Am I not doing bullshit? Why do developers go to gemba
Hi, Habr. I am a tester and I strongly believe that gemba is a great tool for understanding your product. It’s good at answering the question: “Do I not do garbage?” Today I want to tell you more about its advantages, as well as the insights that we received after going to the pizzeria.
To talk about why we need gemba, I'll start from the very beginning. Our product is the Dodo IS information system, uniting all parts of our business in two directions:
It is quite difficult to create a quality product, and not to know how it is used and who works with it. To assess the quality, we use 2 approaches:
No one should, but everyone can. Hike in gemba - the right of everyone. Nobody forbids to go to a pizzeria, but no one forces. Testers, developers, and product managers can go there. The whole thing in the difference of focus.
1. Cheap and angry. Going to gemba is simple to implement. The developer goes to the pizzeria and uses the product. Everything. This is hundreds of times simpler than imitating a pizzeria in the office, inviting existing employees of the pizzeria and a fictitious demonstration of their user experience in the conditions of a spherical horse in a vacuum.
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2. Insights automation. In gembe happen insights about automating business processes. One of our Android-developer Pasha went to gemba and saw what the labeling process was. Employees HAVE RECOGNIZED the labeling and expiration dates of products in the UME and in the ARMS. For each product, the date of defrosting, expiration date and expiration date is recorded and written. Product labeling is a boring routine process in which inadvertent errors occur.
The developer realized that this is a complete bullshit, automate it - “half an hour programmer’s work”, picked up and automated. So there was a mobile application for printing labels. The operation has been reduced to the following: an employee chooses a heading on a tablet, makes a “tyk”, a label with all terms is printed, everything.
3. Disadvantages in the field. In gembe brighter manifest product flaws. In Dodo IS there is a functional for carrying out audit. The functionality was developed under the tablet. During the audit, the employee can enter data directly into the tablet, but in the freezer and the refrigerator is too cold, the tablet refuses to work, sometimes the connection falls off, and the interface itself is not very convenient. Therefore, the results of the revision are recorded on paper and then entered into Dodo IS. Double work!
Before starting to rewrite the interface of the auditor, the development team went to the pizzeria night audits to understand the process. They returned from there with ideas for improving it. For example, if the connection is lost, then the information input must be made asynchronous, the data is stored in the local storage, and sent to the server when the connection is restored.
Outside the window night, at this time, developers consider tomatoes
4. Real working conditions. In the pizzeria you can see the working conditions in which applications are used. One of the development teams made tracking for a pizzeria - a set of six tablets that display pizza, a recipe with added or deleted ingredients, and the location of the pizza in the kitchen at a point in time.
Tablet rolling dough
Tablet packaging
The team included a new tracking in one pizzeria and went to see how it works. In the pizzeria, the developers saw that pizza makers poked into the tablets with their hands soiled with sauce or cheese and did it very quickly. As a result, on the tablet, instead of clicking, you get a swipe. The team was very surprised. After all, we in the office clicked on the tablet with clean hands and did not hurry anywhere. After this campaign in gemba, the team returned and redid a click on the swipe.
5. Problem solving. After going to the pizzeria, you offer the most appropriate solutions. You know how a business works, how things work in real life. When a business comes to you with a problem, thanks to a broad view of business and knowledge of how the system works from the inside, you can offer a simpler or systemic solution to the problem.
Satisfied developers in gemba
6. The effect of the product. You can see how the unavailability or complex interface of the product affects employees and customers. You stand at the checkout counter, and it slows down, a queue accumulates at the checkout counter, some customers because of this negative or go. Without this valuable knowledge, the developer might not pay attention to the increase in response latency.
QA-engineer at the checkout takes orders
I could not come up with the shortcomings of this approach, except that the development of our developers in gembu is not justified financially. We get a lot of feedback that we are engaged in expensive garbage, we pay the developer a salary for turning pizza, tearing it off from work and fulfilling our direct official duties. Here I have a simple opinion - we pay the developer for his work, for his product. He just does his job at a pizzeria, looks at the product through the eyes of a client, and answers himself in real time to the question "have I done a bullshit?"
In Dodo Pizza trips to gemba are commonplace. This is a great experience with which we make a quality product.
I liked how our developer Dima Afonchenko wrote: “For me, as for a developer who did not go to gemba, a developer who went to gemba looks like a carrier of secret knowledge. When discussing at a general meeting, such a person may say: “What you propose will not work, because I was in a pizzeria and saw how it really is there. In general, you need to go to gemba for at least this. ”
Disclaimer : Gemba (jap. 現場 gemba), ganty gembutzu (jap. 現 地 物, "cash in place") - designations of the approach characteristic of Japanese management practice kaizen, according to which to fully understand the situation it is considered necessary to come to the gemba - place of implementation workflow, gather the facts and make a decision directly on the spot. The Russian-language literature usually uses the spelling of “gemba” and “genti genbutsu”. ( Wikipedia )
To talk about why we need gemba, I'll start from the very beginning. Our product is the Dodo IS information system, uniting all parts of our business in two directions:
- b2c (website and mobile app);
- b2b (applications to control shifts, manage pizzerias, warehouse balances, cashier interfaces, and so on).
It is quite difficult to create a quality product, and not to know how it is used and who works with it. To assess the quality, we use 2 approaches:
- Eat your own dog food (for b2c) is a method of probing user experience when in a company employees use products that they develop. This approach is quite simple to use in real life. You also like all customers order pizza when you go to the subway, walk in the rain, at -30 or lie on the beach. Disadvantages, bugs, bad UX can be easily felt on yourself.
