Overview of Kanban, where it is best used, how to implement a kanban board and more.

1. What You Can Do With kanban
Michael de la Maza, PhD
October 30, 2012

2. Who is cPrime?
Engaged for Your Project Management Success

3. About Me
•Currently: Lean/agile coach at edx.org, the Harvard/MIT/Berkeley online education
nonprofit
•PhD in Computer Science from MIT
•Former Research Scientist at MIT Lincoln Lab
•Former VP of Corporate Strategy at Softricity (acquired by Microsoft)
•Member of founding team at Inquira (acquired by Oracle)
•During the past year, I have been an agile coach at PayPal, Symantec, and Blue Cross
•Previously, I have done agile training and coaching at Carbonite, EMC, Intuit, Verizon
Wireless, etc.
•Startup mentor at Blackbox.vc
•Created scruminschools.org
•Co-author of Professional Scrum with Team Foundation Server
Copyright© Agile Transformation IncInc
Copyright© Agile Transformation 3 3

4. Agenda
• What Corporate Hell Looks Like: A Personal Story
• Overview of Kanban
• How to set up a kanban board
• Short case study on setting up a kanban board
• Pictures of many types of kanban boards
• Questions [at least 15 minutes]

5. Survey: About You
What title best describes what you do?
• Project Manager
• Engineering Manager
• Product Manager
• Member of technical team
• Circus clown
• Other

6. Survey: About You
How large is your company?
• One person (me, myself, and I)
• 2-50 people
• 51-200 people
• 201-1000 people
• 1000+ people

7. The Smart Pet

8. Corporate Hell
• Human beings have the unique ability to create
structures which we are not smart enough to
comprehend
• Human beings have very limited reasoning abilities and
very limited memories
Corporate Hell = a company structure that is so
complicated that the humans who work there do not
understand it

9. How Do Corporations Become Too
Complicated To Understand?
• Companies start out small – two people working in a
garage.
• As they grow larger they become less understandable.
Simply increasing in size is enough to make a company
incomprehensible.
• When a corporation becomes too complicated to
understand, this creates a large incentive for people to
play politics. One of the goals of playing politics is to
obfuscate cause and effect.

10. Survey: Too Complicated?
What percentage of the people in your company can
describe, in detail, how software is developed?
• 0%
• 1%-10%
• 11%-25%
• 26%-50%
• 51%-75%
• 76%-100%

11. My Personal View of Kanban
• My view of Kanban is that it is a thinking tool which
makes companies more effective by:
– Making humans smarter
– Making corporations simpler
Company Complexity
Individual and group
intelligence

12. History of kanban
• Created by David Anderson over past decade
• Yahoo group: http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/kanbandev/
• Authoritative book – “Blue book”

13. kanban not Kanban
“The Kanban method is not the same as kanban for
manufacturing, although they share the teachings of W.
Edwards Deming as a common base. The second
challenge has to do with its origin. The Kanban method
is a unique development influenced by the work of
Deming (as noted), Eli Goldratt, Donald D. Reinertsen,
Mary and Tom Poppendieck, the Agile Manifesto, the
Declaration of Interdependence, and some kanban from
manufacturing.”
- Masa Maeda, Cutter IT Journal, 2011

14. Kanban Principles
1. Start with what you do now
2. Agree to pursue incremental, evolutionary change
3. Respect the current process, roles, responsibilities, and
titles
Source: Anderson and Roock, “An Agile Evolution: Why Kanban is Catching On
in Germany and Around the World,” Cutter IT Journal, 2011.

15. Kanban Core Practices
1. Visualize the workflow
2. Limit WIP
3. Manage flow
4. Make process policies explicit
5. Implement feedback loops
6. Improve collaboratively, evolve experimentally using
models and the scientific method
Source:
• Anderson and Roock, “An Agile Evolution: Why Kanban is Catching On in
Germany and Around the World,” Cutter IT Journal, 2011
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/kanban_(development)

16. How to create your first kanban board
• Creating this board is often part of “Start with what you
do now” (principle) and “Visualize the workflow”
(practice)
• Fun test: Ask people on a software team to individually
write down how they develop software. Compare the
answers!
• I have used these steps with multiple Kanban teams with
success.

17. Kick off session: Description
• The first meeting is a timeboxed 30 minute meeting with
all team members. Bring the following to the meeting:
– A space for brainstorming and for the kanban board. This will
typically be a space on the wall or a large, movable white board.
– Sharpies
– 3x3inch sticky notes in various colors (for the work in the kanban
board)
– 8x6inch sticky notes (for the headings of the kanban board
columns)
– Painter’s tape or masking tape
– Optional: Small stickies or colored dots

18. Kick off session: Introduction
• Introduction [5 minutes]
– Begin by saying that the team is entering into a “gamespace” in
which the team is going to try out a new way to organize its
work. The final five minutes of the meeting will be used to
determine what, if any, of the progress made in the “gamespace”
should be transferred into the work environment. Emphasize
that perfection is not required, only progress. Emphasize that
what is decided today can be changed at any time by unanimous
consent. Do not allow the team or team members to get stuck --
getting through all of the steps and starting to use Kanban is
much more important than getting things exactly right.
– Describe states and daily cadence.
– Show an example kanban board.

19. Kick off session: Brainstorming and
Selecting States
• Brainstorming states [5 minutes]
– Each team member has five minutes to brainstorm states on
3x3inch sticky notes. One state per sticky note. Explain why
each team member is doing this individually.
• Select and order states [5 minutes]
– The team members share the states and decide which will be
represented on the Kanban board.
– The team members order the states and write them on 8x6inch
sticky notes and put them on the Kanban board.

20. Kick off: Cadence and Decision
• Establish daily cadence [2 minutes]
– The team members discuss when and for how long they will
meet on a daily basis to update the board.
– Note that the first meeting will require them to place tasks on the
board for the first time so it may take longer.
• Decide whether to adopt [5 minutes]
– Exit the gamespace and decide whether or not to adopt all or
part of the Kanban board in the work environment.

21. Additional steps
After a week of using the board, begin to:
1. Determine the types of work.
2. Define pull rules.
3. Define policies for each state.
4. Track statistics.
5. Add WIP limits.

22. Survey: Launch Your First kanban Board?
When do you plan to launch your first kanban board?
• I already have
• In 1-5 days
• In 6-20 days
• In 21-200 days
• Other

23. Example launch of kanban board

24. Thursday, 150pm

25. Thursday, 258pm

26. Friday, 1133am

27. Friday, 3pm

28. Example kanban Boards

48. Survey: Electronic or Physical kanban board?
If you plan to launch a kanban board will it be electronic?
• Yes
• No
• I don’t know

49. After the webinar…
• We will send information to collect the PDU you will earn
from this webinar
• We will also send a link to the recorded webinar and
slides once they are posted online