David J. Anderson and Associates

Kanban Weekly Roundup - May 16, 2012

2012-05-16T19:24:28Z

By Dominica DeGrandis

A collection of incredibly impressive thinkers and leaders from around the world has converged in Boston for the Lean Software & Systems Conference. This issue covers some of the many takeaways ….

News

Sunday’s Lean Camp (facilitated by Jim Benson) provided some amazing eye openers. First, an opportunity to study two large Kanban implementations and discuss why one saw viral spread and the other didn’t. Next, we played Russell Healy’s new Kanban system design game for Operations teams. Lastly, Jason Yip facilitated a well attended session on learning. Takeaway - put yourself in uncomfortable settings to learn - else you risk falling back into your comfort zone.

Day 1
The opening keynote with Steven Spear focused on achieving greatness through learning.
Spear suggests, “Find out what’s wrong with what you are doing and go tell a friend.” An appealing storyteller, he demonstrates the need for senior leaders to demonstrate their need for more knowledge to motivate people to learn.

David Joyce kicked off the Kanban track Monday morning with a talk on moving beyond the traditional PMO to 21st century portfolio management. Takeaway – Include a “Study” column at the beginning of the board.

Lightening and Ignite talks enlightened us all quickly! Simon Marcus, @lycaonmarcus voiced his concern on the current trend of management bashing. Between @stevenspear’s keynote and Simon’s lightening talk, my interpretation is the following if then statement:
if management is asking why
and not dictating
then don’t bash

Videos from talks will be available through lssc. In the meantime, slides from some talks have been posted on slideshare

Day 2
Troy Magennis incited discussions on how teams can work with upper management to get reliable estimates using the monte carlo simulation. Takeaway – The average is the worst value to use.

Mary Poppendieck’s talk on continuous feedback included an engaging and interactive discussion followed on set-based decision making versus Multiple Viable Product and a/b experiments.
Takeaway – These are not mutually exclusive, we just know when to do one or the other.

Day 3
Don Reinertsen rocked the main stage with his talk on decentralizing control. Taking examples from the US military and the forest fire service, there are too many takeaways to list, but here are my top three:
The important communication is lateral, and not from the top.
You have a duty to disagree if you believe otherwise.
If you think you can eliminate uncertainty, you’re delusional.

Events

Lean Software Systems Conference – Boston, May 13-18, 2012 (#lssc12)
http://lssc12.leanssc.org/

Agile France – Paris, May 24-25 (#AgileFrance)
http://conf.agile-france.org/

SFAgile – San Francisco, June 4-6, 2012
http://sfagilecon.org/

Resources

Lean Kanban University (LKU)
http://www.leankanbanuniversity.com/

Kanbanops
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/kanbanops/

Kanbandev
http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/kanbandev/

Limited WIP Society
http://www.limitedwipsociety.org/

Please contact dominica@djaa.com with questions.

Kanban Weekly Roundup - May 8, 2012

2012-05-08T16:04:35Z

By Dominica DeGrandis

Next week the Lean Software and Systems conference in Boston will undoubtedly supply a plethora of buzz. Until then, here’s a series of blog posts from some prolific writers.

News

A slide deck from November by @drunkcod. I find slide 35 simply delicious!
http://www.slideshare.net/LESSConf/kanban-is-not-your-process

Four, yes that’s 4, new blog posts by David J Anderson on topics ranging from extending core Kanban practices to lack of roles to “certifying” trainers. Check them out.
http://agilemanagement.net/index.php

A post from the “Pitfalls of Kanban” series, Pawel Brodzinski addresses WIP limit abuse. Whether ignoring WIP limits, setting them too high (or too low), a team “voluntarily resigns” from inciting change for the better.
http://blog.brodzinski.com/2012/05/project-portfolio-kanban-better-board.html

VersionOne and LeanKit Launch Advanced Kanban Solution
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/versionone-and-leankit-launch-advanced-kanban-solution-149672945.html

Events

Lean Kanban Southern Europe - Madrid, May 9-10, 2012 (#lkse12)
http://lkse12.leanssc.org/

Lean Software Systems Conference – Boston, May 13-18, 2012 (#lssc12)
http://lssc12.leanssc.org/

Agile France – Paris, May 24-25 (#AgileFrance)
http://conf.agile-france.org/

SFAgile – San Francisco, June 4-6, 2012
http://sfagilecon.org/

Resources

Lean Kanban University (LKU)
http://www.leankanbanuniversity.com/

Kanbanops
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/kanbanops/

Kanbandev
http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/kanbandev/

Limited WIP Society
http://www.limitedwipsociety.org/

Please contact dominica@djaa.com with questions.

