a 10 minutes lightning talk about my experience with Kanban in my previous workplace http://goo.gl/u36FOi

1. Tales of...
Kanban
Experience
Evolutionary software development
- by Mattia Battiston -

4. Welcome to P-Lab!
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Mattia
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IT consulting agency (custom software for
companies + support)
about 8 devs + 3 managers
one big bank client
Joined in October 2011 (until september 2013)
found total chaos!
Waterfall, command & control, micro management,
continuous interruptions, etc. etc. etc.
Demotivated people, low quality products, fire fighting, long
hours
Nothing was ever improving!

5. new big project: CFI
But can’t talk
to users
Rewrite a
COBOL app
QA at the end
600 days; will
400 do?
WE’RE GOING ON AN ADVENTURE!

6. discovering Kanban...
practices
VISUALIZE
values
START WITH
WHAT YOU DO
EVOLVE
EXPERIMENTALLY
INCREMENTAL,
EVOLUTIONARY
CHANGES
LIMIT WIP
RESPECT
CURRENT ROLES
MANAGE FLOW
FEEDBACK
LOOPS
LEADERSHIP AT
ALL LEVELS
EXPLICIT POLICIES

7. Visualize
Step 1: value stream mapping

8. Visualize
Step 2: first board

9. Visualize
Step 3: evolve to keep aligned with reality

10. Visualize: lesson learnt
Reflect reality
Be creative & use different levels

11. Visualize: NIM
From this...

12. Visualize: NIM
...value stream mapping...

13. Visualize: NIM
...to this!

14. NIM: The horizon

15. Limit WIP

16. WIP Limits in action
TODO
C
DEV (2)
A
D
B
E
F
One day in Kanban-land
DEPLOY INT.
(2)
TEST INT. (2)
DONE

17. WIP Limits in action
TODO
DEV (2)
C
DEPLOY INT.
(2)
A
D
B
E
F
One day in Kanban-land
TEST INT. (2)
MAMMA MIA,
THE DEPLOY IS
BROKEN!
DONE

18. WIP Limits in action
TODO
DEV (2)
C
DEPLOY INT.
(2)
YEAH, C IS FINISHED!
HANG ON, I CAN’T MOVE IT
FORWARD!
A
D
B
E
F
One day in Kanban-land
TEST INT. (2)
DONE

19. WIP Limits in action
TODO
DEV (2)
C
DEPLOY INT.
(2)
TEST INT. (2)
A
LET’S WORK TOGETHER AND
FIX THE DEPLOY
D
B
E
F
One day in Kanban-land
DONE

20. WIP Limits in action
TODO
DEV (2)
DEPLOY INT.
(2)
TEST INT. (2)
C
A
D
B
E
F
One day in Kanban-land
DONE
I COULD START D, BUT...I
BETTER FINISH A FIRST AND
THEN CONCENTRATE ON D

21. WIP Limits in action
TODO
DEV (2)
DEPLOY INT.
(2)
D
C
TEST INT. (2)
DONE
A
B
E
F
One day in Kanban-land

22. Limit WIP: lesson learnt
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Avoid local optimization, always look at the whole process
Made problems emerge
○ where things got stuck it meant we had a problem, the process had to improve
Forced us to solve the problems
○ when something was stuck we had to unblock it
Forced us to finish stories rather than starting new ones
○ when choosing what to do we always preferred to work on something on the
right to get it done
Forced us to concentrate just on what we were doing
○ reduced context switch -> work faster
○ higher quality
Forced us to have slack (or “extra capacity”)
○ when the limit was full we’d help others, discuss improvements, refactor, etc.
○ great for dealing with interruptions
Start generous and keep tightening
Play games to gain hindsights

23. WIP LIMITS ARE COUNTERINTUITIVE
PEOPLE ARE WATCHING YOU, AND MIGHT NOT UNDERSTAND

24. Limit WIP: NIM

25. Manage Flow: standup
Standup: from zombies...
I WORKED ON A
STORY
I WORKED ON A
STORY
I CAN’T REMEMBER
RELEASE TESTING

26. Manage Flow: standup
… to FLOW
2 questions:
● what can be pulled to DONE today?
● what’s stopping each card from flowing
to DONE?
read from right to left

27. Manage Flow: iteration
Monday morning checkpoint: “iteration planning”
● week review: what have we done last week?
● on the fly informal retrospective: what has slowed us down? what would make us go
faster?
● bigger view: where are we in the project? how much is left to do? will we make it at
this pace?
● this week: what should we work on?

28. Manage Flow: story size
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features broken into very small tasks
e.g.: draw simple page using dummy service; implement one happy path in the
service; implement another happy path; handle errors; make list paginated on the
page; etc.
each task flowed through the board
benefits: easy to know when task is done; easy to test; sense of accomplishment;
often parallelizable; reactive to interruptions; can decide to stop at any point;
SMALL TASKS AND WIP LIMIT MADE US REALLY FAST!

29. Manage Flow: metrics
PROJECT BURNUP CHART
CUMULATIVE FLOW DIAGRAM
AT THE TIME WE WERE
DOING IT WRONG.
NOW I KNOW IT’S
VERY USEFUL
TRACKING TASKS AT
PROJECT LEVEL
PROVED TOO FINE
GRAINED
VELOCITY
CONFIRMED OUR
FEELINGS, GREAT FOR
FORECASTING

30. Manage Flow: lesson learnt
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small tasks with WIP limit made us go very fast
focus on what you can finish instead of what you can start
difficult to get metrics right: collect data instead and wait until you’re sure
visualize at different levels: portfolio, project, iteration

31. NIM: CFD
WIP
LEAD TIME

32. Feedback loops
“95% of the performance of an organization is attributable to the
system and 5% is attributable to the people” - E. Deming
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team culture: don’t blame people, blame the process =>
celebrate problems! it’s the process telling you loud and clear where you can improve
SOFT ON PEOPLE, HARD ON PROCESS

33. Moral: Kanban values
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start with what you do now & respect current roles
○ we didn’t and resulted in fights with management
agree to pursue incremental, evolutionary change
○ visualize, limit wip, manage flow, feedback loops
○ improve everyday, don’t wait for a retro
○ your board, your charts, your metrics, your people, are trying to tell you
something: listen!
encourage act of leadership at all levels
○ don’t let politics stop you from improving

35. Books + references