Webinar: Rapid Learning Cycles for More Profitable Projects.
Learn from expert Jason Low - Solid Consulting NZ how to implement rapid learning cycles into your projects to squeeze a little more profit from your team's time.
The 'Rapid Learning Cycles' framework synthesises Agile and Lean Product Development to help your project teams and business succeed.
This 40-minute webinar will discuss the following:
Ways to improve decision-making to accelerate project delivery speed
Ideas to enhance the effectiveness of your teams
Ways to increase your project's margins
“In rapid learning cycles, we capture the things we learn in each cycle into an extensible knowledge library. Then, we can inject that knowledge into future programs.”
Don’t worry if you missed the rapid learning cycles webinar, you can now watch the video or read the transcript below.
Madeline:
Thank you, everyone, for joining. My name is Madeline. I'm the Head of Sales here at Projectworks. And I'm very excited to introduce you to Jason Low, an innovation consultant from solid consulting. And he will run you through rapid learning cycles, which is a new way to improve your projects and make them more profitable. So with that, I will hand it over to Jason.
Jason:
Thank you, Madeline. Hi, everyone; excited to be here and share what I know about rapid learning cycles and how to make projects more profitable. So, first of all, like to talk a little bit about myself. So I've had quite a broad career by design spanning design, innovation, product development, manufacturing, and project management.
And I've had a range of work in a range of different industries and manufacturing methods. And I now help businesses with a range of different services. So because of my broad career, I've worked in quite a range of different industries, spending fast-moving consumer goods, pet food and pet protection, devices, skincare, wide area commercial mowing equipment, which I'll tell you a bit more about today, construction, horticulture, additive manufacturing clean tech compostable technology film since and since technology, and rapid learning circles is one of the services I help my clients with. And I can help train and coach businesses, and I'm one of only 13 people globally that can do this, trained and certified.
So this is a bit of an overview of the webinar. So I'm going to talk to you a bit about my experience with rapid learning cycles before becoming a consultant and give you a bit of an introduction to the basic elements of the framework. And then, I'm going to talk to you about the benefits of rapid learning cycles, in particular, how it improves decision-making, how it enhances the effectiveness of your teams, and how they can increase your profit margins. And then I'll leave some time for any questions you might have.
So there are hundreds of businesses using rapid learning cycles around the world. Rapid learning cycles were created in 2010 by Kathryn Rodica, who founded the revenue cycles Institute. And she has continued to grow and improve that business over the last 12 years and the framework as well. And these are some of the more kinds of high-profile businesses that you might have heard of that are public about the use of representing cycles. So hopefully, you notice a few on that slide of some reputable businesses.
Before becoming a rapid learning cycles consultant, I used the framework for four years and a full-time role. They try and mix mowing systems for those of you who don't haven't heard of trimix before.
They design and manufacture wide area, commercial mowing equipment for mowing grass and parks. At the same time, he was larger is a grassland park, golf courses, sports fields and agricultural environments like turf farms.
On my second week at Trimax, I went on the rapid learning cycles course and rapid and Trimax and Gallaghers were two of the first businesses in New Zealand to start implementing the framework.
That was back in 2016. And the course just made so much sense to us. The frame framework really resonated with us. So we started using it straight away. And we kicked off a project the next week using the framework. And then, in the following months, we started kicking off more projects using the framework. And then we were it wasn't too long before we were using it across our whole r&d portfolio. Developing products, especially physical products, is hard. Hardware is hard. Changes late in development can come with big-time delays, customer needs not being met, and product design can fail. Manufacturing setup costs are high. Changes can kill budgets and lead times are usually long, so any mistakes can cause delays, and managing change in a project can be time-consuming.
Rapid learning cycles worked for us at Trimax because they ensured that we made correct data-driven and research-based decisions. It supported our customer-centric focus and allowed us to stay flexible with a easy update plan, ensured better knowledge capture,, and encouragedd better collaboration and alignment across teams. And it was a clear and easy-to-digest framework that was quick to learn and train others employees.
So now I'm going to go into why rapid learning cycles accelerate innovation.