Tolerance #2

2012-05-01T05:23:11Z

Yesterday’s post was inspired by my recent bike rides around my home neighborhood in Clallam County, Washington. I typically ride the last few miles home on the Discovery Trail - a bike path crafted out of an abandoned railway line that ran from Port Angeles to Sequim and on toward Discovery Bay. About 5 miles from home, the path is cut by a gravel road inside the Carlsborg, WA, industrial park. Recently, the road was resurfaced with rather course gravel, some of the small rocks measuring 1”-2” in size - fine for trucks, not so easy for a racing bike with 25mm tires. When I hit the road spinning at about 20 mph, I had only few seconds before hand to recognize the resurfacing work. I didn’t anticipate how chunky some of it was going to be. As I hit it my bike started to shake violently and bounce left and right.

My instinct was to grip tighter - to force more control. Instinctively I wanted to keep the bike moving forward within a very narrow band of variation to the left or right. But I had to fight that instinct, to loosen my grip and let go of the handle bars. I had to let the bike shake left and right - i had enough momentum to get across the rough gravel and safely onto the smooth bike path on the far side. To grip too tightly, to fight the wild oscillations would be to risk making the bike unstable and tipping over - a nasty road rash awaits the unlucky cyclists who tries too hard. Sometimes we have to loosen our grip. We need to be tolerant to variation. We need to ride with a loose rein.

Parents reading this will recognize the parental advice - children controlled too tightly react unpredictably and ultimately rebel. We have to learn to let go if we want our organizations to be stable. We need to recognize that we’ll get knocked left and right in the short term but it’s the longer term trend that interests us. Loosen your grip and ride the bumps - don’t crash and burn in a vain attempt at control!

Tolerance #1

2012-05-01T04:55:21Z

My father was a real engineer. He used to get his hands dirty with machinery. He was a machinist (a turner) by trade. He spent much of the latter part of his career commissioning plant and machinery at an explosives factory. Often he or his colleagues would hand craft some of the manufacturing tools with their own machine tools. He spent a lot of time thinking about tolerances. The tolerance in the actual size of a machined part, or a manufactured component, from its specification. These are typical measured in microns, or in his younger days, fractions of an inch. In his broad Glasgow brogue he’d talk of “thous.” Precision was important but like all engineers he was a pragmatist. Perfection wasn’t necessary - near enough was good enough. I worry that recent trends in the Agile community are losing sight of the inherent pragmatism seen in engineers like my father…

Over the last four or five years, I see ever greater focus on planning and estimation and ever more elaborate methods for sizing, prioritizing and planning work. We seem to be trying to be very precise about commitments. We’re not embracing the natural variation that is inherent in software development. We are creating specifications with very little tolerance and the band of acceptable tolerance is almost certainly too tight to be practical.

Software development has inherently large amounts of common cause variation. I see velocity trend reports that commonly show variation of a factor of 2 above and below a mean, e.g. a mean of 20 story points per sprint may exhibit a variation from as little as 10 to as high as 40. However, we persist in making commitments that are not tolerant to the nature of our work. We relentlessly pursue precision in order to make better plans to improve our chances of delivering on our commitments.

I see the Agile community pursuing a vicious spiral and ironically aping the mistakes of an earlier era - it’s just the practices and techniques that are different. New tribe, new set of tribal rituals, same old mistakes! These elaborate estimation and prioritization methods are an attempt to bring a level of deterministic planning to Agile development, with a level of precision that is not possible given the nature of the work. Making commitments with a narrow tolerance is setting ourselves up for failure and attempts to drive out the variation through every more elaborate methods of planning is simply waste. The variation cannot be eliminated. It must be embraced!

Meanwhile, I predict many will spend more time in training learning these elaborate techniques. Already there are certifications in such activities and doubtless more will emerge. More and more time will be spent planning Agile software development. More time will be spent analyzing user stories, though this activity is disguised by calling it “estimation.” And perhaps it won’t be so long before we’re back where we started, asking ourselves, “When are we actually going to build some software?”

Kanban - What are we Certifying?

2012-04-27T02:30:40Z

When we announced the Accredited Kanban Training program in Lean Kanban University in February some people initially believed we were announcing a certification scheme for individuals taking Kanban training. We were not! Instead we were introducing standards into Kanban training by introducing a defined curriculum and accredited training material against that curriculum. We were also providing a professional designation of Accredited Kanban Trainer (AKT) to those individuals that we believed to be qualified to teach the curriculum adequately. We were “certifying” trainers.

Certification of a Role

Certification schemes tend to attach to roles played by individuals. Certified Scrummaster is an acknowledgement of some level of knowledge for playing the role of Scrummaster. Scrum has two roles, Scrummaster and Product Owner and two widely offered certifications - Certified Scrummaster and Certified Scrum Product Owner. There are also Certified Scrum Coach and Certified Scrum Trainer. I’m picking on Scrum as an example but many other methods and professions certify roles played at some level of proficiency or capability.

