Andon processes can help your team value fire prevention over fire-fighting
And value the flow of work over the thrill of the ‘blocker’.
Andon cords are a lean manufacturing idea, and originate from the same minds that brought you kanban — The Toyota Production System.
Andon is the Japanese word for lantern, and it refers to a process where workers can highlight issues in quality that require attention. In manufacturing, an andon process can be put in place by installing two physical cords at every workstation. An essential ingredient of this system is that the cords can be pulled by any employee.
There is a fundamental difference between the two cords however. The red cord stops the production line, halting the flow of work for the entire team. The yellow cord is different. Rather than stop the line, it highlights the need for a conversation about a quality issue. Think of the yellow cord as highlighting an impediment, and the red cord as a blocking issue.
If an Andon process is to be successful, the yellow cord must attract sufficient attention to resolve the quality issue, and this process must strive to resolve the quality issue before production needs to stop. The process reinforces the idea that when production stops, shit is serious. When the red cord is pulled, we have a sev-1 issue to resolve. Managers will appear. War rooms will be started. We will drop everything to get this sorted out.
Scrum Masters are stakeholders in the Andon business, particularly the yellow cord moments. We want to know about impediments before they become blockers. If a team is good at highlighting impediments, it means that they are anticipating issues in quality, and preventing blocking issues in productivity downstream. However, this is easier said than done!
Do we value firefighting over fire prevention?
For there is glory to be found in red cord moments. Look! The hero swooping in to resolve the red cord issue and get us all moving again! What a rockstar developer!
Unfortunately, red cord issues mean that work is stopped, so this has a huge cost to the entire production system. As scrum masters, we need to make it very transparent to teams that the real hero prevents these issues before they block the flow of work in the team.
Creating Psychological Safety
In 1996, I was lucky enough to spend a summer working at the Audi factory in Ingolstadt, Germany. I still have my Audi work overalls somewhere, and the experience of working in that environment was priceless to me.
I worked on a production line that rolled a completed Audi A4 into the parking lot every two minutes. Every workstation on the line was equipped with two andon cords, one yellow, one red, and I remember wondering what they were… I even considered pulling one to see what would happen.
Imagine, for a moment, that the red cord is pulled and the line is stopped for two minutes. The cost of that stoppage is a car. Imagine now that the line is stopped for 4 minutes, or 10 minutes... You get the picture. The cost racks up quite quickly, and the accumulation is easy to calculate.
When I asked about the cords, an overalled Audi colleague told me a story about a holiday worker like myself. He was tired early one morning on the Frühschicht, which didn’t surprise me, as it started at 6 a.m. Absent-mindedly, yawning, he stretched, grabbed the two andon cords over his head, and supported his full weight on them for a moment.
You can probably imagine the chaos that ensued when the entire production line suddenly stopped. Red signal lights flashed and klaxxons sounded. Supervisors in overalls appeared, seemingly from nowhere, but also, worse still, managers in suits rushed to see what the problem was and whether they could help resolve it… much to the embarrassment of this poor unfortunate!
Psychological Safety is “a shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking” (Amy Edmonson)
It’s an amusing story to recall, but it is also very positive, because it reinforces what andon processes strive to create: a safe environment for every team member. Amy Edmondson is a professor of leadership and management at Harvard Business School, and she describes psychological safety as ‘a shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking’. A recent piece of research in Google has indicated that psychological safety is critical in order to make teams work well together.
Andon processes involve personal risk, because we have to put ourselves under a spotlight, and draw attention from our colleagues. However, I really believe that these processes can help create that safety because we help to create an environment where those risks can be taken for all the right reasons.
We need to value fire prevention over firefighting
Quality is everyone’s responsibility, but teams must feel empowered to do something about the issues they see. If broken windows are not repaired, they might become the norm.
Audi successfully created an environment where everyone was empowered to pull those cords, and broken windows were not tolerated. This was reinforced by the consequences when those cords were pulled!
As a scrum master, I would love everyone in the team to feel empowered that way, but I also want the team to be responsible for anticipating issues with the yellow cord. We do not want a ‘zombie-scrum’ situation, where the team have been working with so many broken windows, they only see value in the red cord, declaring ‘blocker!’ and stopping the flow of work in order to get an issue the required attention.
If your team can be encouraged to pull the yellow cord more often than the red, if there are consequences when the yellow cord is pulled, and impediments are removed before they prevent the flow of work, then you might just create an environment where work flows through the team more freely. Empowerment without responsibility, or without consequences for raising issues, is just nonsense. A team will learn very quickly if yellow cord issues are ignored.
A good question to ask a team is: “do we value fire fighting more than fire prevention?” If we cannot see the value of fixing a yellow cord impediment before it becomes a red cord blocker, and if no credit, reward or positive reinforcement is given for fixing yellow cord issues, a team will quickly learn helplessness, and that red cord issues are the only currency.
To help create a ‘yellow cord environment’, ensure that the team have a robust internal communication channel for interruptions and impediments. (We use slack and find it great for this kind of thing). Help the team understand that new work or new complexity is also a yellow cord issue to be discussed, not a fire to be put out later.
Yellow andon issues can be highlighted in many ways. We can highlight these on a slack channel, or on a big visible board near the team, and encourage the team to take ownership of the yellow andon issues that are under their control. The first step is the signal.
If we value fire prevention as scrum masters, we need to think about ways to bring yellow cord moments to the attention of the teams with which we work. We also need to encourage teams to be responsible for highlighting yellow cord moments. Unforeseen complexity, new work, system issues. We don’t need to live with these ‘broken windows’ and as scrum masters we can help teams to reset these norms.
If you are a scrum master, and you would like to encourage fire prevention in a team, andon processes might just help as a metaphor for that. If you can help a team to take interpersonal risk and engage in appropriate fire prevention, then their performance should improve as a result.
Did you find this post useful? If so, or if you have any questions, please let me know. It would be great to start a conversation on this topic. Does your team value firefighting over fire prevention? What andon processes have you tried? Please feel free to share, and tell me more!
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