING APPROACH
 The following slides serve as background information to facilitate the debriefing session
 The debriefing is typically done in the following steps;
1. Observations and problem analysis by participants in their teams
 Where are we in the OODA loop?
 What are good observations?
 Identifying causal loops!

2. Sharing the observations and analysis
3. Interpretation by facilitator
 Calculating the lead time to demonstrate the use of Little’s Law (CAUTION: boundary conditions may not
hold)
 Calculating flow efficiency to establish how realistic the simulation is (flow efficiency of the simulation
should be around 10-15%)

4. Summary and preparation for the next round
 Summarizing the root causes and their effects
 Options to improve
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Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

REFLECTIVE OBSERVATION
The OODA loop

What do you see? Do you see flow?
What impedes flow? Analyze what
is happening.

Orient
Implicit
guidance

Implicit
guidance

Observe

Decide

Unfolding
events

Habits, experiences and dispositions

Act

Rational choice

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

MAKING OBSERVATIONS
 Observations
 What do you see?
 Observations are not opinions!
 Observations are not actions!

 Look for impediments
 What impedes flow?
 What impedes fulfilling customer expectations?
 What impedes giving answers to questions such as: “when will it be done?”

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

IDENTIFYING CAUSAL LOOPS
Gaining a deeper understanding by analyzing causal
relations by looking at the parts AND the whole.

Identifying causal loops
is not applicable for
quick play.

Tip: Participants can use their favorite problem analysis technique to analyze the problem (e.g. five why’s).
Participants however gain most insights when they look for causal loops (the above figure shows an example). In
the simulation, look for the causal loops between blockers and WIP; predictability and “urgent” work (see also
slides: “A vicious feedback loop” and “Low liquidity”).
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Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

WHAT DO WE SEE?
State A

A lot of wait time (long lead
times compared to touch
State B
time).

Gaps in the flow. Work items are
at extreme ends of the board.

Many work items in progress.
Many items blocked.

Delivery rate is low and
variable (despite that
everybody was 100% busy).

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

WAIT TIME
Lead times are dominated by wait times
Work time
(actual effort)
Queuing

Complete

Queuing

State B

Queuing

Done

Ready

Blocked

State A

Wait time

Lead time (duration)

Work is mainly waiting as work in progress (WIP).
Large WIP and long lead times result in low flow efficiency.
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Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

TOUCH TIME VS. LEAD TIME




During the debriefing session of round 1
calculate together with the group the
average time spent on an item (touchtime).

Have a discussion about flow efficiency (use flip chart)
•

Calculate the leadtime using Little’s Law Delivery rate =

•

Calculate Flow efficiency =

Leadtime

(make sure to use the values of 1 day and not 10 days)

Leadtime =

Use this formula to explain
that the simulation is
reflecting quite a realistic
situation.
10%

WIP

The facilitator may point out to the participants that
strictly speaking the boundary conditions for Little’s Law
may not hold for the simulation as the system is trending.

Calculations are not
applicable for quick play.

WIP

Delivery
rate

0,5 (5 items over 10 days)
3

Touch-time
Leadtime
30

In most simulations flow efficiency will be
around 10% which is compared to reality quite a
good result (in the Kanban community people
report often about flow efficiency <10%).
Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

WHAT ARE THE ROOT CAUSES?

Command &
Control

Keep the
hands busy

Specialist
workers
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Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

EFFICIENCY MINDSET
Ideas

Ready
for Dev

Development
ongoing

Testing

Ready
for UAT

Done

done

The large work-in-progress (WIP) is the result of the focus on
resource efficiency (keeping resources busy).

Resource efficiency = Actual work time / Available work time

Abandoned

Traditional management often explicitly or implicitly
focuses on resource efficiency.

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

CAUSAL LOOPS
For the standard and advanced play you should be able, as a Okaloa Flowlab facilitator,

to explain the causal loops shown on the next page and at the end of round 2 (p 106).
It is not a necessity that you use these slides but at least you need to address these
loops because providing that level of inside is key for running a successful Okaloa
Flowlab workshop. You can reach out to us in case you want to acquire a deeper

understanding about this.

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

Liquidity

Joint
work

Efficiency

Liquidity is the ability to meet obligations
when they come due without incurring
unacceptable losses.