Certification in Kanban

There are members of LKU who wanted to introduce a certification scheme for individuals. In the current economy, all of our businesses need something to make it a little easier. Certifications do attract customers. People like to have professional recognition and a certification and some letters to put after your name, is one way of achieving such recognition. Under pressure in the meeting at the Hilton Royal Parc in Netherlands, I simply replied, “What are we certifying?” And that was the end of the discussion. Kanban defines and prescribes no roles. As I explained last week, this lack of roles is a strength. So, I will not be adding roles for the convenience of creating a certification scheme to make training companies money. Without roles, how do you create a certification scheme for individuals taking Kanban training?

As I stated last week, there is a role to played in the change management approach called the Kanban Method - the role of change agent - the person who leads the Kanban initiative and either facilitates or takes responsibility for the kanban system design. Might we be able to certify change agents who use the Kanban Method? Food for thought!

Kanban - Lack of Roles is a Strength

2012-04-27T02:24:59Z

In their mini-book, Kanban and Scrum - making the most of both, Henrik Kniberg and Mattias Skarin point out that the Kanban Method does not prescribe any roles. Often people ask about roles in Kanban, expecting to be trained to play a specific role. The response is that your role remains the same as it is today. This is a core principle of the Kanban Method - you start with what you do now and you initially respect current roles, responsibilities and job titles.

There is a Role in Kanban

There is one role that helps when using the Kanban Method - the role of Change Agent. I hope to document this role when I get around to writing my book on Advanced Kanban. It is this role that my 3-day Advanced Kanban Masterclass (formerly known as the Coaching and Leadership Workshop) prepares people to play. If you are leading a Kanban change initiative then you might benefit from this advanced class.

A Lack of Roles is a Strength

When you create a change management process, a process that is designed to act on a workflow process and catalyze changes within it, you don’t want that change process to create inertia or increase resistance to change.

As Peter Senge wrote, “People do not resist change, they resist being changed.” A job title and a role played and the practices inherent to that role become part of an individual’s identity. Hence, asking them to adopt a new role, or a new job title, or change the practices performed in the role, is an attack on their identity. They will resist the requested change emotionally.

As Joe Campbell taught us 3 years ago, Kanban is telling you to “be like water.” The Kanban Method is design to go around the rock and the metaphorical rock in change management is emotional resistance. Kanban tries to avoid emotional resistance. Is does this in part by embracing current roles, responsibilities and job titles. Kanban does not prescribe roles in order to reduce resistance to change. A lack of roles is a strength!

Separation of Concerns

I truly believe that to have successful change, your process for change needs to be separate from the workflow process used to deliver customer-valued knowledge work such as software. A process cannot be both a delivery mechanism and a change mechanism. To be a delivery mechanism there is a need to design, define and prescribe roles with titles and practices. To be a successful change mechanism there is a need to avoid doing such things.

Lean has now given us two change process mechanisms - Kanban and A3. I consider A3 an alternative, a rival perhaps, to Kanban. A3 and Kanban are peers. A3 is a change process that acts upon delivery processes and workflows. A3 like Kanban doesn’t prescrive process workflow roles.

First generation Agile methods such as Scrum try to be both a delivery mechanism and a change mechanism. Scrum is challenged as a change method because it prescribes roles for the delivery method - the scrum master and the product owner, explicitly. In doing so, Scrum hits the rock head-on. It creates inertia against change by invoking emotional resistance in those being changed.

Summary

Kanban does not define or prescribe roles for the software development or project management process. It does not change the roles in the workflow for delivering customer-valued work. Kanban is a change management process designed to work upon the delivery process. A3 is a peer of Kanban. A3 uses a different approach but it is designed as a separate change management process. Separating the concerns of delivery from change is strength. It reduces resistance to change. Processes, such as Scrum, that couple delivery with change, struggle because the defined roles create resistance to change. It is, therefore, better to keep the change process separate from the delivery process.

Extending the Five Core Practices of Kanban

2012-04-27T02:21:09Z

Readers familiar with the Kanban Method as described in my book, Kanban: Successful Evolutionary Change for your Technology Business, or those who read yesterday’s blog post, will know that I identified five core practices associated with successful Kanban implementations. I am now considering extending this list to seven for a second edition of the book and a revision of the standard guidance on Kanban.

Current Practices

The five core practices currently identified are:

Visualize - make the invisible work and its workflow visible;
Limit WIP - implement a virtual kanban system;
Manage Flow;
Make management policies explicit;
and Improve Collaboratively - using models and the scientific method to implement a “guided” approach to evolution. There are no random mutations of the target process with Kanban.

So What Is Missing?

As I’ve identified in presentations and key note speeches I gave in 2010, 2011 and earlier this year, the biggest oversight is leadership. Small acts of leadership from any member of the team need to happen regularly. It is these acts of leadership that make change happen.

So the 6th practice is: Leadership - give permission for ideas and encourage process innovation from any and all team members.

There is also a need for explicit feedback loops. The Kanban book identifies these at two levels:

the daily standup meeting at the team and individual contributor level
and the operations review at the organization and inter-team or across services level

So collaboration to review flow of work and demand versus capability measures, metrics and indicators coupled with anecdotal narrative explaining notable events is vital to enabling evolutionary change. Organizations that have not implemented the second level of feedback - the operations review - have generally not seen process improvements beyond a localized team level. As a result, they have not realized the full benefits of Kanban observed elsewhere.

