Sunday, April 25, 2010

Thoughts on #lssc10

On Friday night I flew out of Atlanta for London and Hamburg, after a successful Lean Software & Systems Conference at the JW Marriott. It had been almost a year in planning. I thought it would be appropriate to take a moment to reflect on a project successfully delivered.

Planning for #lssc10 started on the final day of the Lean & Kanban Conference in Miami in May 2009. Software Engineering Professionals (SEP) impressed with what they saw in Miami and keen to help grow the community, offered me their Director of Marketing, Kelly Wilson as the event planner for 2010, in exchange for title/organizer sponsorship. Kelly is a professional experienced event planner. I jumped at the offer. This mitigated the first major risk for 2010.

In total Kelly must have devoted about 14 weeks of effort to #lssc10. SEP were by far the largest contributor to the success of the event.

The next job was to a pick a venue. We picked the city of Atlanta because it was still in the Eastern time zone and closer to Europe and South America and had a major hub airport. We also hoped that the Atlanta Agile and PMI communities would be excited by our event and turn out in force. We planned for 300 people - a massive step up on 57 in Miami. We hoped for 80 from Atlanta. In the end, it wasn’t to be. We got less than 10 from Atlanta. However, the choice of Atlanta was still good for travelers and worked well for international guests.

Within Atlanta we solicited bids via the Vistor’s Bureau from suitable venues. We narrowed this down to 3 candidates, one in downtown, one in midtown and the other in Buckhead. We ended up picking the JW Marriott in Buckhead. I believe that the two main risks in any conference are the event planner and the venue and the past week has shown that we successfully mitigated both. The JW Marriott really worked out. People liked the location. They liked the proximity to public transport and straight train ride to the airport. They liked the intimacy of the venue and close proximity of all the rooms which made for easy transition between sessions and lots of coverage for the exhibit booths.

The next big executive decision was the program. I pushed back on some Lean SSC principles and ran with a 3 track, 2 key note format, with an open space on day 3, plus a title sponsor talk, over the same 2.5 days as 2009. This gave us 43 sessions up from 19 in 2009. That’s a lot more complexity and cost to carry. However, it also worked out.

One of the more interesting comments since the event has been “the lack of Kanban content.” It’s interesting that this was the perception from some of the more advanced, expert members of our community. Lean Software & Systems 2010 actually had more Kanban content than any other event held anywhere, previous to this. In fact there were 10 Kanban track sessions, plus 10 experience reports, nearly all Kanban related, plus a the title sponsor talk that included a case study from a major investment firm, again about Kanban, plus Kanban games in the Open space, and Kanban related lightning talks. It’s actually a tribute to the quantity, quality and diversity of the other content that some Kanban experts chose to spend their time in other sessions and hence perceived a lack of Kanban content at the conference.

The conference also met all my major goals: set the direction for the community; show the growth and vibrancy of the community; demonstrate beyond all reasonable doubt that Lean and Kanban are a force for good and genuine trend in software engineering and IT related work.

The key note speeches were probably the 3rd major risk. Some questioned the choice of Bob Charette as they weren’t familiar with him or his work. However, both Don Reinertsen and Robert Charette were incredibly well received and their talks defined the direction I want the community to follow - a new definition of Lean that includes economics, risk management and systems thinking. Together Bob and Don laid out both a strategic direction for us to follow and specific areas of interest for us to pursue at a practical, pragmatic, actionable level.

One of the highlights for me was standing in the exhibit area just absorbing the atmosphere and thinking that this time last year, none of this existed. We had 4 vendors showing Kanban tools on their booths and two others represented amongst the speakers. We had a definable sub-community of tool vendors and creators.

I was also delighted to present the first ever Brickell Key Awards, commemorating the formation of our community and organization in Miami in 2009. The award went to two very worthy winners, Alisson Vale and David Joyce. I’ve blogged over at Limited WIP Society about these.

I’m out of time today. I’ll blog more thoughts about the event soon. I’m off to teach Kanban in Hamburg now.

