Kanban: No Answers, Just Questions

agile42 | The Agile Coaching Company www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007 - 2013.

Kanban: No Answers, just questions

Ralf Kruse

@ra

lfhh

agile42 | We advise, train and coach companies building software www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007 - 2009.

Agenda

• The great thing about questions and what makes a question great?

• Their is no perfect Kanban system, only systems striving for perfection

• Practices: Their intention, my questions and hopefully yours


The great thing about questions ... and what makes a question great?

• Questions help to make people think and reflect

• the inquirer don’t need to understand the full context

• ... and still can create fresh perspectives

• What makes a question great?

• It hasn’t one answer and is open ended

• create greater possibility for expanded learning and fresh perspective

• Good questions are likely to trigger discovery, clarification and action

Is ... ?



Tuesday, August 2, 2011


Their is no perfect Kanban system, ... only systems striving for perfection

Start with what you do now

Agree to pursue incremental,

evolutionary change

Leadership at all levels

Respect the current process,

roles, responsibilities & title

s

Visualise Manage flow

Make policies explicit

Implement feedback loops

Improve collaboratively,

evolve experimentally

Limit WiP

Kanban ... more than a Board




Kanban practices

• Visualise

• Limit WIP

• Manage flow

• Make policies explicit

• Implement feedback loops

• Improve collaboratively, evolve experimentally


Visualise

• The workflow of knowledge work is inherently invisible.

• Visualising the flow of work is core to understanding how work proceeds incl. bottlenecks & queues

Questions

• What where your problems, variances etc. in the last month? Do such things reflect in your board?

• How much work are u doing next to your board? Is this critical to understand your flow?




Kanban practices

• Visualise

• Limit WIP

• Manage flow





Limit Work in Progress (WiP)

• Limits help to avoid taking more work than you can handle

• Limits help to recognise problems earlier (stop-the-line)

Questions

• Do you have Limited your work in a way that you avoid queues and bottlenecks?

• Does you reach your Limits from time to time, to give you signs of dysfunctions?


Limit Work in Progress (WiP)

• Limits help to avoid taking more work than you can handle

• Limits help to recognise problems earlier (stop-the-line)

Questions

• Do you have Limited your work in a way that you avoid queues and bottlenecks?

• Does you reach your Limits from time to time, to give you signs of dysfunctions?


Kanban practices

• Visualise

• Limit WIP

• Manage flow





Manage flow

• better flow = faster value delivery

• you want to improve it, so you need to measure it

• changes can be evaluated to have positive or negative effects on the system

Questions

• How do you know if your work flows better or worse through your Kanban system?

• How do you use the measurements as an input/feedback for improving the flow?


Kanban practices

• Visualise

• Limit WIP

• Manage flow





Make policies explicit

• All involved people know on how to let the work flow

• Until the mechanism of a process is made explicit it is often hard or impossible to hold a discussion about improving it.

Questions

• Are policies clearly understood and visualized close to the board?

• Are you following the agreed changes?

What means Done?Priority / Next to pull?

WiP Limits?


Kanban practices

• Visualise

• Limit WIP

• Manage flow





Implement feedback loops

• to periodically take stock of where you were, where you are, and where you want to go next

• create needs for improvement and triggers adaptations

• a feedback loop tells us that change is taking us in the right direction

Questions

• How do you get overall feedback, that you are on the right track?

• Do your Daily Stand-Ups help to get the complementory information to know the next best thing you can Do?


Kanban practices

• Visualise

• Limit WIP

• Manage flow





Improve collaboratively, evolve experimentally

• Most systems can’t be improved by one perspective, it’s often only possible to create sustainable improvements collaboratively

• experiments help to discover improvements based on experience

• scientific method can make discussions on improvements more objective

Questions

• Do you and your colleges have the same direction and are you working continuously on it?

• How do you find new improvement opportunities?


Conclusion ...

agile42 | The Agile Coaching Company www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007 - 2013.

Kanban: No Answers, just questions

Ralf Kruse

@ra

lfhh

Date post:	14-Sep-2014
Category:	Business
View:	659 times
Download:	1 times

Kanban: No Answers, Just Questions

Business