So the 7th practice is: Implement Organizational Feedback using Quantitative Measures of Demand and Capability

And the question is, “Should these additional two practices be added to the definition of the Kanban Method?

Is Kanban A Framework?

2012-04-27T00:50:34Z

Recently, I hear some people familiar with Scrum compare it with Kanban by saying that “Kanban is also a framework” or that “Kanban offers an alternative framework.”

I know several leaders in the Scrum community promote Scrum as a framework, and while I might debate that appraisal I’m happy to accept it for the purposes of this post.

I do, however, want to take issue with those who propose that “Kanban is a framework.” Kanban is not a framework! It is a process to catalyze evolutionary change! It is a change management process. Arguably, it is currently the _only_ Agile change management process.

Definition of “Framework”

Here is one definition: A structure for supporting or enclosing something else, especially a skeletal support used as the basis for something being constructed. FreeDictionary.com

If Kanban were a framework it would suggest that it gives you the skeleton of a process framework and that you have to enhance and embellish that skeleton in order to have a specific process for a given context. This is clearly not how the Kanban Method works.

Definition of the Kanban Method

The Kanban Method is a change management method. It describes a process for driving change in an organization and that process has sufficient detail as to be repeatable. The context for which the process could be applied started specifically as software maintenance, then expanded to be general software development, and has grown to cover IT operations, IT services and some other areas of knowledge work. There is some belief and hope that Kanban will develop as a general purpose change management approach for knowledge worker industries.

The Kanban Method has three basic principles:

you start with what you do now - regardless of how ugly it is;
you agree to pursue an evolutionary approach to change;
and you initially respect current roles, responsibilities and job titles.

I then identified five core practices that were common to organizations that had success through Kanban. These were:

Visualize - make the invisible work and its workflow visible;
Limit WIP - implement a virtual kanban system;
Manage Flow;
Make management policies explicit;
and Improve Collaboratively - using models and the scientific method to implement a “guided” approach to evolution. There are no random mutations of the target process with Kanban.

As such Kanban is an orthogonal process to the target workflow process. If you are doing software development, the Kanban Method acts upon that process. It is not part of the process - though to be fair implementing a virtual kanban system will require changes to the target process.

Summary

The Kanban Method is a change management process. It is not a software development, project management or IT operations process or framework for such a process. The Kanban Method is a change management process and not a framework for a change management process. The Kanban Method is a specific formula for driving evolutionary and cultural change in an organization. It is designed to be followed and has shown some level or reliability and that outcomes from its use can be predicted within some spectrum of possible outcomes.

Kanban represents pragmatic, actionable advice for leading lasting, effective change in knowledge worker organizations. It is not an abstraction, or a skeleton. Take it, use it, let it help you evolve your existing processes for the better!

Kanban Weekly Roundup - Apr 24, 2012

2012-04-24T18:45:03Z

By Dominica DeGrandis

Podcasts are a great forum for learning. One can replay the important bits as much as one wants to. This week’s kanban roundup includes two podcasts in addition to thoughtful articles on working with the Feds, variation and standups. Enjoy!

News

A thoughtful blog post titled, “Bringing Kanban to the Federal market space” looks at the challenges kanban practitioners face when working in the federal space and provides suggestions on how to make progress. I found the advice to, “save your political capital for a later day” insightful.
http://blog.leankitkanban.com/2012/04/bringing-kanban-to-the-federal-market-space/#more-1315

IT Kanban Podcast (35 min) with Rachel Davies! She touches on moving teams from using a sprint model to using a kanban model.
http://itkanban.com/2012/03/itk-podcast-3-interview-with-rachel-davies/

Here is the recording of the global town hall meeting with Digite last week. At 70 min in, It’s worth it to hear David describe how Alisson Vale outsources estimation to customers with remarkable accuracy. People on the outside of the org are better at estimating than the people on the inside of the org because they look at total lead time versus touch time effort.
http://www.swift-kanban.com/community/david-anderson-global-town-hall-meeting?utm_source=streamsend&utm_medium=email&utm_content=16091143&utm_campaign=We%20missed%20you%21

Usually we hear bad things about variation. Jim Benson makes a case for the value in variation.
http://www.personalkanban.com/pk/primers/variation-can-help-lean-muppet-post-1/

Many standups are nothing more than a status report where real problems are hidden and where attendees don’t receive much value from them. Here are some thoughts on standups – some of them surprising “weird”.
http://www.software-kanban.de/2012/04/thoughts-on-standup-meetings.html

The Journey from “sure” to “no”, to “not now”, further describes the value of “Start finishing and stop starting.”
http://www.kanbanway.com/the-journey-from-sure-to-no-to-not-now

SDTimes article “Kanban – Is it in the cards?”
http://www.sdtimes.com/link/36552

Events

Lean Kanban Southern Europe - Madrid, May 9-10, 2012 (#lkse12)
http://lkse12.leanssc.org/

Lean Software Systems Conference – Boston, May 13-18, 2012 (#lssc12)
http://lssc12.leanssc.org/
note - @seaportboston extended the room block until EOD Apr 24, 2012.

