What is Yokoten and where does it come from?

Yokoten ( 横転 ) is a Japanese concept that translates to “sharing knowledge or successful practices horizontally across teams or departments” or simply “horizontal sharing”. It originates from lean manufacturing, particularly from the Toyota Production System (TPS). The idea behind Yokoten is simple: when one team discovers a better way to do something, they share that improvement with other teams or departments so everyone can benefit. This practice is essential in lean systems, where continuous improvement (known as Kaizen) is the goal.
Toyota first applied Yokoten to ensure that successful innovations in one production line were shared across the entire organization. By promoting open knowledge exchange, Toyota created a culture where improvements were quickly adopted by other teams, leading to faster, more widespread innovation.

Today, Yokoten has expanded beyond manufacturing and is applied in various industries, including healthcare, technology, and education. It is also increasingly important in Agile Project Management frameworks like Scrum and Kanban.

Where can Yokoten be applied?

Yokoten can be applied in virtually any industry or organization where collaboration and continuous improvement are valued.

Some key areas include:

🔹Manufacturing

In manufacturing, Yokoten helps spread best practices across different factories or production lines, ensuring that all areas benefit from the latest efficiency improvements.

🔹Technology and Software Development

In tech environments, Yokoten can be applied to share coding practices, problem-solving approaches, and software architecture solutions across teams working on different products or features. This helps accelerate innovation and reduce duplication of work.

🔹Healthcare

In hospitals, Yokoten can help spread innovative medical procedures or patient care practices from one department to others, improving overall healthcare delivery.

🔹Retail and Customer Service

Retailers use Yokoten to share successful customer service strategies or inventory management solutions across stores, improving consistency and performance across the chain.

🔹Agile Project Management

Yokoten is especially relevant in Agile environments like Scrum and Kanban, where collaboration, learning, and continuous improvement are central. By sharing learnings across teams, organizations can optimize their Agile processes and deliver better products more efficiently.

Yokoten Benefits in Agile Project Management

In Agile Project Management, Yokoten is a powerful tool for fostering continuous learning and improvement. Since Agile thrives on quick feedback loops and collaboration, Yokoten aligns perfectly with these goals.

Some specific benefits include:

🔹Faster Learning Across Teams

In an Agile environment, teams learn quickly through experimentation and iteration. When one team discovers a new technique to improve efficiency or resolve an issue, sharing that knowledge with other Agile teams accelerates the entire organization’s learning process. For example, if one Scrum team refines their daily stand-up process to reduce time wastage, other teams can adopt and adapt this practice immediately.

🔹Avoiding Repeating Mistakes

In Agile, teams often experiment to find the best ways of working. By using Yokoten, a mistake made by one team becomes a valuable lesson for others. This prevents multiple teams from making the same errors, saving time and effort.

🔹Consistent Agile Maturity

Agile organizations often have teams at different stages of maturity. Some teams may have mastered sprint planning, while others may still be figuring out how to prioritize effectively. Yokoten helps spread successful practices from more mature teams to less experienced ones, creating overall consistency and alignment.

🔹Cross-Team Synergy

Yokoten enhances cross-team synergy by promoting the sharing of useful frameworks, tools, or strategies. For instance, if a team using Kanban discovers a better method for limiting work-in-progress (WIP) to reduce bottlenecks, that practice can be shared with Scrum teams who may face similar workflow issues.

🔹Improved Retrospective Outcomes

Agile retrospectives are designed to foster continuous improvement. When insights from retrospectives are shared across teams via Yokoten, all teams can benefit from these learnings. A solution or improvement identified by one team can be implemented more broadly, leading to faster organizational growth.

Applying Yokoten to Scrum Team Roles

To effectively implement Yokoten within a Scrum team, each role (Product Owner, Scrum Master, and Development Team) must play a part in promoting knowledge sharing across teams.

Product Owner

The Product Owner is responsible for maximizing the value of the product and maintaining the product backlog.

Here’s how Yokoten can help them:

🔹Sharing Product Vision and Strategy

If one Product Owner discovers a more efficient way to engage stakeholders or prioritize the backlog, sharing this method with other Product Owners across teams ensures that the whole organization benefits from better product development practices.

🔹Learning from Other Teams’ Prioritization Strategies

If another Scrum team has found an effective way to manage technical debt or balance customer requests, the Product Owner can adopt these insights to better prioritize their backlog.

Scrum Master

The Scrum Master acts as a facilitator and is responsible for ensuring the Scrum framework is followed. Here’s how Yokoten can support them:

🔹Sharing Scrum Practices

If one Scrum Master finds an improved way to conduct stand-ups, retrospectives, or sprint planning sessions, they can share these techniques with other Scrum Masters.

For example, if one team runs more focused and productive retrospectives by using a new format, that approach can be shared across teams.

🔹Helping Teams Learn from Each Other

The Scrum Master can facilitate cross-team learning by setting up knowledge-sharing sessions between different Scrum teams. This can include “Scrum of Scrums” meetings where different Scrum Masters exchange lessons learned.

🔹Scaling Agile Practices

For organizations using Scrum at scale, Yokoten can help Scrum Masters ensure consistency in Agile practices across all teams, leading to better alignment and collaboration.

Development Team

The Development Team is responsible for delivering the product increment. Here’s how Yokoten can help developers:

🔹Sharing Technical Solutions

When one development team discovers a better way to implement a feature or solve a bug, sharing that solution with other teams can prevent duplication of effort. For instance, if a team optimizes code for performance, that code can be shared with others to improve performance across the board.

🔹Improving Code Quality and Testing Practices

If one team develops a more efficient way of writing unit tests or managing continuous integration pipelines, Yokoten ensures that all development teams can apply these improvements.

🔹Adapting Successful Workflows

If a team discovers a more effective workflow or tool for managing pull requests or code reviews, sharing that information helps other teams improve their development processes.

Yokoten is a powerful concept that enhances collaboration, learning, and continuous improvement in Agile project management. By fostering horizontal sharing of knowledge across teams, Yokoten helps organizations avoid silos, accelerates learning, and increases overall efficiency. Whether it’s helping Scrum Masters refine processes, Product Owners prioritize more effectively, or developers share technical solutions, Yokoten ensures that all teams can benefit from each other’s successes. By adopting this approach, Agile organizations can unlock faster growth, better alignment, and more consistent delivery of value.