As you know, with product development, the further you go through the process, the more expensive it is to change things. So that is why making the right decisions in a project is important. And then as one rapid learning cyclecycle really helps you with rapid learning cycles works because it eliminates long slow learning cycles. So to fix this, we pull learning forward and push decisions later to maintain flexibility and the project.
So you pull learning forward ahead of decisions. And by pushing decisions later in the project, when they need to happen, you can change the cost of the change curve by using rapid learning cycles. Long loopbacks and projects are a big contributor to a loss of margin.
Reducing these loopbacks means faster time to market by the launch coordination and more confidence in your product. Lower development costs lower product costs and fewer failures in the field. And rapid learning cycles, we capture the things we learn in all those learning cycles into an extensible Knowledge Library. So we can inject that knowledge into future programs. Every key decision and knowledge gap will have an A3 report, and they are stored in a Knowledge Library. So they're easily accessible for future teams and projects to utilize. At Trimax, we held a lot of knowledge. Most of this was an individual's head, and some were in reports.
After starting our Knowledge Library, it only took a few months before we started dipping back into it for knowledge, especially when running highly accelerated life testing. When you have easily digestible three reports on all the most important knowledge you've created on your project, have them stored in a central location. That's keyword searchable. It's extremely valuable to speed up your r&d program.
According to Katherine Rodiga’s research, the first time a group goes through this process, they're up to 30% faster. But the second time, they can go twice as fast after they have a base of extensible knowledge to work with. And they keep getting faster the more extensible knowledge they have to work with.
So when it comes to project management frameworks, there's no one framework to rule them all. Instead, different frameworks must be used for different types of projects. And a hybrid approach to managing your portfolio of projects is required if you want to increase your profit margins.
Rapid learning cycles, sweet spotters, and projects with a high cost of change and a high amount of uncertainty.
The framework was specifically designed for hardware product development r&d. But it's also used for stretch research projects and software projects that have a high cost to change, for example, security systems and HealthTech software or software where you need to make the right decisions; otherwise, there will be a high cost to change.
Most software projects have high uncertainty and a low cost to change. So agile project management is great for those types of projects.
And traditional project management is excellent for projects with a high cost of change but a low amount of uncertainty. So if you already have a production line and need to duplicate it, make another one and steal another one. That's a low amount of uncertainty but a high cost of change. So and also construction projects fall into that category as well. But when you have projects with low uncertainty and a low cost of change, there's no need to overcomplicate things, and formal tools are great for this.
So now I'm going to talk to you about the major elements of the framework.
This is the official definition of rapid learning cycles and is a synchronized set of learning activities to remove uncertainty, manage risk and eliminate obstacles before key decisions need to be made within a product development program.
When you kick off a project using rapid learning cycles, the first task and the kickoff event is to define a core hypothesis. The core hypothesis is the justification for doing a project. It defines your project from beginning to end.
And it describes your customer needs, business value and new technology. It's my favourite part of the whole process because it's all about alignment.
So when you start brainstorming, you've got your core team and key stakeholders in the room. You start brainstorming about all the potential customer needs we're trying to meet by base kicking off this project? And what is the value of the business? Why are we doing this as a business? What's, what's the value, and what are all the new technologies that we're going to either use, improve or invent, and this project and when you list that out, and debate on one of the top one or two out of each category, that you're going to put into your core hypothesis to define your project. It's amazing how each person in the room has a different view of the project and sometimes very competing priorities from different departments. And so you have these amazing debates that might not otherwise happen until weeks or months down. And so you're pulling that debate and then alignment forward. So you're kicking off the project right away, and then max the next stages of planning the project much easier.
So the core hypothesis is the reason your company believes in this product. And then you have key decisions. So then you want to defy define all the high impact, high unknown decisions in the project. And they must be made on time to complete the product development process, but the team can't make them confidently.
And then every key decision that you have in the project has at least one or more knowledge gaps. So that's some knowledge you need to close to make a key decision.
And then, you have activities, activities, or tasks you need to complete to close knowledge gaps.
So here are a few examples.