Agile France – Paris, May 24-25 (#AgileFrance)
http://conf.agile-france.org/

SFAgile – San Francisco, June 4-6, 2012
http://sfagilecon.org/

Resources

Lean Kanban University (LKU)
http://www.leankanbanuniversity.com/

Kanbanops
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/kanbanops/

Kanbandev
http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/kanbandev/

Limited WIP Society
http://www.limitedwipsociety.org/

Please contact dominica@djaa.com with questions.

Lean Kanban Southern Europe Madrid 9-10 May

2012-04-21T19:00:35Z

I’m proud to be the opening key note speaker at the first Lean Kanban Southern Europe Conference in Madrid, Spain next month. This small event is an attempt to emulate the first Lean Kanban conference in Miami in 2009 and catalyze the emergence of a strong community in Spain and Portugal. It’s a 2 day event with a single track of top quality international speakers the first day with 2 tracks on the 2nd day, one offering a full day of Spanish presentations with speakers from Spain, USA, Peru and Argentina. The pricing makes the event accessible for Spanish and Portuguese attendees in these tough economic times and makes this a truly low cost opportunity to learn Kanban and meet some of the leading practitioners from around Europe and further afield. There is still time to register. Pricing starts at 445 euros + VAT. Register now! Come enjoy Madrid and build your network of Limited WIP Society members

I’m particularly proud of the program we’ve put together for a smaller regional event. We’re working with the assumption that much of the audience will be new to Lean thinking in software product development and IT services and learning about Kanban for the first time. The first day is a single track designed to give attendees an overview and basic understanding of Kanban and how and where it is being used. This first day includes a presentation of the award winning Kanban implementation at BBVA by Atos Origin consultants, Oscar Garrido and Erika Weiss that earned them a Brickell Key Award nomination at the Lean Software & Systems Conference in Boston the following week.

The speaker lineup in Madrid is also very impressive as well as the quality of the businesses represented. Brickell Key award winner, David Joyce, on his way from Australia to Boston, will break his travel to give the 2nd key note. David is always an entertaining, informative speaker with beautiful presentations. As well as the BBVA case study from Spain, Angel Diaz, will present his experiences at ING Direct. Sticking with the financial industry, Eileen Shuter will tell the story of Vanguard, an American pensions firm, and their 3 year story of large scale Kanban adoption. From the media industry, we have Leopoldo Simini from Thomson Reuters in Argentina. Kevin Ryan will talk about portfolio level Kanban pioneered with the Financial Times. And at the other end of the scale, Nina Schwab from mobile search app startup, Tupalo in Vienna, will tell their Kanban story.

Explore the whole speaker line up for yourself. This is the truly unique opportunity to meet and share Lean and Kanban experience around Europe this spring. While a regional event, Greenlight PM have put together a high quality program and offer superb value for money. Don’t miss out. Register now! See you in Madrid!

Advanced Kanban Masterclass London, UK - June 27-29, 2012

2012-04-20T21:17:34Z

This 3-day masterclass for advanced Kanban practitioners, consultants, coaches, change agents and managers with pioneer of Kanban, David J. Anderson is limited to just 12 people.

This workshop is for anyone tasked with leading a change initiative in their organization or at a client organization in 2012. It is suitable for managers, process engineers, change agents, experienced Agile, Lean, or project management coaches and consultants. Existing Kanban practitioners with 1 year of experience, or those who have previously taken an accredited 2-day Kanban class and are actively using Kanban at work are welcome. Attendees are expected to be familiar with the content of the book, “Kanban - Successful Evolutionary Change for your Technology Business.

Kanban takes a cultural approach to capability, performance and organizational performance. These intensive 3 day workshops are intended to transfer the knowledge and skills to enable you to lead Lean transformations using the Kanban Method. This is your opportunity to get your hard questions answered by the founder of the method and to develop deep ties in the community and network with fellow practitioners. All attendees will receive an automatic invitation to the next Kanban Leadership Retreat, 2-day open space conference.

Don’t miss out! Read what others are saying about this workshop.

- Rachel Davies, Kanban Coaching Insights
- Karen Graves, Kanban Evolution
- Armond Mehrabian, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

A copy of the book will be supplied upon registration. Attendees will maximize the value if they are already familiar with the material.

