as presented @ 28th Athens Agile Meetup 13.06.2016

1. welcome to
Agile Learning Labs
Understanding Kanban
28th Athens Agile Meetup
14.06.2016

2. Nikos Batsios
Agile Coach
personal thoughts: https://escapelocaloptimum.wordpress.com

3. A Kanban Bitamin Injection
start from where you are right now

5. If we have nothing to look at, we have nothing to act on
Visual systems like Kanban, draw their power from our
preference for visual information

6. Once we see our work and the process
related to it, we create and build a
shared understanding for Business and
IT people
…

7. Understanding Kanban

8. Principles or Practices call them as you want :-)
★ Visualize
★ Limit Work In Process
★ Manage Flow
★ Make Process Policies Explicit
★ Implement Feedback Loops
★ Improve Collaboratively, Evolve Experimentally

9. ✤ Visualising your work

10. Visualising the work
Make all necessary information visible when
people need it, enabling effective
collaboration and improvement through
understanding how work works.
To achieve this you have to make polices
explicit and make use of information
radiators

11. Information Radiators
✤ Big visible displays
✤ Keep them easy to update
✤ Keep them big
✤ Use them or lose them
✤ For you and other interested parties

12. The Kanban Board
different colour could indicate
different types of work (classes of
services), could help to decide how
to prioritise
different stages of your
workflow shown as columns
the actual work item. add just
enough information required to
understand the status of the work
item
swim lanes can be used to split up the board to
handle different types of work on the same
board. as example here is a swim lane to indicate
expedite, urgent work items

13. The Kanban Board
✤ things to know when working as a team
✴ who is working on what?
✴ are we focused on highest priority items?
✴ are there any blocked items remaining
unresolved?
✴ are there place where queues are created
due to bottlenecks?

14. The Kanban Board
✤ Use a big board to radiate information
about your work
✤ Physical or electronic board can serve
different purposes. try to make the
most out of them
✤ Use daily standup meetings in front of
the board to collaborate and learn
together

15. Workflow Mapping
✤ Let the board reflect your ACTUAL workflow
✤ Learn by using examples
✤ Do not think too much. be prepared for
changes
use abstract names for
stages to fit your different
types of work not all types of work go
through all the stages.. and
that is ok! (e.g bugs!)

16. Queues
✤ Examples of Queues
✴ Todo: fist column
✴ Ready for Development: things that have been
analysed and are ready to be picked by developers
✴ Development Done: items that have been developed
and now are ready for testing
✴ To Test: stuff that is ready to be tested
queues, can help you
manage handoffs, get more even
flow of work, give visual signals
when work can start!

17. Queues
which criteria need
to be met in order for me to
move a work item from one
column to another?
Entry and Exit Criteria
keep in mind that criteria
and policies are incrementally
changing and improved! review them
at retro, RCAs, always ask: did we
follow the criteria?

18. ✤ Work Items

19. overview
show a blocker
show progress on a
work item
gather data for check
in and check out!
mark an important
deadline that you
cannot miss!
reference to an
electronic tracking
system
estimated size of
the work item
who is working
on that
work item
description
RED = defect
indicate the
type of work

20. Types of Work
✤ Different colours for different
types of work
✤ Helps prioritization
✤ Avoid yellow sea
✤ Use colours for a reason

21. ✤ Work In Process

22. What is Work in Process
✤ All the work that you have going on right now.
✤ Work that you actually working on, work that is
waiting to be verified or deployed, and also work
not started yet.
✤ It is all the work that you need to do to deliver
value to your customers
it does not mean to do
less work, it means do less work at
the same time. limiting WIP helps you
complete more work in total more
quickly

23. Little’s Law
time through the
process for each item
number of items you work
on at the same time
average time it takes to
complete each item
✤ Little says that the more things you have going
on at the same time, the longer each thing will
take
example 1 example II example III

24. Effects of too much WIP✤ Context switching (keep your own WIP minimum!, finish
one prior starting another)
✤ Delay causes extra work due to long feedback loops
(think of a bug introduced in the past and you learn
about it quite late!)
✤ Increased RISK (high WIPs -> increased lead times ->
market loss?, obsolete features? e.t.c
✤ More overhead (need for coordination, reporting, tracking,
planning e.t.c)
✤ Lower Quality due to long lead times, prolonged feedback
loops
✤ Decreased Motivation