Induced work

Finishing work

Resource
efficiency

O
Lead time
predictability

WIP

Blocked work

O
O
Expedited work

Starting work

Idle time

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

#work items

NO FLOW

Started work

Lead time

W I

W
I
P

Lead time

Finished work

Delivery rate
time

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

REFLECTIVE OBSERVATION
The OODA loop

What would you like to see?
What options can you explore?

Orient
Implicit
guidance

Implicit
guidance

Observe

Decide

Unfolding
events

Habits, experiences and dispositions

Act

Rational choice

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

ADDITIONAL DEBRIEFING TIPS
 General observations coming from participants
 Difference in performance in team
 A lot of blocked items

 Long leadtimes
 Little collaboration to finish work
 Urgent items jump the queue causing the WIP to increase
 Hard to predict when something will be finished

 Ask the participants if this resembles their reality
 Some will say it does not sound realistic while others recognize their situation very well in this simulation

 Blocking usually means that they are waiting for somebody else; or that they are called away so that their work is waiting
 Explain that being called away means that extra effort is needed to restart your own work (which is the same as the effort
needed to unblock)
 To explain this is important to give the audience the feeling that these simulations are realistic (in most cases people follow this
reasoning but keep in mind that you can always have exceptions in the audience so make sure that this does not distract you).

 Have a discussion about rationale behind urgent items
 Since it is hard to predicate when an item is going to be finished, we make items urgent because that gives us the comfort that it
will get the attention and hopefully will be delivered then
 Ask them to predict the average leadtime (let them make a predication based on their experience with the current simulation)
 Do the Little’s Law exercise (see next slide)
 While resource efficiency is 100% (everybody was constantly busy – that is if the project manager did his planning well), the flow
efficiency is typically 10% during this simulation
 See exercise on next slide
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Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

EXAMPLE OF TYPICAL BOARD AFTER ROUND 1

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

LIMITING WIP
Flow efficiency - round 2

WIP LIMITS
State A (3)

State B (3)

Limiting Work In
Progress (WIP) to 3
items in this column.

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

RESPECTING WIP LIMITS
State A (3)

State B (3)

✔

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

RESPECTING WIP LIMITS
State A (3)

State B (3)

✖

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

RESPECTING WIP LIMITS
State A (3)

State B (3)

✖

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

OR USE A CONWIP
(4)
State A

State

Limiting Work In Progress to 4 items
total in State A and B together.

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

SPECIALIST WORKERS / HANDOVER COST
State A

State B

✔✔✔✔✔✔

If you work on an item that is not
owned by you, then halve your
die score and round up (e.g. 3
becomes (3+1)/2 = 2)

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

ADDITIONAL RULES

1. If you work on an item that is not owned by you, then halve your die score and round up
(e.g. 3 becomes (3+1)/2 = 2)
2. You can unblock someone else by throwing 3 or more

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

POLICIES
 Try to finish work as soon as possible
 Only start work when capacity allows it (respect the Work In Progress limits)

 If you cannot do any work, then help someone else to unblock or perform work
 If you throw 3 or more, unblock someone else if you can
 Otherwise adjust your die score to (die score + 1)/2 and do work assigned to another person

 Throughput (amount of items delivered per time period) is measured in periods of 5 days

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

ACTIVE EXPERIMENTATION
THE PDCA loop
Do

We believe that

Will achieve

Experiment

Plan

Hypothesis

Results

Check

Learning

Adjust
© Okaloa bvba, June 2017

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

FORMULATE A HYPOTHESIS
Policy

Expectation

Why?

Limiting WIP to ?

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

INSTRUCTIONS - ROUND 2
1.

Start from empty board; let the teams clear the board and work items.

Make sure that the set with blocker cards is shuffled very well.

As a facilitator collect all the special work items again.

Let the teams start with a new lab note sheet and ask to complete the estimates for
their new hypothesis.

Start again with event cards day 1 to 10.

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

ESTIMATION FOR ROUND 2

Estimate what the outcome of round 2 will be so that
at the end of round 2 you can validate your
hypothesis.
At day 7 you will be asked to give an
estimate for Request 1 – complete
your estimates here.