The intent is to have an interactive collaborative session designed to facilitate knowledge sharing and learning. Attendees should come prepared to discuss their own experiences with Kanban and challenging situations they’ve faced with change initiatives at clients or employers

The workshop will open with a round table of introductions and shared Kanban experience. Each participant will be asked for a list of questions they’d like answered over the 3 day session and from this a topic backlog will be built. David will augment this backlog with essential topics and foundational material. The agenda for the remaining time will then be set to insure the fullest of coverage and the maximum value for all participants. The focus will be on shared experience and discussion of the hard questions that clients and team members ask coaches during the introduction of Lean ideas through the use of a kanban pull system. The workshop will include the use of the GetKanban game simulation and discussion of its value as a teaching aid.

The goal is to enable participants to go back into the field and successfully coach Agile/Lean transitions using the Kanban approach. Every workshop is different because of the unique experiences of each participant and their specific focus and desired outcomes. Each participant will received a personal recommendation from David J. Anderson as a result of participating in the class.

Kanban offers agile and project management coaches another tool in their transformation and coaching toolbox. Kanban is proving to be a facilitator of evolutionary change with low resistance and an enabler of accelerated high levels of organizational maturity.

Location: London, ENGLAND
Venue TBD

Kanban Weekly Roundup - Apr 18, 2012

2012-04-18T15:04:03Z

By Dominica DeGrandis

A book, a game, and a tool - AND the Boston Lean Party news…..

News

The Boston Lean party is happening in May and these two posts nicely summarize the major highlights.
http://agilemanagement.net/index.php/Blog/thoughts_on_lssc12/
http://agilemanagement.net/index.php/Blog/lean_camp_new_england_may_13th/

The web edition of the GetKanban game has been released. Check it out! (ie browser unsupported)
https://getkanban.corporatekanban.com/

In Kanban for Skeptics, Nick Oostvogels tackles the 5 most common arguments against Kanban.
http://skycoach.be/2012/04/17/my-new-kanban-e-book-is-released/

SEP Teamworks launched a two minute video demonstrating the new Kanban features available for Team Foundation Server.
http://www.sep.com/labs/teamworks/

Here’s a nice visual of a white board evolution - from messy tangle of words to tidy organized work. Voila!
http://dobiatowski.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/kanban-organize-your-and-your-team-work.html

Events

Lean Kanban Southern Europe - Madrid, May 9-10, 2012 (#lkse12)
http://lkse12.leanssc.org/

Lean Software Systems Conference – Boston, May 13-18, 2012 (#lssc12)
http://lssc12.leanssc.org/
note - call for papers extended
http://lssc12.leanssc.org/speakers/call-for-participation/

SFAgile – San Francisco, June 4-6, 2012
http://sfagilecon.org/

Resources

Lean Kanban University (LKU)
http://www.leankanbanuniversity.com/

Kanbanops
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/kanbanops/

Kanbandev
http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/kanbandev/

Limited WIP Society
http://www.limitedwipsociety.org/

Please contact dominica@djaa.com with questions.

Lean Camp New England May 13th

2012-04-17T22:18:33Z

One aspect of our Boston Lean Party, conference week next monththat I am particularly excited about is the full 1-day open space event that will be led by Jim Benson, Lean Camp New England. It’s available as a separate one day registration for $300. Lean Camp Registration

It has been evident from previous events that open space only works when it has a dedicated time slot on the program. This year we were restricted by venue availability to May 13-16th for the main conference. It is amazing how few venues there are in Boston for a conference of 300-450 people. Even planning more than one year in advance, we had limited choices available. When we settled on the Seaport Hotel and World Trade Center, we knew we would have Sunday, May 13th on the program. The question was, what to do with a Sunday?

The answer was create a one day open space event and make it available as a separate registration at an affordable price so that local enthusiasts for Agile methods, process improvement and Lean could come together with our elite world class invitation only speaker list and share their experiences peer-to-peer. And who better to put in charge of this than Jim Benson, the leader of the Personal Kanban movement, the founder of Lean Coffee, and organizer of the Seattle Lean Camp in 2011.

Lean Camp New England provides a unique opportunity to collaborate and share your Lean, Kanban and process improvement challenges with a truly global set of participants. Our event will feature participants from Europe, the Middle-East, South America and Australasia, together with Americans, Canadians and especially local enthusiasts from the Massachusetts and greater New England region. We can’t confirm any Asian or African participants at this time but who knows. Single day open space, “camp” events, tend to be local in nature. They help foster a community of peers but rarely is there the opportunity to integrate such an experienced set of global practitioners.

So register, come along to the World Trade Center Boston, its a spectacular venue with great views of the Boston waterfront, and make your own program - get the answers you need from the experts, and meet a whole new set of peers and turn them into long lasting friends. Lean Camp New England! The must attend event in May!

Attendees of the Lean Software & Systems Conference should insure that they also registered for Lean Camp. It may not be included in your registration.

To register visit http://lssc12.leanssc.org/ and make a date on May 13th.

Thoughts on #lssc12

2012-04-09T22:08:14Z

The 2012 edition of our Lean Software & Systems Conference is almost upon us. I’m particularly proud of this year’s edition and the team who’ve worked hard to put it together. I thought I’d take a few minutes to reflect on why I’m referring to it as the Boston Lean Party and why I feel it will such a worthwhile gathering…

Why Boston?

