Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Last day for $995 Rate at #lssc10

March 31st is the last day to get the $995 rate for the Lean Software and Systems Conference. The hotel room block is only guaranteed through the same time. Sign up now to get the $995 rate and the $149/night hotel rate. From April 1st the conference will cost you $1250 and the hotel room rates at are the hotel’s discretion.

Lean Software and Systems is _the_ conference for the latest advanced material in the use of Lean and Kanban Systems in software and systems application. If you want to be at the leading edge of the next wave of software engineering and management practice, come on down to Atlanta and join the community.

Remember to book an extra night and come down a day earlier to attend our Technical Advisory Board meeting to discuss certification. See you all there!

Friday, March 12, 2010

2010 Kanban Conference

For those who haven’t noticed, and perhaps we didn’t make it obvious, this year’s Kanban conference is the Lean Software & Systems Conference in Atlanta next month. Hurry! You only have two weeks to sign up at the regular price of $995 before the punitive last minute pricing of $1250 kicks in.

This year’s event features 10 specific Kanban presentations and as many as 10 more case studies and field reports, as well as sessions on more general Lean application for software and systems engineering. It’s probably the best value conference you can attend this year. Packed with high quality content.

So don’t be misled by the lack of Kanban in the title. This is it! This is the 2010 Kanban Conference! Hope to see you in Atlanta!

Why do we use Kanban?

During my week in Argentina, I’ve been thinking hard about the correct motivations for adopting the Kanban Approach to change management and organizational culture. I’ve been asking myself hard questions about my own original motivations and why someone coming to it now would want to adopt the approach. I’ve concluded that I (and people I advise and coach) use Kanban for three main
reasons.

(1) Evolutionary, incremental change with minimal resistance
(2) Achieve sustainable pace by balance throughput against demand
(3) Quantitative Management and emergence of high maturity behavior in alignment
with senior management desire to have a highly predictable business
(4) Better risk management (the emerging theme in the Kanban community)

(1) & (2) are where I started in 2004. They are the focus of the forthcoming Kanban book. (3) represents a
staging area to (4). You need quantitative management to really
encourage a kaizen culture and to achieve better incremental improvements. (3)
is also a pre-requisite for some elements of risk management.

We do not use Kanban because

(1a) we want to decouple cadence (planning, lead time, delivery)

- such a decoupling could be achieved without limiting WIP or visualizing work

(1b) we want to dispense with iterations

- we can remove iterations without limiting WIP or visualizing work. You do not
need a pull system to disperse with the iteration framework

(2) we want to manage and optimize flow

- we can achieve flow management with an unconstrained system. I demonstrated
this between 2002 and 2004 with the case studies and examples from Motorola’s
PCS division - the era I refer to as “managing WIP with Cumulative Flow
Diagrams” and is also a large focus of my Agile Management book

(3) we want to abandon estimation or use of the velocity metric

- there can be a relationship between making estimates and limiting WIP. In some
case studies, estimation has been a source of variability and a contributing
factor to customer dissatisfaction. Limiting WIP can control (or remove) sources
of variability. However, there is no direct general relationship that says
introducing a WIP limited pull system will replace estimation.

(4) we want to introduce a forced workflow, handoffs or incentivize
specialization

- Kanban (capital “K”) as a change management method will work with any WIP
limited pull system. This would include DBR, CONWIP or a CapWIP (CONWIP/DBR
hybrid) and not just a kanban system. A simple CONWIP solution need not involve
any workflow, handoffs or specialization but it will still have the effect of
catalyzing change.

The 4 items in my “don’t do Kanban because” list represent elements that are
coincidental to Kanban but have tended to exist with most implementations. So
the casual observer making an empirical judgment without a deeper understanding
of the motivations, principles and science might draw these conclusions. I
believe such conclusions are a source of much of the misinformation and
criticism.

While adopting a limited WIP pull system solution is an answer to these problems it is not the only answer nor do these problems represent a solid motivation for adopting the Kanban approach.

