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2011 (14)
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Explaining why Limiting WIP is so important

According to Kanban limiting Work In Progress is a foundational component that enables knowledge workers to engage in continuous improvement. But why? And how do I explain the need to limit WIP to execs and other decision makers that need to be convinced?

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Balancing Global & Local Authority within the Organization

Organizations frequently have difficulty managing diversity as they scale to larger number of programs/projects. A balancing act is required to determine how much freedom to give versus how much control to take when determining how to manage and govern.

Many organizations I have worked in or what appeared to be laden with a top-down, restrictive, and prescriptive governance approach, or conversely, are not properly engaged with what's going on, suffering from ad hoc, siloed initiatives that appear out of control.

Many folks I talk to have a very partisan/polarized view around which state is better. The agile community tend to bristle at any oversight and governance that comes from outside of the team, many rightly point out that governing from afar isn't particularly effective, and the people doing the work have the best context and knowledge around what decisions are necessary to manage their work.

I believe Kanban, and many of the concepts described in "The Principles of Product Development Flow" by Don Reinersten, provide the basis for creating a localized/global authority mechanism. This mechanism would leverage explicit capacity and demand allocation, decision rules for prioritizing work, and ensuring that enough feedback exists across multiple levels of the organization.

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Extending Value Stream Mapping Notation For Value Creation Networks

When I first started reading about and using lean in a context for helping improve software delivery performance, the tools I used classic value stream mapping to describe current state and future state systems of work.


The VSM tool seems to have fallen out of favor with a number of the LSSC community. Interestingly, this is a tool I continually use to help various stakeholders come up with what the various handoffs, activities, and order of work should be for future project, future program, or to support a future organizational design. I agree that the value stream mapping notation as it exists right now contains some flaws. The notation is really meant for stable, serial/linear processes, with is no real way to describe different strategies to handle variability, or the non-homogenous nature of the work entering the system.

I’ve since come up with a notation to extend value stream. mapping with some simple notations that allow me to model what I perceive to be a value creation network. 

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http://agileconsulting.blogspot.com/2011/06/extending-value-stream-mapping-notation.html
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Optimizing Your Delivery Approach Based on Market Risk

Creating a delivery system of work that is optimized towards cost tends to look very different from a system of work that is optimized towards speed. Many of my clients want help in optimizing both.

Determining the kind of business that the IT organization is trying to support provides guidance arpund which optimization is best. One way to categorize these organizations os to look at Market Risk.

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Using Cost of Delay Functions to Prioritize Product Delivery

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This article discusses how a colleague of mine and I extended our  Kanban board to use   capability and theme map, color coded to represent Cost of Delay function.

A Cost Of Delay Function is a simple way to profile the impact of not doing a story on the business, or in this case the project. COD, also known as Opportunity Cost, is often graphed as a line showing the relationship between impact vs time, the steeper the angle of the line, the worse the impact is over time. COD can represent financial, political, moral, or other impact that could adversely impact the organization.

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Using Standardized Work Types To Enable a Measurable System of Work

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One of the more interesting innovations coming out of the Kanban community been the notion of tagging all work according to a finite set of possible work types.

Once this work type categorization has been done then work can be tracked, measure, and managed according to the unique features of that type. This approach provides a healthy balance between treating all software delivery work as being completely unique, requiring completely different process and skills, and treating all software delivery work as being the same. 

Frequently my clients get tripped up around when to standardize, and when not to, how much common process is a good thing, and how much gets in the way. I found that one of the most effective ways of dealing with this issue is to create one or more work types that match the context of a particular software delivery environment, variation of approach can then be used to support the unique context of these different categories of work.

Using the Class of Service Concept To Optimize Flow, Manage Risk, and Increase Predictability

One of the key themes of Kanban is to categorize work by risk type and then associate it with a specific class of service, allowing software delivery professionals to manage risk, flow of work, and improve predictability of work output.

Explaining Why Limiting WIP Is So Important

http://agileconsulting.blogspot.com/2011/07/explaining-why-limiting-wip-is-so...

Jeff Anderson
agileconsulting.blogspot.com
http://twitter.com/thomasjeffrey

The LeanSSC European Conference Series 2011 | AvailAgility

This year the LeanSSC are running a series of conferences which have been created to give local audiences more convenient access to similar and related content without the need to travel extensively. While each event will have its own unique flavour and presenters, the similarity in timing allows for some overlap, and we are encouraging people to choose the event most convenient for them. The LeanSSC is not differentiating between the events in priority or preference and does not view one as superior to another.

