Upcoming March 5th Meeting: getKanban Board Game

The getKanban Board Game is a physical board game designed to teach the concepts and mechanics of Kanban for software development in a class or workshop setting. It has been described as the most effective way to learn Kanban. It’s hands-on, engaging, and fun.

We will explain the rules at the start of the meeting and you can also learn a bit about the game at http://getkanban.com/.  Then we will break up into several teams and play the game using physical boards as well as accounts on the electronic version of the game.

Please RSVP using the this Communitech page even if you're not sure you're coming.  We need to estimate the number of people and the number of boards and electronic game accounts we need.  If you have a physical getKanban board or an electronic account or would like to help us facilitate the game, please contact the organizers.

We hope to see you there on Tuesday, March 5th, from 5:30 to 7:30, in Atlas/Matrix rooms at the Tannery Building (151 Charles Street West, Kitchener, Ontario N2G 1H6).

Need to do more? Try slowing down! What you missed...

Have you ever had so much going on that you don't know where to start? Or you've got your toe in so many tasks/projects that it seems like nothing ever gets DONE? 

Mike Edwards (@mikeeedwards) led our December session, showing  how Kanban can help bring focus and faster resolution to our workday. He made it clear, though, that Kanban doesn't work in all situations; it has to be a good mix with the corporate culture.
Check out this You Tube clip he showed the group to demonstrate how easy it is for people to get distracted when there's a lot going on (Change Blindness video link).

Five simple Kanban rules

1. Visualize the work 
2. Limit WIP: inventory is waste!
3. Measure and monitor 
4. Make processes and policies explicit - make the rules visual, okay for rules to evolve (i.e. How to handle blocks, Batch size (wip) limit, Goal of completion rate)
5. How to treat urgent items and their limit (very disruptive)

The basic idea with Kanban is that you capture a list of task using post-it notes and then you 'pull' tasks into the next column as capacity allows. There's a limit on how many tasks can be worked on at one time, so capacity only opens up once a task is FULLY completed.

Sample Kanban Boards

To Do	Work-In-Progress	Completed

or ...

Backlog	Requirements	Design	Develop	Test	Deploy
E F G	C D	A B

or...

Plan/Define	Build	Verify	Implement

Group Exercise

We did a group exercise that quickly demonstrated his point. A small 'work line' was set up a BA creating batches of requirements which went through a series of developers until it was handed to the customer for final acceptance testing. The first round was chaos and then Mike gradually added more rigour by limited the work in progress. 

Take a look at the results in the '# Accepted' row in the below picture; there's your proof! 

Session Registration Now Open

You can now register for the December 4th Communitech Peer2Peer session with Mike Edwards. This will be a hands on introduction to Kanban.

Next Limited WIP Society Session Announced

A survey of attendees at our last meeting revealed that 80% of people were curious about the basics and how-to's of Kanban.  With that in mind the December 4th meeting will be a hands on introduction to Kanban by Mike Edwards.

Need to speed up?  Then slow down! A practical introduction to Kanban.

December 4th, 2012. 5:30 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. at Communitech

If the title grabbed your attention it’s likely because ‘slowing down to speed up’ is counter intuitive to what we learn in school, business, and life in general. Many managers believe the best way to get more work from their people is to speed up, or push more work into the system. I’ve seen many managers add work to the pile “to ensure they don’t run out of work to do”. Unfortunately this is the worst thing you can do, as much like cars merging at a bottleneck of the highway during rush hour the high volume actually causes significant back-ups. 

During this workshop we will start with a simulation game where a development team will be creating a product according to customer specs! Through a refinement of the exercise we will demonstrate the impact of too much work in the system, identifying the bottlenecks, and strategies for improving the flow of work. Participants will come away with an understanding of the basic mechanics and concepts behind Kanban. Most importantly participants will come away with a better understanding of the nature of work, and the impact our behaviours have on the outcome.

Too many teams do not make great decisions regarding the work they agree to take on.   Unfortunately this can often result in poor performance, which is often not talked about.  In fact many people claim to be Agile, when all they’ve done is adopted the Scrum methodology.  Most management methodologies focus on process or product.  Kanban focuses on the flow of work, making it visible and providing a platform for organizational improvement. Through the use of these very simple tools you can significantly improve the results on your projects! Even if you don’t adopt Kanban you will find the concepts useful in guiding you in any project, and how you manage the work you and others do.   

Mike Edwards started his career 25 years ago as a software developer. In the past 15 years his career has gone down the path of leading and managing IT. Mike has recently carved a new path through the wilderness and is now an independent consultant.