I decided to take the conference to Boston in 2012 as I felt that Lean approaches to managing software and systems engineering activities are coming of age. Boston (or more precisely, Cambridge, MA) is the academic home of Lean as we know it in the West. Boston is and has been the spiritual home of Lean Thinking for over 20 years. It was therefore time that we took our community, our thought leaders, our presentations and our anecdotal and empirical evidence to the home of Lean. It was time to underscore that Lean in knowledge work fields has to be about optimizing flow and not about waste elimination. And that counter-intuitive ideas like using kanban systems in knowledge work workflow actually enable kaizen cultures much better than an intuitive approach such as identifying non-value-adding activities performed by workers.

The Program

This year we’ve invited 3 key note speakers from outside the fields of software development and systems engineering. It was time to reach out and to further encourage the diversity and the cross-pollination that we’ve become well known for this past 3 years. So this year’s edition features Steven Spear, author of High Velocity Edge, that reports his findings from years of studying Toyota, Greg Howell, of the Lean Construction Institute who’s focus has been on building new hospitals faster and better, and from outside Lean altogether, Jochai Benkler, who’s book The Penguin and the Leviathan, looks at how to design better more cooperative human systems.

This year’s venue offers us a unique 500 seat amphitheater, so we decided to borrow another idea from the Agile conference and feature a main stage. The criteria for inclusion meant every speaker must have published a book on a relevant topic. in addition to our 3 key note speakers, our main stage will feature: Donald Reinertsen; Jim Sutton; Alan Shalloway; Michael Kennedy; Jim Benson; Hillel Glazer; Pujan Roka (another new face to this audience); Mary Poppendieck; and me. In itself the main stage is a major conference on Lean Software Development but there is more, a lot more…

Jeff Anderson from Deloitte is chairing a Learning Organizations track that features Steve Denning (Radical Management), Brant Cooper (Lean Startup), Joe Dager (Business 901) plus Jeff himself talking about how to synthesize ideas like Kanban, Lean Startup and Gamestorming.

David Joyce, Russell Healy and Benjamin Mitchell (always a good guy to stir things up a bit) are leading a 3-day Kanban track. This represents the largest Kanban conference ever held. Truly a conference within a conference. For the Kanban diehards a feast of new material and new faces from around the world.

Bob Charette will reprise his lead on the Risk track. Once again Bob has found a few new faces for us to enjoy. Troy Magennis revisits the conference but this time to talk about Monte Carlo simulation, while Brian Hagen looks at how to calculate the value of a Lean program. Mike Burrows will explain how Kanban moves risk upstream to places where it can better be managed.

And once again we make space for a pure play systems engineering track, this time with Richard Turner in the lead. Richard will be presenting some of his recent research into scheduling large scale systems engineering programs using kanban systems. Neil Siegel will look at the social context for large scale programs. Greg Yezersky is back to give us more on the General Theory of Innovation. Greg Parnell will look at identifying and measuring the value of Lean on large scale systems engineering projects. Mark McKinney looks at how to actively involve the end user in design and development of complex systems.

Lean Camp New England, May 13th

As if this were not enough, there is a full day of open space on Sunday May 13th, marketed separately as Lean Camp New England and 2 full days of tutorials also open to those who don’t attend the main conference.

Lean Action Kitchen and 2012 Brickell Key Awards

Jim Benson will also be demonstrating his culinary talents with Lean Action Kitchen (limited to 30 attendees). There will be the opening social gathering on Sunday May 13th and the gala banquet dinner for the presentation of the Brickell Key Awards. This year we have another outstanding set of nominees from around the world: Markus Andrezak; Jeff Anderson; Jim Benson; Oscar Garrido & Erika Weiss; Arne Roock; Yuval Yeret. The party after the dinner and awards will be open to all full conference attendees. Come along on the evening of May 15th and celebrate all the incredible contributions to our community.

Sponsors & Exhibit

This year we’ve seen the biggest, most positive response from sponsors to date. Software Engineering Professionals are back again as our stalwart backers, together with my own firm and Lean Kanban University taking the lead to promote accredited Kanban training. In purely alphabetical order I also need to thank Atlassian, Constant Contact, Deloitte, GBMP, Hansoft, Kanbanery, Kanbanpad, Lean Kit Kanban, Net Objectives, PMI, Rally, Swift Kanban, Target Process, Ultimate Software, and last but certainly not least as the one of only two sponsors to be with us all four years, Version One. This year’s exhibit area will be the biggest and best to date. I’m looking forward to a series of exciting product launches and updates from the many Kanban software vendors attending!

Look out also for the book table immediately outside the main stage entrance. This year it will feature the most extensive range of books from more than 10 of our speakers. It’s your chance to get your favorite books signed by the author. It will also be the first chance to purchase my new book, Lessons in Agile Managament being launched at the conference.

