Let’s take a look at an example of continuous improvement practices at the company Atlassian.
Atlassian, a software company that offers products to product managers and development teams, has successfully created and sustained a culture of innovation and continuous improvement. Atlassian achieves this in a few different ways.
Firstly, to drive innovation, employees are given 20% of their allocated work time to spend on personal projects. [1] This is modelled on Google’s innovation strategy, where personal projects often can be transformed into creative new features or products for the organisation. This strategy requires Atlassian to allow their employees the time to work on these personal projects, which is an expensive risk for the company since 20% of employees’ time is given away to experimentation. However, to ensure that this time is used productively, employees focus their personal projects on the team, how it operates, and what they do.
Secondly, Atlassian cultivated a culture of continuous improvement to support innovation. Specifically, Atlassian split their employees into small teams and encouraged them to own their career path by embracing and identifying challenges and strengths. What they found was that successful teams handled challenges differently to other teams, so to help those who struggled, Atlassian implemented a workshopping resource called the Team Playbook. They gathered the practices that successful teams used and created short, purposeful workshops and exercises that enabled teams to learn and adopt these practices. [2]
For example, Atlassion’s Health Monitor [3] helps teams to assess their strengths and weaknesses. Once some weaknesses have been identified, teams and employees can use other plays to strengthen these areas.
Instructions: How do you implement continuous improvement practices?
Taking dedicated work time to innovate and find continuous improvement opportunities can be an expensive cost for an organisation. Considering what you have just learned, complete the following:
- Explain in a brief paragraph:
- How might you go about implementing effective continuous improvement practices?
- What might you do differently to Atlassian?
As a good product manager I would apply the Principle of PCDA and also seek feedback , create a well conducive environment for employees as well as using a structured framework that helps to stimulate innovation.
Unlike the Atlassian, I would give 6% of the allocated work time to the employees and would also conduct research on how to enhance productivity as well as making all employees to undergo a survey to know their strength and weaknesses.
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Adopt the principles of PDCA for continuous improvements , spilting my teams to know there strength and weakness, Also, knowing there area of expertise helps In division of labor, each team will be giving 5% of employees time instead of 20% like atlassians. Also we will give our teams topup as appreciation to there efforts, in continues improvement practice of the company.
I would conduct regular review to ensure productivity
I don’t think the title of your article matches the content lol. Just kidding, mainly because I had some doubts after reading the article.
As a product manager that is constantly looking out for areas of continuous improvements that will satisfy customer desire, as well as bring about improve process and increase profit for the company, I will apply the four (4) pillars of continuous improvements by;
1. Examining customer feedbacks through our various feedback channels and carefully analyse each.
When analysing, I will look out for suggested or recommended areas for improvements as well as, areas were customers are partially or completely dissatisfied with the product.
2. I will carry out an extensive internal research to know if the recommended/suggested improvements will bring about the following:
i. Optimum customer satisfaction.
ii. Incremental improvement to the product.
iii. Improvement to our process and tools.
vi. Increase profitability for the company.
Upon verifying that the 4 pillars of continuous improvements will be satisfied by the suggested/recommended changes from my analysis of our customer feedbacks, I will proceed with the continuous improvement by utilizing the four (4) components of continuous improvements (PDCA).
2. What I will do differently from Atlanssian are:
i. Using the 4 pillars of continuous improvements by utilizing our customer feedback mechanism to recommend incremental improvement for our product.
ii. Though like Atlanssian, I believe that some idea of incremental improvement should be internally generated, however, I do not toll the line of giving away 20% of daily man hour for such. I think routine brainstorming by the team on possible areas of improvement is okay.
To implement continuous improvement practice on products, I would implement the PDCA proccess. carry out a systemic study of consumers’ engagement with the products. Starting from what motivated them to acquire the product, their behaviour with the product as well as competing products. Get personal feedback from consumers’ experiences and expectation. D analysis of gathered information and implement improvements and changes.
Differently from Atlassian, I would make workers refference the personal projects they are working on to the product of interest
I would allocate a portion of work hours, such as 10%, for personal projects and innovation days. Unlike Atlassian’s fixed 20%, the time could be adjusted based on capacity. I would also encourage cross-team collaborations during these sessions and implement a feedback loop with tools like a Team Playbook and regular meetings. This approach balances innovation with flexibility and team collaboration, ensuring alignment with the main goals.
I will use continous improvement method just like PDCA and define goals and objective, Identify areas for improvement using employee feeback, Assemble teams with diverse kills and persepectives to drive improvement initiatives just as Atlassian allocate few mins for each employee to develop their project, monitor progress and celebrate little wins, foster a feeback loop to encourage ongoing feedback.
Adopt the principles of PDCA for continuous improvements , ensure teams effectiveness by learning from various success of other teams