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

CAPTURING LEAD TIME
Tracking of lead time can
be omitted in quick play.

• Mark the start date when
you take ownership of a
work item

System lead time

• Mark the end date when
you move a work item into
“complete”
We are no longer interested in
touch-time so STOP tracking
work time!

Lead time = End – Start + 1

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

EACH DAY COMPLETE THE CHARTS
ON THE LAB NOTES
Add a mark of the occurrence of the
lead time for each completed work item.

Charts are not
applicable for quick play.
complete the CFD – use the 4-color pen
to draw the dots and lines.
Mark the
lead time on the control chart of the items
that have been finished that day.
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Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

FACILITATOR TIPS
 It is good to have different teams choosing different WIP limits to be able to compare
 We recommend for the purpose of the simulations to work with CONWIP (since we are
working lane and not column oriented)

 When people are absolutely not familiar with pull systems, Kanban or anything alike you
might expect resistance and heavy discussion on the WIP number. Just let the team start
with a number and leave it open to change it during the round.
 During the play you could have a discussion with each team individually about starting
dates of urgent items
 At day 2, 5 urgent work items need to be started
 What will be the starting date in this round with adjusted policies? Is it when it is requested by
the client, or when the team starts working on it?

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

100

PLAY DAY 1 TO 10
1.

Standup meeting
 Review the board
 Every 2 days: Do not forget to replenish the “Selected” column

Perform work
 Throw and process your dice
 If needed pull in new work items from the “Selected” column

Close the day (team or project leader)
 Draw an event card
 Mark the day as done
 Make sure that everybody has followed the rules and policies as agreed!
 Every 5 days, note down the amount of work items that have been completed (= throughput)

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

101

DO
 Play 2 cycles of 5 days (10 days in total)
 Perform the following daily steps:
1.

Throw and process your die (each team member)





Unblock one of your items (when you throw 4 or more),
or perform work,
or take ownership of a new item if WIP limits allow it (!!)
or if you have no other option
 unblock another player’s item (when you throw 2 or more),
 or perform work for another player (with adjusted die score)

 Raise your hand (so that other team members know that your day is finished)

Close the day (team or project leader)
 Draw an event card (team or project leader)
 Mark the day as done
 Make sure that everybody has followed the rules and policies as agreed!
 Every 5 days, note down the amount of work items that have been completed (= delivery rate)

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

102

ACTIVE EXPERIMENTATION
THE PDCA loop
Do

Has your hypothesis been
validated or invalidated?

Experiment

Plan

Hypothesis

Results

Check

Learning

Adjust
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Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

103

OBSERVATIONS
 What do you observe?

 Does it validate or invalidate your hypothesis?

 How do the causal relationships now compare with the previous round?

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

104

DEBRIEFING TIPS

 In case of the standard play, you should stress in the debriefing that limiting WIP is a step
by step process, but in the simulation it is done in one go!

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

105

Liquidity

Joint
work

Efficiency

Liquidity is the ability to meet
obligations when they come due
without incurring unacceptable
losses.

Induced work

Finishing work
Flow efficiency

Resource
efficiency

O
Lead time
predictability

WIP

Blocked work
Resource
efficiency

O
Expedited work

Starting work

Back to p 79

Idle time

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

106

OUTCOME
Fast feedback with short
lead times

#work items

Collaboration to finish work

Lead time
W
P
I

time

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

107

EXAMPLE OF TYPICAL BOARD AFTER ROUND 2

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

108

THE TEAM FLOW
ADVANCED PLAY

INSTRUCTIONS
An advanced play exists out of 3 rounds of simulation:
•

Start round 1 as in the standard play – only difference you could introduce here is asking people to enter
‘Start’ day so that you can collect lead time metrics starting in Day 20.

•

Rather than immediately go to the improvements suggested by round 2 of the standard play (i.e. WIP
limits), the approach for this advanced play is to do a range of experiments that should lead to more
realistic improvements. We will do the experiments “starting from where we are now” (so boards will not
be cleared like in the standard play but we continue from the current situation).

•

As an intermediate step we will first experiment with changing policies like pulling work, cadences etc.
(round 2 of advanced play) and gradually move towards more collaboration and limiting WIP (round 3 of
advanced play, see round 2 of the standard play).

