Team Members and Stakeholders can:Kanban An Evolutionary Approach

to Agility

Team Members and Stakeholders can:

Jon Terry is Chief Operating Officer of LeanKit. Before LeanKit, Jon held a number of senior IT positions with hospital-giant HCA and its subsidiary, HealthTrust Purchasing Group. He was among those responsible for launching HCA’s adoption of Lean/Agile methods.

Jon earned his Global Executive MBA from Georgetown University and ESADE Business School in Barcelona, Spain, and his Masters Certificate in Project Management from George Washington University. He is a Project Management Professional, a Certified Scrum Master and a Kanban Coaching Professional. 

follow @leankitjon

ABOUT JON TERRY

Team Members and Stakeholders can:

Agile

Scrum

XP

Lean / Kanban

AgileScrum

Avoid a narrow IT-focused view of modern management methods

Team Members and Stakeholders can:

1960s-1980s 1980s 1990s 2000s Today

TOC

Just-In-Time

Kanban

Lean Manufacturing

Lean Healthcare

Lean Software Development

Lean Construction

ToyotaProduction

System

Six Sigma

TQM

Agile

XP

Scrum

Focus on rapid flow and feedback vs. planning and “efficiency.”

A Broader Perspective

Team Members and Stakeholders can:

1. Visualize the (current) workflow

2. Implement feedback loops

3. Manage (for smooth) flow

4. Make process policies explicit

5. Limit Work-in-Progress (WIP) *

6. Improve collaborativelyusing Kanban to become Lean

THE KANBAN METHOD Evolution

The quickest path to agility is to start from where you are today.

* Often implicitly at first

Team Members and Stakeholders can:

This is Greek to me. So are many/most project deliverables to non-specialists

Team Members and Stakeholders can:

A picture translates complexity into a simple pattern we can all digest

Team Members and Stakeholders can:

1. Have each team member write down a few of their current work items

2. Ask each person to pick one at a time

3. Have them describe:

– What am I doing to it now?

– Who had it before and what were they doing with it?

– Who will I hand it to next, to do what?

Visualize Workflow

Map out your real, current process

Team Members and Stakeholders can:

Cards are (usually) nouns, lanes are verbs

Team Members and Stakeholders can:

1. Have each team member list their current workload

2. Have them assign each item a type: UX feature, API feature, defect, task, etc

3. Collate the work types they defined into one list and assign each a card color

4. Turn the lists into cards and place them in the correct lane on the board

Catalog the Work

As the manager, only add your “official” list after.

Team Members and Stakeholders can:

Be succinct and focus on results. Try to limit types of work

Team Members and Stakeholders can:

Stop at current state, resist the urge to “improve” now

Team Members and Stakeholders can:

1. Allow a fixed time period – 10-15 min

2. Ensure board is complete & accurate

3. Are there expedites or blockers?

4. Otherwise, walk the board from right to left a card at a time

– What’s needed to advance this item?

– Who can help?

5. Stop when time runs out

Feedback Loops

Daily standups focus on value & completion, not activity

Team Members and Stakeholders can:

Hold regular retrospectives …. but stop-the-line for bottlenecks

Team Members and Stakeholders can:

1. Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?

2. Common root cause answers:

– Hidden WIP

– Stop starting, start finishing

– Downstream/external blockages

– Uneven sizing

– Parallel processes

– Rework

3. Let data be your guide

Feedback Loops

Retrospectives focus on critical issues, & small incremental changes

Team Members and Stakeholders can:

Control charts allow targeted process improvement

Easily see typical delivery patterns vs outliers and drill into them

Let’s investigate this!

Team Members and Stakeholders can:

Look for trends in your delivery speed for different work

In time, better decomposition & effective categorization can replace estimates

Team Members and Stakeholders can:

Splitting process steps into active/waiting queues makes flow more clear

Team Members and Stakeholders can:

Swimlanes can represent different workflows or partner teams

Team Members and Stakeholders can:

Once work visible & process is clear, WIP limits can balance capacity

Team Members and Stakeholders can:

Eliminate Waste

Build Quality In

Create Knowledge

Defer Commitment

Deliver Fast

Respect People

Optimize the Whole

Lean PD System

Process

Skille

d Peo

ple

Tools & Technology

1. Work-In-Process2. Delays3. Extra Features4. Technical Debt5. Handoffs6. Task Switching7. Defects

Lean Principles nicely map to & enhance Agile IT best practices

Team Members and Stakeholders can:

1. Visualize the (current) workflow

2. Implement feedback loops

3. Manage (for smooth) flow

4. Make process policies explicit

5. Limit Work-in-Progress (WIP) *

6. Improve collaborativelyusing Kanban to become Lean

THE KANBAN METHOD REITERATED Evolution

The quickest path to agility is to start from where you are today.

* Often implicitly at first

Team Members and Stakeholders can:

Release 1

Iteration 1

Iteration Planning

Daily Standup

Demo / Retro

Iteration n

Iteration Planning

Daily Standup

Demo / Retro

Iteration Backlog

Fixed Time and Resource

Not Done

Iteration Backlog

Not Done

Product Owner

Ideas

Product Backlog

Release Planning

Release Backlog

Scrum mandates new roles, “rituals” and cadence for a small team.

THE SCRUM PROCESSScrummaster

Team Members and Stakeholders can:

Scrum• A structure of new roles, “rituals” and cadence• No prohibition against visualization, WIP

limitation or flow measurement• A mature scrum team with good technical

practices often looks awfully Kanban-ish Kanban• Evolution through measurement• No opinion on roles or iterations• Software dev teams who use Kanban to

become more Agile often act quite Scrum-my

WHERE’S THE CONFLICT? You can do both.

Team Members and Stakeholders can:

The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business WinGene Kim, Kevin Behr, George Spafford

Implementing Lean Software Development: From concept to cashMary and Tom Poppendieck

Kanban: Successful evolutionary change for your technology businessDavid J. Anderson

LeanKit.com for blog posts, case studies, and more!  

FURTHER LEARNING

Thank You!