The 4 items on my “do Kanban because” list represent the focus of my Kanban
Coaching Workshops. Only the first two - incremental change and sustainable pace - were drivers for
me in 2004 and 2006. The others - quantitative management leading to accelerated
high maturity and better risk management - were emergent properties that we (the community)
discovered in the most recent 3 years. Perhaps the list will get longer? Perhaps
we’ll discover other reasons to use Kanban. However I am confident that the
4 items I list as poor motivations for adopting Kanban will continue to remain poor
motivations

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Lean Software & Systems Conference Program Announced

The Lean Software & Systems Conference program has been announced. Each of the 3 days is packed with great content describing how Lean is being adopted and leveraged to generate real business benefits. As with the Miami conference in 2009, the focus is on practitioners telling real stories from the field describing why, what and how changes were implemented along with the tangible business benefits. This is by far the best ever conference focused solely on Lean (including kanban systems) applied to the field of software development, IT and systems engineering.

The program is so packed with quality it is impossible to single people out. Some folks you’ll have heard of… Donald Reinertsen, Mary Poppendieck, Jim Shore, Arlo Belshee, Karl Scotland, Alan Shalloway, Joshua Kerievsky, David Laribee, Simon Baker and Gus Power, and Richard Turner. There are four Gordon Pask Award winners on that list alone! And some folks you might not have heard of but really need to check out because their stuff is amazing… Robert Charette, Richard Hensley, Bo Oppenheim, Benjamin Mitchell, Christoph Louvion, Ryan Martens and Yuval Yevet!

The Lean Software & Systems Conference program has been announced. Each of the 3 days is packed with great content describing how Lean is being adopted and leveraged to generate real business benefits. As with the Miami conference in 2009, the focus is on practitioners telling real stories from the field describing why, what and how changes were implemented along with the tangible business benefits. This is by far the best ever conference focused solely on Lean (including kanban systems) applied to the field of software development, IT and systems engineering.

The program is so packed with quality it is impossible to single people out. Some folks you’ll have heard of… Donald Reinertsen, Mary Poppendieck, Jim Shore, Arlo Belshee, Karl Scotland, Alan Shalloway, Joshua Kerievsky, David Laribee, Simon Baker and Gus Power, and Richard Turner. There are four Gordon Pask Award winners on that list alone! And some folks you might not have heard of but really need to check out because their stuff is amazing… Robert Charette, Richard Hensley, Bo Oppenheim, Benjamin Mitchell, Christoph Louvion, Ryan Martens and Yuval Yevet!

Many of the presentations are new and have not been presented at previous conferences and many of the speakers will not be appearing at other agile community events in North America in 2010. If you believe that Lean (and Kanban) are the way forward for your organization then you simply have to register and come down to Atlanta in April. You won’t find better value anywhere else! Don’t miss out! Bring a colleague to insure you get full coverage. Register now!

Use the Twitter search tag #lssc10 to filter tweets about the event. Follow @lssc10 on Twitter for news from the organizing team.

If you are speaking or attending the conference you might like to tell people about it by adding these buttons to your web site design. If you want to use these assets on your site just paste the HTML code provided straight into your web source code or content management system.

Conference Chair: David J. Anderson

Track Chairs: Alan Shalloway, Joshua Kerievsky, James Sutton, Eric Willeke, Chris Shinkle, David Anderson
Open Space: Jean Tabaka and Aaron Sanders
Lightning Talks: Eric Landes

Event Planner: Kelly Wilson
Organizing Sponsor: Software Engineering Professionals (SEP)
Title Sponsor: NetObjectives
Event Team: Dennis Stevens, Janice Linden-Reed, Aaron Sanders, Eric Landes

Sponsorship opportunities email .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Kanban Coaching Workshop Chicago in May Announced

I’ve just announced my third public Kanban Coaching workshop in the United States for May of this year to be held in downtown Chicago.

I’ve been collecting some useful blog posts from people who’ve attended previous sessions…

Rachel Davies who attended the first public workshop in London in October 2009, Kanban Coaching Insights

David Draper who also attended in London, Kanban Coaching Workshop, Why Kanban, Lean Decision Making

Karen Graves who attended the public workshop in Cape Town, South Africa in February, Kanban Evolution

Armond Mehrabian, who attended a private workshop held in Seattle in January, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

These sessions are designed to be intensive knowledge transfer for agile, project management and process coaches and consultants keen to learn how to lead Lean transformations using kanban systems and an evolutionary approach to change management.