An example of a core hypothesis, the trail runner x t uses a diesel hybrid and smart sensor technology that delivers a fuel-efficient, high-performing sports utility vehicle so that we get a new revenue stream for the North American market. So diesel hybrid and smart sensor technology is the fuel efficient, high performing sports utility vehicle as the customer need and new revenue stream for the North American market, it's the value to the business. So one example of a key decision on that project might be what motor we will use for the production of the trail runner X to an example of a knowledge gap might be how much power is required to move the trail runner X t and heavy off-road use. And then you have the activities you need to complete to close that knowledge gap.
So not everything is a key decision. So what makes the key decision? We'll use this matrix to help us sort through decisions and identify the key decisions. Only items in the upper right quadrant of this matrix are actually key decisions, key decisions or high impact, higher known solutions. And every key decision has at least one or more knowledge gaps. So you need to close an order and confidently make that key decision.
We discuss the importance of making resilient key decisions in rapid learning cycles.
And so that's about making key decisions at the right time in the project with the right people with the best available knowledge. And if you do those things, you'll have a resilient key decision.
So when we talk about the right time, we are talking about the last responsible moment to make a key decision. And that is the moment on the project's timeline when a decision must be finalized to avoid major impacts on downstream partners. So an example of this might be procurement decisions or tooling. Those are a couple of examples where a key decision must be made on time. I was gonna there's going to be downstream delays or effects.
And when we talk about the right people, it's making sure that the core team and the key stakeholders get to weigh in on that key decision. So your experts, your project sponsor, and your review boards. The right people must be part of this decision-making process. Rapid learning cycle structure of learning cycle events and integration events ensure that key people are part of this process at the right time.
And when we talk about the best available knowledge, key decisions, by definition, have knowledge gaps. So to make a decision, there is the knowledge you need to close to make that decision with confidence. And that is what we mean by best available knowledge.
So now I'm going to talk you through three key areas in which you'll see benefits by using the rapid learning cycles framework.
Rapid learning cycles improve decision-making.
It enhances the effectiveness of your teams and then increases your profit margins.
Rapid learning cycles improve decision-making.
Major decisions are made at the right time with the right people and the best available knowledge that ensures research-based, data-driven decisions are made. It pulls learning forward and helps uncover issues early when they're easy to fix and the project.
Getting things right the first time equals less time wasted on unproven ideas.
And better decisions equals more partner confidence in r&d.
Resulting in the more faithful execution of the product vision and proving decisions produce a more sustainable competitive advantage for your business.
Rapid learning cycles enhance the effectiveness of your teams and encourage better learning outcomes.
You will accelerate future projects by building an extensible and accessible Knowledge Library.
It provides a clear, clearly defined project structure for even the fuzziest projects and a time-based learning plan that is easy to understand for everyone involved.
The structure ensures the most important project tasks are being worked on, not just the shiny things.
And it gives a clear communication and project meeting structure which means better collaboration across teams.
It also ensures better alignment between departments and better team engagement. And the project leader also has more ownership. And because of all those points, you will have better utilization of your staff. Rapid learning cycles increase your profit margins by spinning up your r&d programs. It gives you a flexible plan that's easy to update, meaning less re-planning time and making your teams more organized.
It ensures correct decision-making, which reduces costly project loopbacks and delays, and teams adopt a mindset that timelines don't slip, which means products are delivered on time.
There are fewer wasteful activities, less trial and error and fewer effective project meetings.
Fewer product failures and potential failure modes are caught early in the process. When the cost of change is low.
Time savings on projects mean more time for other innovations.
And better decisions equal better products which equal more satisfied customers the rapid learning cycles services that offer
One-day practitioner training to train your team on change train across your business kickoff facilitating so kicking off facilitating the kickoff of your first pilot project or any other projects beyond that.
Pilot project support and also bespoke rapid learning cycles coaching. So when it comes to choosing your pilot project, I'll also help with making sure that you're choosing the right type of project for rapid learning cycles and the right type of project for your very first project.
