{"id":1197,"date":"2018-12-05T16:46:09","date_gmt":"2018-12-05T15:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/getnave.com\/blog\/?p=1197"},"modified":"2024-09-24T09:25:18","modified_gmt":"2024-09-24T07:25:18","slug":"reduce-cycle-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/getnave.com\/blog\/reduce-cycle-times\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Reduce Cycle Times to Boost Customer Satisfaction and Build a More Productive Workforce"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The cycle times of your workflow is the period required for a product team to develop and deliver a valuable outcome to a customer. There are two things that are important here \u2013 how quickly the customer needs the results to be ready, and how much time it takes your product team to develop and deliver them. To that end, it refers to the synchronization between the requirements of the customer and what your internal processes can achieve.<\/p>\n

Although product quality should always come first, reducing cycle times remains a key priority for manufacturers, software developers, and other organizations. Not only are customers setting ever-stricter deadlines \u2013 but there\u2019s also the internal need to optimize efficiency and, therefore, maximize profitability. Shorter cycle times lead to faster innovation, greater customer satisfaction, and substantial savings.<\/p>\n

To reduce cycle times, teams need a system that maximizes productivity and delivers value quickly without leading to burnout. Using the Kanban method<\/a>, you\u2019ll be able to streamline workflows. As a visual collaboration platform that gives teams perspective on projects, Trello<\/a> is great to implement Kanban. With the addition of data-driven analytics<\/a>, you can use Trello to communicate and coordinate your projects more effectively.<\/p>\n

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Set Clear Goals with Well Defined User Stories<\/h2>\n

User stories<\/a> aren\u2019t about product specifications – they\u2019re outlines of the desired outcome, expressed from the user\u2019s perspective. It\u2019s a continuous process of research, discovery, delivery, communication, and testing. Since the number-one priority for product teams is to deliver value to the customer in as little time as possible, they need to have a thorough understanding of what the customer wants to achieve. If your user stories are vague or overly generalized, they\u2019ll be open to misinterpretation, which will lead to miscommunication and, thus increase cycle times. Instead, product teams need to have a good understanding of what they should be focussing on.<\/p>\n

With clearly defined user stories, teams can better identify the fastest way to deliver and minimize the risk of miscommunication. To that end, a user story should specify the type of user, what they want to achieve, and the reason they want to achieve it. However, for more complex scenarios, the overall user story might be too complicated for a team to complete in one go, in which case, you\u2019ll want to break it down into smaller and more specific stories. For example, a customer might want to be able to execute payments through your mobile app. Perhaps, then, the first cycle could focus on the goal of integrating credit card payments with the app. That way, your customer ends up with a viable solution before you start working on integrating more payment methods. This helps teams define clear goals and maintain their focus, thus reducing cycle times.<\/p>\n

Prevent Overburden by Introducing a Pull System<\/h2>\n

A combination of backlogs, tight deadlines, and a lack of limits on work in progress<\/a> is a sure-fire way to stifle productivity and morale. Team burnout<\/a> can ultimately lead to compromises in product quality and wastage of resources. Preventing overburden is a key priority in any solid project-management routine. A Kanban pull system<\/a> lets you implement techniques that increase productivity and speed up task-delivery by ensuring that the team only takes on work when they have the capacity to do so.<\/p>\n

A Kanban pull system is a simple yet effective mechanism that controls the flow of work through the system. This is the opposite of a push system, in which project managers are constantly pushing work onto the team without considering their capacity. When using Kanban, you\u2019ll define workflow steps based on each product-development stage. While these vary depending on the project or industry, a software-development process might define the following steps:<\/p>\n