- Gemba (for b2b) is a method of probing user experience when in a company employees use products that they develop. BUT. In our case, it implies a deeper immersion in the product and the environment. You cannot at any moment go to work as a pizza maker or become a pizzeria manager in order to understand how the system works.
Who should go to gemba
No one should, but everyone can. Hike in gemba - the right of everyone. Nobody forbids to go to a pizzeria, but no one forces. Testers, developers, and product managers can go there. The whole thing in the difference of focus.
- Products For products, this is one of the main activities, in the pizzeria they get ideas, get insights, see the picture in integrity. Product managers use gemba to test hypotheses, in-depth interviews, customer-development, create a customer journey map, and so on.
- The developers . Developers go to gemba to “touch” the product they have made. A side effect of this is uncontrolled insights.
- Testers . For testers, an internship at a pizzeria is part of onboarding. We believe that testers should be more immersed in the business context than developers. After returning from the pizzeria, no tester said it was a waste of time.
Why go to gemba
1. Cheap and angry. Going to gemba is simple to implement. The developer goes to the pizzeria and uses the product. Everything. This is hundreds of times simpler than imitating a pizzeria in the office, inviting existing employees of the pizzeria and a fictitious demonstration of their user experience in the conditions of a spherical horse in a vacuum.
')
2. Insights automation. In gembe happen insights about automating business processes. One of our Android-developer Pasha went to gemba and saw what the labeling process was. Employees HAVE RECOGNIZED the labeling and expiration dates of products in the UME and in the ARMS. For each product, the date of defrosting, expiration date and expiration date is recorded and written. Product labeling is a boring routine process in which inadvertent errors occur.
The developer realized that this is a complete bullshit, automate it - “half an hour programmer’s work”, picked up and automated. So there was a mobile application for printing labels. The operation has been reduced to the following: an employee chooses a heading on a tablet, makes a “tyk”, a label with all terms is printed, everything.
3. Disadvantages in the field. In gembe brighter manifest product flaws. In Dodo IS there is a functional for carrying out audit. The functionality was developed under the tablet. During the audit, the employee can enter data directly into the tablet, but in the freezer and the refrigerator is too cold, the tablet refuses to work, sometimes the connection falls off, and the interface itself is not very convenient. Therefore, the results of the revision are recorded on paper and then entered into Dodo IS. Double work!
Before starting to rewrite the interface of the auditor, the development team went to the pizzeria night audits to understand the process. They returned from there with ideas for improving it. For example, if the connection is lost, then the information input must be made asynchronous, the data is stored in the local storage, and sent to the server when the connection is restored.
Outside the window night, at this time, developers consider tomatoes
4. Real working conditions. In the pizzeria you can see the working conditions in which applications are used. One of the development teams made tracking for a pizzeria - a set of six tablets that display pizza, a recipe with added or deleted ingredients, and the location of the pizza in the kitchen at a point in time.
Tablet rolling dough
Tablet packaging
The team included a new tracking in one pizzeria and went to see how it works. In the pizzeria, the developers saw that pizza makers poked into the tablets with their hands soiled with sauce or cheese and did it very quickly. As a result, on the tablet, instead of clicking, you get a swipe. The team was very surprised. After all, we in the office clicked on the tablet with clean hands and did not hurry anywhere. After this campaign in gemba, the team returned and redid a click on the swipe.
5. Problem solving. After going to the pizzeria, you offer the most appropriate solutions. You know how a business works, how things work in real life. When a business comes to you with a problem, thanks to a broad view of business and knowledge of how the system works from the inside, you can offer a simpler or systemic solution to the problem.
Satisfied developers in gemba
6. The effect of the product. You can see how the unavailability or complex interface of the product affects employees and customers. You stand at the checkout counter, and it slows down, a queue accumulates at the checkout counter, some customers because of this negative or go. Without this valuable knowledge, the developer might not pay attention to the increase in response latency.
QA-engineer at the checkout takes orders
Why not go to gemba
I could not come up with the shortcomings of this approach, except that the development of our developers in gembu is not justified financially. We get a lot of feedback that we are engaged in expensive garbage, we pay the developer a salary for turning pizza, tearing it off from work and fulfilling our direct official duties. Here I have a simple opinion - we pay the developer for his work, for his product. He just does his job at a pizzeria, looks at the product through the eyes of a client, and answers himself in real time to the question "have I done a bullshit?"
the end
In Dodo Pizza trips to gemba are commonplace. This is a great experience with which we make a quality product.
I liked how our developer Dima Afonchenko wrote: “For me, as for a developer who did not go to gemba, a developer who went to gemba looks like a carrier of secret knowledge. When discussing at a general meeting, such a person may say: “What you propose will not work, because I was in a pizzeria and saw how it really is there. In general, you need to go to gemba for at least this. ”
The two most frequent questions about gemba and developers
How do you go to a pizzeria without honey. books? No Without a medical book, one cannot go to gemba. We are normal people and strictly observe the standards of cleanliness. There can be no exceptions. Before you go to gemba, you need to undergo a medical examination and obtain the appropriate work permit.
Do developers need to wash toilets? Not. We go to the pizzeria in order to understand how our product works in “combat” conditions. UPD: after the publication of the article I received a feedback that during the gemba you may still be asked to get out, including in the toilets, because when you come to the pizzeria you become a full-fledged trainee.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/457398/
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