I came across the idea of an Andon cord while I was reading The DevOps Handbook. The concept originates from Toyota, where if any worker is stuck due to an issue, they can pull the Andon cord above their workstation, prompting everyone present to try to help and figure out a solution to the problem.
This seems counterintuitive at first, as one might think: why bother everyone, causing them to switch context to solve a local problem? However, the perspective should be that since it's a team’s problem, it’s a global problem.
I’m not sure how effective Andon cord pulls are in teams of various sizes, but according to the book, the anecdote about Excella showed that cycle time was inversely proportional to the number of Andon cord pulls.
I'm also uncertain about how frequency is related to the number of Andon cord pulls per week or day relative to team size.
Nevertheless, it’s an interesting idea and something a tech team should try and analyze to see if it works for them.
In my personal experience, frequent Andon pulls were frustrating at first. But as my team and I gave it a chance, we saw a significant reduction in cycle time—if, and only if, the team took learnings and actionable insights from the Andon cord pulls.
The whole idea is to reduce overall chaos within the developer team while enabling quick swarm-based problem-solving.
Written on: October 28, 2024