Here are the details of the conferences. If you are in Europe, or fancy a trip, please consider submitting or registering. I hope to see you there.

Lean & Kanban 2011 Benelux

Call for Papers

  • Closed

Speakers

  • Including Don Reinersten, David Anderson, Alan Shalloway, John Seddon, Dave Snowden, Michael Kennedy

Registration

Prices exclusive of VAT

  • 2 Day Conference Pass: 700 Eur until Aug 15 (then 800 Eur)
  • 2 Day Conference Pass + Dinner: 750 Eur until Aug 15 (then 850 Eur)
  • 2 Day Conference Pass + Dinner + Hotel (3 nights): 1150 Eur (then 1250 Eur)

Lean & Kanban 2011 Central Europe

Call for Papers

  • Currently open. Closes June 28th.

Speakers

  • Including David Anderson, Kent Beck, Jim Benson, David Joyce and John Seddon

Registration

Prices exclusive of VAT

Individuals:

  • One day, Regular 520 EUR until Aug 17 (then 580 EUR)
  • Both days, Regular 985 EUR until Aug 17 (then 1095 EUR)

Two or more colleagues from the same company:

  • One day, Regular 465 EUR until Aug 17 (then 520 EUR)
  • Both days, Regular 885 EUR until Aug 17 (then 985 EUR)

LESS2011

Call for Papers

  • Currently open. Closes July 18th.

Tracks

  • Lean & Agile Product Development, Complexity & Systems Thinking, Beyond Budgeting, Transforming Organisations

Keynotes

  • Peter Middleton, Jim Sutton, Steve Denning, Bjarte Bogsnes

Tutorials

  • Alan Shalloway, Jean Tabaka, Benjamin Mitchell

Registration

Prices exclusive of VAT

  • Early registration EUR 595 until July 31
  • Regular registration EUR 695 until October 29
  • On-site registration EUR 795

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via availagility.co.uk

What is Kanban

Originally posted by Rob Hathaway on May 29 2009

Over the last few weeks there has been a discussion on the Kanbandev mailing list over definitions of what Kanban means within Software Development. Below are some extracts from the the mailing list discussion and I’m planning to keep this updated as the definitions appear/evolve.

Karl Scotland

While the word Kanban comes from the Japanese for “visual card”, the term Kanban as used by the Kanban Software Development community, represents much more than a standard task-board. Additionally, the Kanban Software Development community have not tried to replicate the mechanism of the Toyota Production System kanban tool exactly, but have taken the underlying principles in order to achieve similar effects in software development. So what is a Kanban System for Software Development?

A Kanban System visualises some unit of value. This unit of value could be a User Story, Minimal Marketable Feature, Plain Old Requirement or something else. This is different from a task-board, which generally focuses on visualising the current tasks.

A Kanban System manages the flow of these units of value, through the use of Work In Process limits. This is different from a task-board, which generally has no WIP limits, but aims to have all tasks complete by the end of a time-box.

A Kanban System deals with these units of value through the whole system, from when they enter a teams control, until when they leave it. This is different from a task-board, which generally only deals with the work in the build/test stage, but shows no information about what work is being prepared, or what work is ready for release.

By putting these 3 properties of a Kanban System together, we can describe a Kanban System for Software Development as one which allows value to flow through the whole system using WIP limits to create a sustainable pipeline of work. Further, the WIP Limits provide a mechanism for the Kanban System to demonstrate when there is capacity for new work to be added, thereby creating a Pull System. Finally, the WIP Limits can be adjusted and their effect measured as the Kanban System is continuously improved.

A task-board simply shows what development tasks have been predicted to be done in the current time-box, with their status.

Torbjörn Gyllebring

To help us win as a team Kanban to promotes flow and reduced cycle-time by limiting WIP and pulling value through in a visible manner.

Eric Willeke

Short

Kanban helps our team contribute to the business by promoting flow and reducing cycle-time through a limited WIP and a fully transparent value pulling system.

Shorter

Kanban is a transparent work-limited value pulling system.

Troy Tuttle

Value Pull, Limited WIP, and Visibility can create an ecosystem where teams have the opportunity to improve.

David Anderson

I think the underlying principles are that a fixed WIP limit provides a predictable cycle time and an expectation of a quality level. That a pull system balances demand against throughput, releasing slack time in non-bottlenecks and revealing the bottleneck in the process.

2ndary stuff comes from identification of bottlenecks, waste and variability and the three bodies of knowledge on what to do about them.

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