25. ✤ Limiting Work in Process

26. Searching for WIP limits
what is the right
WIP for your and your
time right now? well, depends!
how much pressure there is to improve your
organization?
which is the number of people in your team/org and which is their
availability?
which is the same and size of your work items?
..
✤ Lower is better than higher
✤ People idle or work idle
✤ No limits it is not the answer

27. Lower is Better than Higher
✤ Lower WIP -> Better lead times -> Faster
feedback -> Force you see and remove impediments
-> Improve the flow of work items
✤ Too low WIP -> will surface too many problems ->
you might end up resolving problems more than
delivering value

28. No Limits it’s not an Answer
removing your WIP limits will
remove your willing to improve. without
WIP limits nothing triggers us to get
better!
unused boards,
no flow

29. Principles for WIP limits
✤ Stop Starting, Start Finishing
✤ One is not the answer
the more you
finish the more you finish,
John Seddon

30. Limiting WIP per column
✤ Start from the bottleneck
✴ A bottleneck is a step in your
workflow that slows your flow down
✴ Limit the step feeding the bottleneck
to keep it from being flooded
✴ Drive the team to resolve the
bottleneck
increase the
throughput from the
upstream, will create
queue!
increase
the throughput from the
downstream, useless, since
there will be no work!
but what about developers?
what they should work on?

31. Limiting WIP per column
✤ Pick a column that will help you improve
✴ example
✴ pick the development column
✴ add a limit
1. 1.5 the number of developers
2. double your current items and reduce
them 20%-30% periodically
3. just pick a number!..(avoid paralysis by
analysis)
✴ collaborate to finish fewer items faster

32. Limiting WIP per column
Imagine John, the guy that build an app and
he is the one that every decision related to
this app should go through him!
✴ What will happen if John is on vacations?
✴ Are there any work items that do not require John
involvement?
✴ Do you think that autonomy and mastery might increase if
more people of the team could get into this app?
✴ If we free up some time from John wouldn’t be great for him
to work on more complex stuff that might be the only one to
know?

33. ✤ Managing Flow

34. FLOW
✤ One-Piece continuous flow means
✴ no waiting, delays, handoffs, over-production
✴ just value-adding activities
✤ Waste is something that stops work from
flowing
✤ Examples of waste
✴ Partially done work, extra features, relearning,
and handoffs
✤ Do not become obsessed with removing
waste, instead look at the Return of Time
Invested
all we are doing is
looking at the time from the
moment the customer gives us an order to
the point when we collect the cash. and we
are reducing that time line by removing
the non value-added wastes
Taiichi Ohno
what is stopping the
work from flowing? What does
the customer want from this
process? (end customer, internal
customer e.g in the next
phase of productions
e.t.c)
there
is no greater waste
than overproduction,
Taiichi Ohno

35. Helping the Work to Flow
✤ Limit Work in Process (resource efficiency versus flow efficiency, MRI or fire department)
✤ Reduce Waiting Time (measure waiting time, make work ready for next stages)
✤ Remove Blockers - Never been blocked! The Prime directive of Agile
Development (swarming, demonstrate shared ownerships and responsibility, work outside of
your specialization, reflect on your blockers, keep data, avoid starting new work if you are
blocked)
✤ Avoid Rework (build quality-in from the start, avoid doing the wrong things right- failure
demand)
✤ Use Cross Functional Teams (all skills, less handovers & dependencies
✤ Use Service Layer Agreements(define cycle time for items) and time box your
work (review & adapt work)

36. Helping the Work to Flow
✤ As David Joyce suggested:
✴ Can you help finish work that is already in process? Do that!
✴ Do you have the skills needed for that? Look for bottlenecks or other
things that slow down your flow, and help resolve them
✴ Do you not have the right skills to help resolve a bottleneck or
remove a blocker? Pull new work into the system, as long as you do
not exceed the WIP
✴ If you still find yourself without work, find something interesting
that you think will help the team, and do that
✴ Too much idle time. Start cooperating more, pair more, learn more

37. Metrics
Throughput

38. ✤ One day in Kanban Land

51. References
✤ Kanban in Action
✤ Real World Kanban
✤ Kanban from the Inside
✤ Lean from the Trenches
✤ One day in kanban land
✤ Essential Kanban
✤ Lean Software Management: BBC Worldwide Case Study