•

For this version of the simulation you play 30 days (continue with the event cards):
•

Round 1: play day 1 to 10

•

Round 2: play day 11 to 20

•

Round 3: play day 21 to 30

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

110

IMPORTANT NOTES
•

The lab notes contain placeholders to complete 30 days so let the participants continue to

complete their findings on the same lab note sheet.

•

Since we continue the play starting form the existing board, tell people to focus on collaboration
to make sure that they achieve their target WIP a.s.a.p. (and while they are doing this they will
already start to finish work).

•

In some cases people will already suggest to collaborate and/or limit WIP for round 2; since it is
the goal to demonstrate a more realistic, evolutionary approach with this advanced play, you
should challenge whether it is really realistic to jump immediately from no collaboration to
collaboration and limiting WIP just like that. You could instruct - before the start of round 2 - one or
more persons in the teams to “refuse” to collaborate (role play style).

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

111

LET`S PLAY
Cadence – round 2 of advanced play

INPUT QUEUE
State A

State B

Items that are ready to be worked
on by the team.

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

113

PULL
State B

State A

In a pull system, work is
assigned;
Worknot
is not
assigned; butbut
workers
pull
work when
have capacity.
workers
pullthey
work
when
they have capacity.
PULL

PULL

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

114

DEFERRED COMMITMENT
State A

State B

All work remains optional before the
commitment point.

After the commitment point, we are
committed to finish the work without
delay.

Commitment point
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Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

115

REPLENISHMENT
State A

State B

Replenishment

The input queue is replenished
from a pool of non-committed
work items (aka options)

All other work items (that are not yet
selected) remain in a queue outside the
board.

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

116

CADENCE
State A

State B

Replenishment

Replenishment can be on-demand (very agile) or
with a regular cadence (e.g. weekly).

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

117

CLASSES OF SERVICE
State A

State B

FIXED DATE

Pull decisions are guided by “classes of service”.

PULL

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

118

EXAMPLE


critical and immediate cost of
delay



cost of delay goes up significantly
after deadline



cost of delay is shallow but
accelerates before leveling out



cost of delay may be significant
but is not incurred until much
later

Urgent

Policy

EXPEDITE

Cost of delay

FIXED DATE

STANDARD

INTANGIBLE



will be pulled immediately by a
qualified resource



will be pulled based on risk
assessment (delivering on time)



will use first in, first out (FIFO)
queuing approach to prioritize pull



will be pulled through the system
in an ad hoc fashion

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

119

POLICIES
 Try to finish work as soon as possible
 Workers pull work when they have free capacity
 Work is pulled according to their class of service and the associated policies that have
been agreed with the customer
 The “Selected” column is replenished every 2 days
 Specific classes of service may lead to immediate replenishment when agreed with the customer
and the team

 Throughput (amount of items delivered per time period) is measured in cycles of 5 days

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

120

TRACKING SYSTEM LEAD TIME
We can now start tracking
system lead time

Selected

• Mark the start date when
you select a work item

System lead time

• Mark the end date when
you move a work item into
“complete”

Lead time = End – Start + 1

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

121

STOP TRACKING WORK TIME
State A

State B

STOP tracking work time!

✔✔

✔✔✔✔✔ ✔
✔✔

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

122

EACH DAY COMPLETE THE CHARTS
ON THE LAB NOTES
Add a mark of the occurrence of the
lead time for each completed work item.

complete the CFD – use the 4-color pen
to draw the dots and lines.
Mark the
lead time on the control chart of the items
that have been finished that day.
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Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

123

ACTIVE EXPERIMENTATION
THE PDCA loop
Do

We believe that

Will achieve

Experiment

Plan

Hypothesis

Results

Check

Learning

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

124

FORMULATE A HYPOTHESIS
Policy

Expectation

Why?

Pull work

Class of service

Policy

Expectation

Why?

Expedite
Fixed date
Urgent
Standard

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

125

PLAY DAY 11 TO 15
1.

