GROWING POPULARITYOF KANBAN BOARDS

- HOW COME?IPMA WORLD CONGRESS 2013

MATTIAS HÄLLSTRÖMFOUNDER AND DIRECTOR R&D, PROJECTPLACE

What is a kanban board?

Kanban is derived from the Japanese words: kan = visual signal, ban = card

Lean and Kanban is spreading from production and product development to many industries and business areas.

The Digital Kanban Board- The most important Project Management Tool

Nonlinear Management (NLM) management techniques and strategies started to appear 40 years ago. Examples: Systems Theory (CAS), Concurrent Engineering, Toyota Kaizen, Lean Production

Important principles & methods• Self-organized teams• Control through transparency and “pull” of work items• Workflows should be visible for everyone• Kanban-inspired Visual Management Tools

THE DIGITAL KANBAN BOARD IS SPREADING VIA LEAN & AGILE UPTAKE IN IT

• Kanban is visualizing work and limit work-in-progress.

• Visualising work allows us to transform our conceptual and threatening workload into an actionable, context-sensitive flow. (We see what we are doing.)

• Limiting our work-in-progress helps us complete what we start and understand the value of our choices.

VISUALIZATION ACCELERATES LEARNING AND THE ABILITY TO PRIORITIZE

• The board is a natural gathering point to discuss issues, solve problems and learn

• Psychological projection onto the visual cards makes uncomfortable feelings more easy to handle

• The kanban board makes behavior clearly visible

ABILITY TO SELF-ORGANIZE IS THE KEY TO HIGH-PERFORMANCE TEAMS

COLLABORATIVE PLANNING REINFORCES EFFICIENT PROJECT BEHAVIOR

Group psychology and modern behavior science can explain why!

“The psychological tendency to remember an uncompleted task rather than a completed one”

• Dragging a card to the second column on the kanban board communicates that you have commited and started to do something. It increases accountability and reduces procrastination.

• Dragging a card to the last column, representing finnishing a task, reduces cognitive load and perceived stress.

THE ZEIGARNIK EFFECT PROMOTE FOLLOW THOUGH

• Our brains are hard-wired to coordinate behavior by positive intermittent reinforcement

NEW KNOWLEDGE ABOUT HOW TO SHAPE HUMAN BEHAVIOR

“Project Management is all about shaping of human behavior. Period!”

The role of the Project Manager?To enable people to align behavior with the project purpose by shaping behavior of themselves and others.

APPLIED BEHAVIOR ANALYTICS

• Use role-model leadership, instructions and core values with good examples to activate behavior you want. (20% of behavior shaping)

• Give positive feedback on the behavior you want to have more of. (The other 80%)

• Ignore behavior you do not want. (It will decrease over time)

• Be very cautious with negative feedback. (It will make people unmotivated, defensive and insecure.)

BEHAVIOR ANALYTICS APPLIED TO PROJECT MANAGEMENT

• Organization's processes and practices are an outcome of people's thinking and behavior.

• The traditional view is that by defining processes you can control peoples behavior, but it is actually the other way around.

IMPLEMENTING PROCESSES IS ALL ABOUT SHAPING BEHAVIOR

SOCIAL FEATURES SHAPES BEHAVIORFeeds, streams & notifications is a platform for feedback that involve and engage

Control through transparency is a key principle within Lean, Agile and Social Business

TRANSPARENCY PROVIDES MANAGEMENTCONTROL WITH LESS OVERHEAD

CONNECTING AND TRACKING WORK ON KANBAN BOARDS WITH SCHEDULED DELIVERABLES

THE TECHNOLOGY IS READY“The digital kanban board fits like a glove on smartphones, tablets

and large TV-screens.”

GROWING POPULARITY OF KANBAN BOARDS- HOW COME?

• Lean and Agile uptake in IT is spreading the digital kanban board concept in general

• Visualization accelerates learning and the ability to prioritize

• Collaborative planning reinforces efficient project behavior

• Transparency provides management control with less overhead

• The technology is ready

IT’S ALL ABOUT SHAPING BEHAVIOUR

THE REST IS SOCIAL TECHNOLOGY

• Today 16:30 – 17:00 at Vine bar Hotel LaCroma (free drinks):

Traditional PM vs Social PM, can they co-exist?Tobias Andersson – Chief Operating Officer, Projectplace

• Tomorrow 10:00 – 12:30 at Valamar President room Ruda:

Best Practice 1: Getting project execution working – for real!Merv Wyeth – Chair of ProjM, APM UK

Best Practice 2: Secop – Efficient control with social attributesMarko Cakalic – Country Manager Germany, Projectplace

DO NOT MISS!