Newspaper business is a field in which requirements change rapidly. A sudden death of a celebrity, a political scandal or the outbreak of a war or revolution prompt the question how to best exploit these events in a way that is quicker and better than the rivals'. As a means to become more capable of reaching those goals, the existing Scrum processes were transformed towards the Kanban method. In this experience report I'll describe the introduction of Kanban in a publishing company based in Munich that is responsible for the online activities for over thirty German regional newspapers. After a quick overview of the different stakeholders, in the first half of the report I'll explain how prioritization and selection of new value items was done, how the visualization of the work flow made structural problems in the publishing company visible and how the data assembled from applying the Kanban method led to changes in not only the development team but also management. The second half details how the change processes hit the glass ceiling and got slowed down and eventually halted by management resistance. The report is directed mainly at an audience with little or no experience who are thinking about introducing Kanban but are not fully aware of the consequences that come with a deep implementation.
SUCCESS AND FAILURE WITH KANBAN IN NEWSPAPER BUSINESS (OLIVER FINKER) - LKCE13
1. 1
SUCCESS & FAILURE
With Kanban in
NEWSPAPER
Business
Presenter:
Oliver Finker
oliver@finker.de
Twitter: @ofinker
November 2013
Lean Kanban Central Europe
2. 2
The publisher
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Top-5 Newspaper Publishing Company
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More than 30 different newspapers
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Print run: A Million newspapers a day
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One central digital service provider
November 2013
Lean Kanban Central Europe
6. 6
The Usual Work
New Feature
New Feature
Customisation
Customisation
Testing
Testing
November 2013
New client
New client
Interface Spec
Interface Spec
Fix a bug
Fix a bug
Clean-Up
Clean-Up
Lean Kanban Central Europe
9. 9
Fix the Symptom, Not the Cause
●
●
Cycling role
„Strategic“
vs.
„Operational“
Green cards,
red cards
November 2013
Lean Kanban Central Europe
10. 10
Gaming the system
●
●
●
●
Red-card team members were not distracted by
management
Green-card team members appeared to solve tasks
Green-card team members went and asked redcard team members for help if stuck
Communications overhead
November 2013
Lean Kanban Central Europe
11. 11
Main issues
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Sprint planning was based on
„ideal world“
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Too much concurrent work
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No visualization
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Hard to keep an overview
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High lead time
●
#@!
Customer dissatisfaction
November 2013
Lean Kanban Central Europe
13. 13
Introduction of Kanban
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Top-Down decision by management
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„We'll do that from now on“.
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Team got informed and trained in workshops
●
●
Initial board design was kept simple to learn
from experiences
Ticket system was retained as foundation
November 2013
Lean Kanban Central Europe
16. 16
Priorization
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Critical Bugs and Showstoppers
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Top Mission Tasks
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Generating Direct Revenue
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Generating Traffic (Indirect Revenue)
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Unique Features
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Discussed once a week
November 2013
Lean Kanban Central Europe
17. 17
Quick Improvements
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WIP reduced drastically
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More teamwork
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Problems became visible (and resolved)
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Ad-hoc decisions to deal with impediments
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Bottlenecks became apparent
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Lead-time improved considerably
November 2013
Lean Kanban Central Europe
19. 19
What caused the Improvement?
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Focusing on items that contained value
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Abandonment of features and products
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Third-party products over custom solutions
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Priority on features that were of use for all
customers, not only a single one
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Involving the customer in the process
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Limits on WIP led to less context switching
November 2013
Lean Kanban Central Europe
20. 20
Organizational Changes
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Existing project managers left the organization
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Saying „no“ to customers and stakeholders
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Reluctance to commit to deadlines
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Transparency towards the outside
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No separation between Administration /
Backend Dev. / Frontend Dev. / Testers
November 2013
Lean Kanban Central Europe
23. 23
The Shadow World
●
●
●
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Separate Non-Kanban
Workflow got created
Service Manager with direct
access over employees
Backed by Ticket-System
After a while they would
switch the workflow –
but skip priorization!
November 2013
Lean Kanban Central Europe
24. 24
Perceived Slowness
●
●
WIP-Limits were raised
Items from hidden workflow
reduced focus
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Push instead of Pull
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Lead-Time got higher
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Theory: Team is slacking off!
November 2013
Lean Kanban Central Europe
26. 26
Management Changes
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Additional project managers
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Developers should develop, not test
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Work, no retrospectives/reviews/documenting
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Aggressive deadlines
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Micro-Management
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Gantt-Charts revival
November 2013
Lean Kanban Central Europe
27. 27
EFFECTS on the team
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Pulling stopped
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Cherry-Picking
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Shadow Tasks
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No interaction during daily stand-ups
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Breach of board rules
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Negativity and shift of language
November 2013
Lean Kanban Central Europe
28. 28
Effects on the Process
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More bottlenecks that were unresolved
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More specialization
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More defects and needed rework
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Specification often incomplete
●
Board became a visualization of ideal world,
not of reality
November 2013
Lean Kanban Central Europe
30. 30
What to do Different next time?
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Bottom-up, the real process should be modelled
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Understanding that it's about change mgmt.
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Start at portfolio layer to help focus
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Be more scientific, believe the data, not the gut
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Get Buy-In from stakeholders
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Hire experts: higher acceptance
November 2013
Lean Kanban Central Europe
31. 31
Thank you for listening
November 2013
Lean Kanban Central Europe