And coaching can be quite bespoke. It can be a lighter touch, for example, a video call, One Hour Video call once a week or every two weeks, and then phone or email support in between. And it can be a bit more hands-on but more involved. So, for example, I can attend your learning cycle and integration events remotely, ensuring they run effectively. And I can also help mentor your three reports to ensure that you are creating knowledge of three that will be usable for future teams. And the way I look at that knowledge gap a three is you want to write them in a way that is free from jargon. It's really easy to understand so that someone in five years from now, a new starter with no prior knowledge of the project can pick up a knowledge gap report and get some usable information on it. And it's not reporting just for report's sake. You're only including the most important information and making them visual with photos, tables and graphs.
If you want to learn more about the framework, these are a couple of books that I'd recommend you check out.
They're available online on a few different web pages. And the one I'd recommend starting with is the shortest distance between you and your new product, you can also sign up for the rapid learning cycles mailing list, and I recommend that you do so. There are some great newsletters, and you get access to free webinars and other resources. So you can keep learning about the framework.
You can also download a recent case study that I've put together. If you go to my website, solidconsulting.co.nz and click on the rapid learning cycles tab in the top right-hand corner, it will take you to my page about rapid learning cycles, and you can download the case study from there.
So the case study is on OASIS engineering, which is part of the Teleflex group. Oasis wanted to enter the hydrogen vehicle refuelling industry. And they had traditionally been involved in the automation and monitoring of high-pressure gases and liquids, like compressed natural gas. Still, the hydrogen industry was something they had no prior experience with. So they needed to use a project management framework that would give them the confidence to do so. So download and have a read of you if you want to learn more about rapid learning cycles and Oasis engineers' experience with implementing it and the benefits they have seen.
See if you remember one thing. And one thing only today is the importance of making resilient key decisions and your projects. So you want to make these key decisions at the right time. So that's the last resort responsible moment, and your project before downstream delays or effects are going to happen. And that's with the right people. So you want your core team and key stakeholders to weigh in on that decision. And also, you need to have the best available knowledge. So you must now have closed your high-priority knowledge gaps and be confidently making that key decision. And if you do all those things, you'll have a resilient key decision that sticks and key decisions or decisions that you need to make in the project that is high impact and high or none.
Thank you very much for your time. And I'm happy to take any questions that you might have.
Madeline:
Thanks so much, Jason.
I have one question for you. And then I see some questions are already coming in in the chat. So, folks, you can feel free to submit questions. We've through that q&a feature there on Zoom.
So I'm just curious, Jason, if you could share a little bit about one of your favourite kinds of teams that you've worked with on this, you know, not to name names, but kind of like a little bit of how this improved their operations and what kind of results they saw for a specific company that implemented this?
Jason:
Yeah, sure. So I'll use Oasis engineering as an example. So that's the case study business. So they already had quite a highly organized engineering team that implemented lean manufacturing, and the factory and really impressive facility, as well.
And they had already implemented other tools and techniques in their product development process, things like design thinking and other methodologies and things but they hadn't found a framework that worked really well for managing the unknowns of product development. And so they saw the framework by pulling learning forward and pushing decisions to LIDAR. And the frame, when you build a project, the framecourages much deeper tinking about what arewe areying to achieve here? What are the decisions we need to make? And what we need to learn to achieve that encourages really deep thinking in the planning process. And through that and the process of focusing on learning, they could uncover issues much earlier on the project and things that they admitted that they would have missed or would not have realized until it was too late. And their cost of change curve would have taken would have meant that it would be really expensive for that project.
Great. Yeah. Thank you so much.
I see a question here. What size do projects benefit from this methodology the most? Sure. So with this framework, and most frameworks, especially with product development, r&d, you don't want to kick off any more than six to 12 months of the project. So you want to kick off a phase of a project. I've kicked off projects where there have been 15 people involved, and part of the project team. And I've kicked off projects where there have been two people involved in the project team. So there isn't a particular project size that we could work for a project of one person. It's just whether you have projects that have a high amount of uncertainty and a high cost to change. That's where it best fits. So product development, hardware, r&d, stretch research projects and software projects that have a high cost of change as some examples.