Standup meeting
 Review the board
 Every 2 days: Do not forget to replenish the “Selected” column

Perform work
 Throw and process your dice
 If needed pull in new work items from the “Selected” column

Close the day (team or project leader)
 Draw an event card

 Mark the day as done
 Make sure that everybody has followed the rules and policies as agreed!
 Every 5 days, note down the amount of work items that have been completed (= throughput)

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

126

ACTIVE EXPERIMENTATION
THE PDCA loop
Do

Has your hypothesis
been validated or
invalidated?

Experiment

Plan

Hypothesis

Results

Check

Learning

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

127

FACILITATOR TIPS
 Note that in some cases the WIP will decrease in this round while for other teams it might
even increase
 In reality, when teams are taking baby steps towards improvement, but notice the opposite
effect, they might jump to the conclusion the agile isn’t working
 The real reason for this are the long queues that sustain themselves; that issue is often not
addressed as is this case in this first cycle of 5 days of this round; addressed in the next 5 days
 Tell the participants to move all the items that are not worked on or that are not urgent back to
the ready or input column (i.e. all blocked and other items already in the active state for a longer
time but with no activity at the moment); let them clear all the work on those items;
 This one-off intervention will now improve the situation
 Let’s continue with the next 5 days
 Participants should as of now start seeing progress

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

128

PLAY DAY 16 TO 20
1.

Standup meeting
 Review the board
 Every 2 days: Do not forget to replenish the “Selected” column

Perform work
 Throw and process your dice
 If needed pull in new work items from the “Selected” column

Close the day (team or project leader)
 Draw an event card

 Mark the day as done
 Make sure that everybody has followed the rules and policies as agreed!
 Every 5 days, note down the amount of work items that have been completed (= throughput)

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

129

ACTIVE EXPERIMENTATION
THE PDCA loop
Do

Has your hypothesis been
validated or invalidated?

Experiment

Plan

Hypothesis

Results

Check

Learning

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

130

MAKING OBSERVATIONS
 What do you observe?

 Does it validate or invalidate your hypothesis?

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

131

#work items

CONVERGING TOWARDS FLOW

Lead time
W
P
I

time

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

132

EXAMPLE

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

133

ACTIVE EXPERIMENTATION
THE PDCA loop
Do

Experiment

Plan

Hypothesis

Learning

Results

Check

How do you suggest to further
adjust? What new options can
we explore?

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

134

LIMITING WIP
Flow efficiency - round 3 of advanced play

INSTRUCTIONS - ROUND 3

Go to round 2 of the standard play for further instructions

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

136

ESTIMATION FOR ROUND 3

Estimate what the outcome of round 3 will be so that
at the end of round 3 you can validate your
hypothesis.
At day 22 you will be asked to give an
estimate for Request 2 – complete
your estimates here.

Facilitator’s Guide – Team Flow v1.0

137

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

QUESTION 1
•

Q: How many hours should I plan for a Team Flow simulation?

•

A: The introductory simulation with round 1 (resource efficiency) and round 2 of the
standard play (flow efficiency) can be done in 90 minutes if you stick to the bare minimum.
It can take up to 3 hours if you do an elaborate debriefing. In case of the advanced play you

should make it a full day workshop including elaborate debriefing interchanging with some
theory.
 Example of what other partners experienced:
•

Round1 of Team Flow: 1 hour = explanation of the simulation + doing the

simulation with 3 teams + 10-12 min debrief; Round2 (standard): 25 min = doing
the simulation + 5 min debrief
•

The team flow simulation took about 2 hours for two teams of 4 and 5

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QUESTION 2
Q: I start with 4 people; the project leader assigns 1 ticket to each player and puts the tickets in
State A, then, immediately selects another 4 tickets, assigns 1 ticket to each player and puts
them in Ready state. Is that correct?
A: Partially correct and partially not correct. Once a ticket is assigned, it is put into State A; the

rest of the work items is put in the Ready column (the Ready column contains the entire
backlog). In the first round there is no notion of “deferred commitment” yet as work is
assigned by the project leader. It is up to the project leader to decide how many items to
assign. Strictly speaking, for the first day he only needs to assign one work item per person as

there is no risk of idle time yet.

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QUESTION 3
Q: As of day 2, the project leader can select at the beginning of the day, whatever he wants
only from the stack with standard tickets and not from the stack with the special work items
such as urgent, expedite and fixed date because those ticket can only be added through the
event cards. Is that correct?