Saturday, April 10, 2010

Forthcoming Kanban Classes in Europe

I have two 2-day Kanban classes planned in Europe in the 2nd quarter of the year.

The first is in Hamburg on 26th and 27th of April with IT-Agile.

The second will be in Stockholm with Crisp on May 31st - June 1st

All attendees will receive a free copy of my new book, Kanban - sucessful evolutionary change for your technology business and a Ltd WIP Society t-shirt.

The 2-day class is intended for practitioners in the field looking to implement Kanban. The curriculum is based on the text of the book and more or less follows both the flow of the manuscript and covers the material through a series of presentations followed by breakout group exercises focused on a real world situation. Many previous attendees have left the class ready to implement Kanban in their office with their team or organization.

Reminder #lssc10 Technical Advisory Board Meeting April 20th

This is a reminder that attendees for the Lean Software & Systems Conference in Atlanta, April 21st to 23rd, are cordially invited to the Lean Software & Systems Consortium Technical Advisory Board Meeting.

This meeting is open to conference attendees, as the Technical Advisory Board, is interested in hearing opinions from interested parties and the market. What do you want the Lean Software & Systems Consortium to do for you? The Chairman of the Technical Advisory Board, Donald Reinertsen has put together an agenda for the meeting…

Technical Advisory Board Agenda

0800              Introductions

0830              Define goals for the day, agree upon agenda

0900              Develop mission statement for TAB and its goals (What is success?)

0945               Break

1000               Develop concept of operation for TAB

                                    Membership size and demographics

                                    Meeting frequency and locations

                                    Organization into working groups

                                    Benefits of membership

                                    Responsibilities of membership

                                    Expected time commitments and contributions

                                    Key group norms

1200               Lunch

1245                Group discussion of potential work output of TAB

                                    How to contribute to visibility of LSSC

                                    How to contribute to LSSC’s Body of Knowledge

                                    How to contribute to certification program

                                    How to keep LSSC at the leading edge

1415                Break

1430               Divide into subgroups focused on particular goals to identify specific actions to be taken, people responsible, and target completion dates.

1600               Subgroups report back and group discussion of plans

1630               End of meeting

Thursday, April 08, 2010

Five Core Properties of a Kanban Implementation

In my forthcoming book, I’ve documented the 5 core properties that I see as consistent on teams using the Kanban approach to process evolution and change management. These properties are…

1. Visualize Workflow
2. Limit work-in-progress
3. Measure & Manage Flow
4. Make Process Policies Explicit
5. Use Models to Recognize Improvement Opportunities

These properties represent facets of an organizational process that have been present on all Kanban implementations that I’ve been involved with. They are written in a rough order of focus or implementation. So all 5 properties may not be present initially but over time they should appear providing the leadership/management is dedicated to successful evolutionary approach to change using Kanban.

Visualize Workflow is subtle. It is beyond visualization of work - the concept I pushed hard with my Agile Management book. Visualizing workflow is about revealing the mechanism, the interactions, the handoffs, the queues, buffers, waiting and delays that are involved in the production of a piece of valuable software.

Limit work-in-progress implies the introduction of a pull system from a family of possible solutions: CONWIP, DBR, CapWIP, Kanban.

Measure & Manage Flow highlights a focus on keeping work moving and using the need for flow as the driver for improvement. A focus on flow rather than on waste removal is in my opinion a higher mastery of Lean and much less likely to lead to “Lean and Mean” anti-patterns and dysfunction.

Make process policies explicit is another level of visualization. It’s about holding up a mirror to the working reality and encouraging the whole team and its leadership to reflect on its effectiveness. Thinking of a process as a set of policies rather than a workflow is a very powerful technique.

Use models to recognize improvement opportunities shows that Kanban is quantitative and takes a scientific approach to improvements. The three models I focus on in the book and in most of my teaching are: The Theory of Constraints; an Understanding of Variation and the System of Profound Knowledge; and the Lean models of Waste and Flow, though I teach waste as economic costs rather than the manufacturing-centric approach that is typical.

In my next blog I’ll discuss the properties that didn’t make the cut and why not!