Organizing Team

This year’s event has been put together by a stellar team with Kelly Wilson leading on event planning with her team of Samantha Cotten, Amanda O’Rourke, Courtny Cotten, Lilian Nijboer and Janice Linden-Reed. Hillel Glazer led the program while Donna Cotton coordinated the Brickell Key Awards.

Venue

It’s the biggest! It’s the best! It’s the Boston Lean Party and it is taking place at the Seaport Hotel and World Trade Center, May 13-18, 2012. Don’t miss out! Register now!

Kanban for Devops Ghent, Belgium - June 18-19, 2012

2012-04-05T05:19:22Z

with Dominica DeGrandis (instructor)

Join us for our first Kanban for Devops class offered in Europe! 8 seats left!

Are you managing an Ops function and find the demands overwhelming and the process chaotic? Kanban for Devops seeks to optimize the whole of the organization. From business requests to IT delivery, we discover how to help work flow across different functional teams. Devops is about respect, cooperation and trust among individual practitioners and leadership. With Kanban, we look at how using a service-delivery approach can help unify teams and promote cross-functional collaboration.

This 2-day workshop introduces how the Kanban Method can help Ops teams improve balancing demand against their capability to deliver. We begin by studying the demand on your team, department or organization and learn how to gather data to understand the capability of your system and how it operates. Discussions and interactive exercises on the Kanban Method will address the following topics:

- Specialization and bottlenecks
- Dependencies on external groups
- Variable task size
- Interrupt driven work

Working in small teams, class attendees will analyze and design a Kanban system that they can bring back to the organization to implement right away. We will also look at how to manage risks related to the increasing complexity around software delivery and support. Attendees play the “Kanban for Ops” version of the GetKanban game.

Based on David J. Anderson’s book “Kanban - Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Business”, attendees of the class will receive a copy of the book.

Class Schedule

Day 1 Kanban Mechanics
- Demand Analysis
- Workflow Mapping
- Visualization
- Work Item Types
- Work-in-progress Limits
- Kanban Simulation Game

Day 2 Kanban Progression
- Kanban System design
- Classes of Service
- Operations Review
- Case Studies
- Risk Management
- Metrics
- Theory of Constraints
- Variability and predictability
- How to Get Started with Kanban

What others are saying about this training

“What a worthwhile use of my time! It is rare that I walk away from professional training feeling so inspired and fulfilled and wanting to tell everyone about it!!” Jane Despas, Cloud Services, Cisco

“Dominica, Thank you for the great kanban for devops training. I learned how to use kanban to illustrate my work.” Alex Honor, Co-founder, DTO Solutions

“I was in your Kanban training earlier this week – thank you. I got a ton of useful information out of it and it has definitely prompted us to think about how we want to use one for our team.” Kate Compton, IT Manager, R.E.I.

“The class was excellent. The minute our kanban board went up, everyone started asking questions and getting involved when they never had before. I am seeing managers take actions to investigate issues without having to escalate – a huge plus. The conversations alone are worth the effort!”
Betsy Hearnsberger, Release Manager, Cisco

Is this for you?

This training provides a useful perspective for improving work done on the periphery of software development. If ever-more frequent deliveries from software development are increasing pressure on your teams and creating bottlenecks in the delivery process, look at Kanban to extend agility and balance to IT services and operations teams. From Data Administrative Services to Deployment & Release Managers to Help Desk, this class covers beginning to intermediate level material.

Register today!
1200 USD per person.

EARLY BIRD SPECIAL 950 USD per person!
Group rates - 4th person attends for free with 3 registrations. Contact dominica@djaa.com for questions on group rates or for payment options other than Google checkout.

Enter Discount code: BIZDEVOPS
expires May 18, 2012

About the presenter

Dominica specializes in Kanban for IT Services and Operations - with teams interacting with software development. She spent her first 15 years in software engineering deeply embedded in Development teams performing builds, deployments and environment maintenance. She has worked in organizations of all sizes, from the US Army, Boeing, and AT&T to small start-ups. Dominica first worked for David Anderson at Corbis in 2006 where she helped deliver the first implementation of Kanban for software engineering in the US. Adept at leading teams performing Configuration Management and Release Management, Dominica found a passion for improving the way development and operations teams work together. Dominica holds a BS in Information Computer Sciences from the University of Hawaii. She can be reached at dominica@djaa.com. Follow her on twitter at @dominicad.

Location:

Ghent, BELGIUM

Venue:

Zebrastraat
9000 Ghent, Belgium

http://www.zebrastraat.be

There are no really close hotels to the Zebrastraat venue, but here are some options within a few kilometers:
• NH Gent Belfort http://www.nh-hotels.com/nh/en/hotels/belgium/ghent/nh-gent-belfort.html
• Marriott Gent http://www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/gnemc-ghent-marriott-hotel/
• NH Gent Sint Piters http://www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/gnemc-ghent-marriott-hotel/