A: Yes that is correct. To make sure that the project leader does not assign those special work
items randomly it is advised that you as facilitator keep them aside.

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QUESTION 4
Q: The project leader should be proactive and assign more (enough) items to people to avoid
that die points are lost, he should be in the mindset "What if all the players throw a 6, what are
the options then? I don't want to lose points of the dice”, is that correct? With that thinking I
usually finish first 5 days with a WIP of 18.

A: That is correct, and yes it is possible that after 5 days you have such large WIP.

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QUESTION 5
•

Q: At the end of day 2, I should pickup blocked cards, should I pick cards for the 4 new
urgent items that I are added at the end of the day?

•

A: Yes indeed; we on purpose added the new urgent items to the board before the blocker
cards are drawn .

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QUESTION 6
•

Q: Is it correct that we are tracking the "work time” every day to calculate the Flow
Efficiency at the end of the simulation?

•

A: Yes indeed if you play the standard or advanced play.

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QUESTION 7
Q: If I try to unblock a ticket, and I throw only a 2 with my die, then I can use that score on
another ticket (assigned to me and unblocked of course). Is that correct ?
A: Yes that is correct.

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QUESTION 8
Q: If I throw a 6 with my die, and I have an URGENT ticket in State A that needs only 3, can I
mark those, and use the other 3 points on another item that is assigned to me, even if that
item is not URGENT, and in State B?
A: Yes.

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QUESTION 9
Q: The Blue worker has one standard ticket blocked, one ticket urgent and one ticket with a
fixed date. This worker now throws a 6, what should the Blue worker do first: work on fixed
date or unblock the standard one? If I prioritize fixed date over a standard blocked one, then at
the end of day 15 there will be many tickets blocked since the end of day 1...

A: That is exactly the point here in this round.

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QUESTION 10
Q: In the second round, we mark start date when the ticket is on State A. Is that correct?
A: That is correct. In the second round work is pulled by team members. When a team
member pulls a work item in State A, the start date is marked on the work item.

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QUESTION 11
•

Q: Why do we track working time in round1 and why do we stop tracking it in round 2?

•

A: We use the working time to calculate flow efficiency to show that, although we work
100%, we have a low flow efficiency; in round 2 we stop tracking because we realise that
this is not an interesting measurement; we want people to realise that lead time is more

important.

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QUESTION 12
•

Q: Why don’t we use the Histogram and Control chart in the first round , why don’t we
already use leadtime in the first round?

•

A: Although you may decide differently for your own simulations, there are multiple
reasons why we recommend not to track lead time in the first round:

•

it is a bit easier for the participants to get started;

•

it gives you as a facilitator the opportunity to show how you can calculate the lead
time using Little’s law – see calculation touch vs. lead time (slide 75);

•

It is more in line with the background of round 1: a resource efficiency focussed

organisation would typically track effort but not lead times

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QUESTION 13
Q: In the first round I worked with 4 people (4 dice), now that the limit is only 3 on the first
day, we still work with 4 people, so I assume that one ticket is being worked on by 2 people,
but only one of them takes ownership so that the second person can only apply half of the
points, is that correct?

A: That is correct but note that the CONWIP of 3 is just an example; teams can choose what
they feel up to. In a more advanced play you can encourage participants to come up with their
own rules for collaboration that better represent the type of collaboration that would be
possible in their own work environment.

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QUESTION 14
Q: If I have a ticket in state A that has only one point left, and I throw a 6, can I use those 6
points as follows: mark the one point left on the ticket in State A, then I move the ticket to
state B and mark 5 points of state B on the same ticket?
A: In the second round you can do that because we are now in a pull system; in round one

participant cannot do this since it is a push system whereby the project leader had to decide at
the daily standup who will work on what item meaning that items finished in State A first need
to go to a wait state (=the done column of State A) before they can move to the next state the
next day if the project leader would decide during the standup meeting that you should work

on it.

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QUESTION 15
•

Q: Are participants allowed in round 2 of the standard play to share their points with others
although they could work on their own items? Common observation: some just start
looking for most effective ways to distribute the point of everybody during the daily. In
terms of simulation, it's a policy right? So they could change it?

