Friday, May 15, 2009
Blogosphere Buzz about Lean & Kanban
Since the Lean & Kanban 2009 conference there has been a lot of blogosphere buzz about the conference and Kanban specifically. Here’s a roundup of what I’ve seen…
Mike Cottmeyer posted the most comprehensive thoughts as he was blogging throughout the event. Here are his posts in chronological order.
Day 1 - May 6th - Lean Day
#LK2009 Shalloway, Leffingwell, Middleton
#LK2009 Sutton and Mortensen
#LK2009 Observations from the Lean & Kanban Conference
#LK2009 Rathore & Ladas
#LK2009 Tabaka, Hsu & Shalloway
Day 2 - May 7th - Kanban Day
Announcing the formation of the Lean Software & Systems Consortium
#LK2009 Anderson, Scotland and Hathaway
#LK2009 Vale, Cook and Landes
#LK2009 Willeke, Shinkle and Laribee
Day 3 - Open Space Day
#LK2009 Alan Shalloway (Closing Keynote)
Post Conference Thoughts
Lean or Kanban or Agile
Why a Lean Software & Systems Consortium? Why a Lean Certification?
[update] Mike Bria highlights Mike’s post on InfoQ with additional commentary
There was a lot of talk at the conference about achieving high maturity (the equivalent of CMMI ML4 or ML5, quantitatively managed or optimizing organizations) with Kanban and how Kanban appeared not only to enable achievement of high maturity but also accelerate the rate at which that high maturity could be achieved. Chris Shinkle of SEP reported that some teams had achieved essentially a quantitatively managed maturity in 6 months. The amazing thing is that Chris felt the need to apologize to the audience because it had taken so long 
Since, the conference some academics have begun to take an interest and we’re likely to see a couple of academic studies over the next year looking at high maturity Kanban teams.
Alisson Vale presented how his team at Phidelis in Brazilia, Brazil, work in a highly mature optimizing fashion and he demonstrated their home grown tool - a sort of cross between an electronic kanban card wall, an electronic executive dashboard and a Facebook-like social media tool. The tool was impressive but the organization behind it humbled us all. I truly believe that Phildelis must be the highest maturity team on the planet. They build software with the kind of supply chain precision that Dell builds computers. It has to be seen to be believed. I would urge you to pick up the proceedings book when it’s available and read Alisson’s paper. Meanwhile, here is his latest blog post with his thoughts on the conference, Inside the Lean & Kanban Conference. And if you can’t wait to get your copy of the proceedings book you might want to read Kanban: When Signalization Matters in the meanwhile.
Though not at the conference, Benjamin Mitchell has been making huge strides with his team at BNP Parisbas in London. Here’s his first ever blog post detailing how they use statistical process control charts to drive a quantitatively managed continuous improvement program, Control/Capability Charts on a Kanban Software Development Project.
Israel Gat kindly published John Heintz’s thoughts on attending the conference. By posting them to the Agile Executive blog Israel gave John’s thoughts and stimulated a really valuable thread of conversation. Do go and read all the comments not just the article.
Alan Shalloway posted his own thoughts on the conference at his Net Objectives blog. Alan made a lot of notes during the event and distilled out some really useful learning. He made the remark at the beginning of the conference that he believed it would be seen as a landmark event and folks who weren’t there would look back and wish they had been in years to come. In this retrospective blog post he explains why even his expectations were exceeded.
Jack Milunsky picked up on Sterling Mortensen’s “Stop Starting stuff and start finishing stuff” in his Successful Lean Philosophy post. Actually, this quote has a history. I first used it at USC in March 2004 referring to the Device Management project at Motorola and the first real examples of Cumulative Flow Diagrams in action. Later in 2004 and 2005 I used the same charts and story at a couple of Lean events with Don Reinertsen including the Lean Design & Development conference and I believe the other one was the Management Round Table Lean New Product Development event. Don liked the quote so much he started to use it. All of this was pre-Kanban for me.
Sterling liked the Motorola story and the Cumulative Flow Diagrams so much that he took it back and used it in the mix at HP’s Boise location on printer firmware development. It was a part of the mix of Lean initiatives that ultimately improved productivity by 8x and shortened cycle times from 18+ months to 4 months. The following year Sterling returned to the same conference with his case study. He quoted Don, quoting me, and pointed out how this simple message backed with the reference of a cumulative flow diagram is really powerful at changing behavior for the better.
Karl Scotland has been busy with a few blog posts. This one discusses Kanban and Time Boxes. And this other one looks at motivations for improvement and how Kanban appears to differ from earlier agile methods, Anxiety or Boredom Driven Process Improvement. This second post is inspired by Mihalyi Czikszentmihalyi who’s 3 books were a significant influence on some of my early work in management science and process improvement. It’s great to see his work inspiring others in the field.
Karl also announced the Lean Software & Systems Consortium and provided some of his own thoughts on it.
Dean Leffingwell on his Scaling Software Agility blog described the conference as “one of the most impactful events” he’s attended in many years.
Not conference related but a some other interesting perspectives on Kanban appeared this week. Joe Campbell explains why the teachings of Bruce Lee resonate with his Kanban experience in Be Like Water.
Have you seen any more blogosphere buzz about Lean & Kanban 2009? Please leave a comment Technorati tag: David+Anderson, Agile+Management, Agile, Lean, Kanban, CMMI, Software+Engineering, Project+Management