Troy is the founder and consultant for Focused Objective LLC the leading quantitative analysis and forecasting vendor for the software industry for the last five years. He regularly speaks at industry conferences and promotes the better use of historical data, metrics and quantitative techniques to anyone who listens. Troy has worked at all levels of the technology industry for the last 30 years, from entry-level positions to Vice President for 1,000+ person technology organizations (Sabre Airlines, Travelocity, LastMinute.com, Corbis) and now consults for major companies like Tableau Software, Microsoft, Skype, Walmart, Siemens, LeanKit.

Blocker and Dependency Management - Capturing and Prioritizing the Reasons Work Doesn't Flow

Kanban rightly puts heavy emphasis on flow, and the reasons work isn't flowing. This session looks at how to capture and analyze blocker data in order to get blocked items flowing and to find ways to avoid those causes of blockers happening in the future. Blocked work when unnecessary has a huge impact on flow. The industry average time work spends idle is 85-95% (hands-on time accounts for only 5-15% of lead-time. If we could find the causes and ways to reduce that blocked time, the cost savings are enormous. Those saving in faster flow mean less cost of delay, meaning not just cost savings but increased revenue. This pile of cash is sitting on the table waiting to be picked up. And this session gives you actionable ways to capture, identify and fix the causes of these delays in your organizations.

• What are blockers and dependencies, definitions and types
• What is the cost impact of blockers on flow, and cycle time
• What data should be captured about blockers
• How to find the most impactful blockers using data
• How to see that process changes are working