•

A: When we do a standard simulation, we allow to do this. It gives the maximum result, but
then it may not represent reality. Especially the fact that people would go from no
collaboration to almost swarming in one big evolutionary step. We deliberately designed
the advanced version (30 days) to have something that is more realistic. We suggest to

participant to come up with their own rules for collaboration that better represent the type
of collaboration that would be possible in their own work environment.

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QUESTION 16
•

Q: The confusing bit happened when my team who knows Kanban, got themselves all tied
into a knot when during the WIP simulation they were asked to take ownership of a

number of cards as instructed on day 2 or 11. The WIP limits did not allow for it , and we
went round in circles until we read the instructions again that showed that the start date
gets filled in when ownership is "assigned". We did this and left the cards in the left most
column until there was capacity to pull it in. The clock therefore started ticking (a

commitment was made by the assignment), but the card had to wait for capacity to free up
in the "in progress" side. How to handle this situation correctly?
•

A: The card says indeed that you need to assign cards. In round 1, this is in line with the
mindset of command and control. In round 2 (3), most people get a bit confused. That is

intentional. It is an opportunity for discussion. Of course, when you have WIP limits, these
new cards cannot be assigned. They get prioritised in the “Ready” column. This is a good
opportunity to discuss why prioritisation needs to happen before the commitment point.

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QUESTION 17
•

Q: Looking at the event cards, it seems that 5 is the optimal number of players? e.g. day 11
introducing 5 urgent ones is really tough for just 3 players?

•

A: If there are less than 5 players in a team there is discussion on who will pick up what but
that us just perfect during the simulation.

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QUESTION 18
•

Q: In round 1 it says:”Track the work time: put a mark on the work item(s) that you worked
on during that day”. Does this mean on any active cards at that day, or only on those that
you have been using die points or have unblocked?

•

A: The latter; only those that really have been worked on.

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FEEDBACK FROM BETA TESTER
•

In this guide we introduced prioritization rules but some other facilitator like the ‘surprise’
factor of what to do with the urgent request. Here’s a quote of one of the beta testers: “It is
a kind of surprise that is commonly used in training session in which participants think they

need to ‘do something’, but in fact this is a trigger for behaviour that is the actual focus
point of training. So in this case it is the realization that simple rules (policies) can replace
lengthy team discussions.”
•

Tracking the waste really was a valuable addition; we asked the team lead to keep track of

the dice value that could not be used and thus was wasted. This happens when the team
lead isn't proactive enough to ensure every team member has something to do.
Advantages of the experiment: Waste/Slack points are easy to track, Motivates team leads
in round 1 to make sure energy does not get wasted, Learning of value of Slack time

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FEEDBACK FROM BETA TESTER

CONT.

•

“Using causal loop diagram on WIP, TP, LT, collaboration and blockages, and which
parameters is the one that can be controlled best works really great when briefing
the learnings!!”

•

Team flow simulation with a team of process managers that pretend to work
already for 1,5 years in an agile way. Timeframe was 2,5h - in this case just enough
time for participants to reflect on learnings, although definitely too less time to
give some background or further elaborate on questions or concepts?
General feedback: great simulation! Nice material and nice way to guide
participants through a journey to get insights ... Participants (senior profiles & lean
six sigma blank belts) got an 'aha' effect that for me shows again the strengths of
the Flowlab.

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WHAT’S NEXT

EXAMPLES OF EXTENSIONS AND
ADDITIONAL SIMULATIONS
The Team flow set contains a basic simulation that can be played in 2 or 3 rounds (standard or
advanced play). On top of this, we and some of our partners, have developed extensions or
additional simulations. These simulations will be made available to you soon (some through online
platform, for others additional physical material need to be acquired – more information will be
communicated to you after summer 2017).
•

Overview of current set of extensions
1.

Quality simulation: showing the effect of limiting WIP on quality of work.

Bottleneck simulation: showing how to address the issue of a bottleneck worker in a
team.

Extended set of event cards created by Susanne Bartel to be used for LKU KMPI training

Extended set of event cards created by Andreas Bartel to address the topic of capacity
allocation (LKU KMPI training)



Other beta testers are also experimenting with other extensions, so more to follow

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Back to intro

CUSTOM DEVELOPED SIMULATIONS
For some of our corporate clients we have developed specific simulations to address specific
issues they are facing, e.g. simulation to show the impact of feature versus component teams.
Feel free to contact us to see if we can help you with your (client) challenges and cocustomize a workshop with you.

