Visibility - A powerfull #agile mindset tool

The ability to react to a fast and ever-changing environment, deliver ongoing changes to high quality working software is not only about having the right tools or establishing the right process. It is also crucial to  establish the right mindset or culture, no matter what tool or processes we employ

Visibility is only one of those mindset tools we need to esquire. However Visibility is a powerful tool. Correct usage of visibility can create the expected behavior. We expect everything that can point us in the right direction or provide early feedback to be plainly visible.

Let’s illustrate the value of visibility with an example: Pretend that in your town, there’s a problem of speeding drivers. And as you are a responsible driver yourself, you know that’s dangerous.

To solve the problem, police set up hidden speed cameras in strategic locations. According to them, this is meant to catch dangerous drivers who exceed the speed limit, and so reduce the number of accidents. But as it turned out, drivers didn’t actually drive any slower, as they didn’t see any visible deterrent (hidden speed cameras, remember?)

So was there any value in setting up the cameras? Apparently not. Our taxpayer money was spent on buying and installing them, but the actual driving speed didn’t go down. So there was a challenge (speeding drivers) and a quick reaction (hidden cameras), which didn’t actually produce any value.

But was there ANOTHER value in setting up the cameras?

Yes, and you can probably guess what it was. With the hidden cameras in place, the police department (and the town council) made buckets of money from collecting fines.

The problem, of course, is that’s not what we were looking for. We wanted to reduce the number of accidents by making people drive slower. THAT was the intended value.

When the hidden cameras were taken down, and VISIBLE cameras were set up, people started slowing down. And that reduced the number of accidents.

See? Value, and the value we were looking for.

The following is an example of changing driving speed by means of clear visualization:

The following is an easy way to control large crowds:

Control your inventory easily:

Control your child?

And here is how it looks like when you deal with DevOps. Everything is visible, and the relevant information that needs to change is presented:

For further reading about the agile and Devops mindset