A few years ago Mike started incorporating Lean & Agile into his world dominated by PMI. It didn't take long for Mike to figure out how this shift was going to rock his world! Mike has had success bringing together Lean & Agile to help teams transform their world! Although he works with the whole team, his specialty is helping the project management office increase their value. Mike's true passion surfaces when he has an opportunity to speak or teach at events across Canada each year. 

You can follow Mike on Twitter , LinkedIn: and on his new blog.

Not just change, but LEAN change!

We've all experienced change in the workplace... some good and some not so good - although it seems like we have more experience with the bad & ugly. What makes change management so difficult? Oh right - there's the people factor. People are unique and will react differently.

Jeff Anderson and Alexis Hui from Deloitte presented their thoughts on 'Lean Change' to the KW Limited WIP Society on September 10th. Their methodology is a combination of Kotter's 8 Steps, Lean Kanban, and Ash Maurya's 'Running Lean' principles.

Lean Canvas

I was introduced to a new concept called a 'Lean Canvas'. It's a one page business model that is produced on a large scale (whiteboard, empty wall) to ensure visibility. It reminded me of an A3, only blown up from its 11x17 piece of paper. In Kanban style, post-it notes are used on the Canvas to capture key points.
The Canvas presented by Jeff and Alexis captured key points on Urgency, Vision, Success Criteria, Target State, Action, Change Recipients, and Wins/Benefits.
At the bottom of the Canvas, Action Post-It Notes were moved Kanban style from a 'to-do' pile, to a 'work-in-progress' pile in the middle, and finally to 'done' once fully completed.

 

Change Risk

Three types of change were addressed in the presentation:

1. Change risk: will the business problem be fixed or do we have the wrong change?
2. Resistance risk: will people adopt the change or is it a bad "fit" (i.e. cultural barriers)?
3. Sustainability risk: will people continue with the change?

Organisations need the ability to continually transform their people, processes and technology. Lean Change is a relatively new concept. It was interesting to learn a new application for Kanban methods. Having stakeholders involved in building a Canvas and Action Plan using visual Kanban should increase buy-in and enhance chances of a successful change adoption. And if not, the team can work together on another change option (using an iterative approach) to find the best solution to address the problem.

For more from the experts... check out http://agileconsulting.blogspot.ca/

Thoughts on AgileTour Toronto 2012

AgileTour Toronto is a highly recommended annual, one-day Agile conference in our region.  It is a great, low-cost opportunity to learn, meet experts, and share experiences with hundreds of practitioners from the Greater Toronto Area and Southern Ontario.  The conference usually has a well balanced program that has something for everyone, regardless of their functional role.  The 2012 edition of this conference, taking place will not be an exception.

Warning: the tickets to this conference went on sale this week!  Last year, they sold out in less than one full week; this year, the venue is bigger, so it may take the organizers a bit longer to sell them out.  Don't procrastinate.

Now I would like to highlight several sessions in the conference program that might be of interest to our group.  In the participant survey during the September meeting (thank you everyone who attended and filled it out), many people asked for some introductory and how-to content related to Lean and Kanban.  As one of the organizers, I assure you that we will be offering such content in the upcoming meetings of the Limited WIP Society.  But in the meantime, there is this great local conference where you might get some useful ideas sooner.

Here is the link to the conference program.  The session descriptions are not finalized yet (as one of the speakers, I know that the deadline to jazz them up is October 16th), however, you can get a pretty good idea of what most sessions will be about.

Manvir Singh Grewal and Brandon Byars will speak about the Lean Data Architecture.  Their experience report from applying Lean thinking to data warehousing and mapping the value stream of business intelligence sounds fascinating.  Mike Edwards will "ask", The Lean PMO: Oxymoron or Possible?  I suppose his answer is possible and he will show how we can rethink the concept of PMO so that it can create value in an Agile organization.  Jeff Anderson will present Lean Change: Enabling Agile Transformation through Lean Startup, Kanban, and Kotter, repeating his September presentation to our group, in case you missed it.

Yours truly will be Unveiling Kanban - it's a gamified, illustrated introduction to the Kanban method.  I am also teaming up with Gerry Kirk to introduce you to Personal Kanban.  Our joint session is titled Lean Coffee or an Introduction to Personal Kanban.  And last, but not least, if you want to get a taste of Seattle-style Lean Coffee, we'll do our best to organize one at this conference - arrive one hour before the official start and join one of us in the breakfast room.

Enabling Agile Transformation

On September 10 Jeff Anderson and Alexis Hui gave the presentation Enabling Agile Transformation through Lean Startup Methods. This was the first speakers session organized by the Limited WIP Society of KWCG and the community support was fantastic as almost 50 people were in attendance.
The presentation was a fascinating discussion on using Lean startup principles and Kanban to create high feedback collaborative systems within large organizations.
The session was interactive and allowed for a great deal of conversation within the group and is available for review.