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FOCUS ON ENTERPRISE FLOW
Creating value through meaningful work

DELIVERY
DEMAND

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ENTERPRISE VERSION - EXTENDED SET OF OKALOA FLOWLAB SIMULATIONS

Back to Intro

FACILITATOR WORKSHOP
testimonials

“Intense two days indeed! And that was because it was so much more
than just a FlowLab facilitators training. We didn't just learn some
new simulations, we actually deepened our understanding of the
intricate underlying models that go way beyond the basic simulations.
Personally I think these kind of workshops (and even more than one)
should be mandatory in order to be allowed to use the FlowLabs
quality mark in your trainings/workshops. A very big thanks to Arlette
and Patrick for creating the right context in the past 2 days for us to
learn and grow. “
Kris Philippaerts

“The more I digest, the more I realize just how much I learned about,
flow, options and system causal loop diagrams in agile
transformations. Best learning: which aspects can you directly
influence? Or what actions in the causal loop you can directly
manipulate in order to have a leverage? “
Arno Korpershoek
© Okaloa bvba, June 2017

“Still digesting the vast amount of
insights and knowledge gained during
the first Okaloa Flowlab facilitator
workshop ! “
Vincent Pattyn

“Just finished a 2 days coach the coach session
about flowlab coaching and facilitation with
Patrick and some peers. It was exciting every
second of the 2 days. Gained so many deep
insights that I will need some time to digest it. A
must for everyone!”
Wim Bollen
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OKALOA FLOWLAB NETWORK
To maintain high quality of Okaloa Flowlab workshop facilitation and further development of
Okaloa Flowlab it is the intention to create an Okaloa Flowlab network that could connect through
an online dedicated platform to stimulate collaboration (future plan).

Substantial
contribution to
the
development of Okaloa Flowlab
through development of additional
simulations based on existing material;
additional material; or contributions
that further develop the Okaloa Flowlab
network (modalities to be discussed).

Okaloa Flowlab
Contributor

Facilitator that is endorsed by the
network*:

Okaloa Flowlab
Facilitator

•

proven experience with successfully
facilitating Okaloa Flowlab workshops
(as witnessed by the number of
registered participants connected in
the network), and

•

co-facilitation with Okaloa Flowlab
founder + other Okaloa Flowlab
facilitator or participation in an Okaloa
Flowlab facilitation workshop.

Registered
Okaloa
Flowlab
workshop
participant

Everybody who purchased Team flow
and uses the material to facilitate their
own workshops.

Okaloa Flowlab
Partner

The core of the network; participants
that value the experience and learning
by doing the simulations are invited to
connect to the network (modalities to
be discussed).

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

We like to thank our beta testers and partners for their valuable feedback,
support and active contributions:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Rob Maher (NZ)
Karl Fuchs (ZA)
Brad Hughes (US)
Vincent Pattijn (BE)
Gabe Abella (US)
Adam Hsu (US)
Arno Korpershoek (NL)
Vincent Vanderheeren (BE)
Kris Philippaerts (BE)
Jeronimo Palacios (ES)
Steve McGee (US)

•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Teodora Bozheva (ES)
Infosys (IN)
Jan Dirk Hogendoorn (NL)
Wim Bollen (BE)
Susanne and Andreas Bartel (DE)
Scrumtrek (RU)
IT-Agile (DE)
Koen De Keersmaecker (BE)
Jerzy Stawicki (PL)
Florian Eisenberg (DE)
Ivan Gonzales (PE)

Special thanks to Adam Hsu and Gabe Abella for reviewing this guide and contribution to the
network, Wim Bollen for contributing to the network, and Susanne and Andreas Bartel for their
work on creating extended sets of event cards for LKU KPMI training courses.
© Okaloa bvba, June 2017

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Thank you
Stay in touch!
@okaloaflowlab

patrick.steyaert@okaloa.com
arlette.vercammen@okaloa.com

A tweet about Okaloa Flowlab would be
much appreciated.

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