No time to work on improvements? Find it with Kanban! Here I share practical experience from case of insurance company in Russia. I've installed Kanban board as a tool for IT management team to execute IT Service Management programme. Kanban board is great for workflow visualisation and can be used to improve efficiency of teams managing services and portfolios not only in IT, but also marketing, sales, production, operations etc. Want to learn how to do it yourself? Vladimir Ivanov is consultant and trainer in Project Management and IT Service Management, certified IPMA-B and ITIL Expert. Board member at International Project Management Association at Latvia and IPMA 4 level certification system assessor (taking exams in Latvian, English and Russian). Helps companies to develop IT Service Management by adopting ITIL, COBIT and other frameworks in an Agile way. Gives knowledge and skills in Project, Programme and Portfolio Management.

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2. http://youtu.be/X1c2--sP3o0
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3. • No time “culture” – you start inventing chewing gum instead of brushing your
teeth...
• No resources to work on improvements
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4. No surprise many have told they feel like this... especially in the operations.
• Top10 insurance company in Russia
• >100 IT staff, >10M$ IT budget
• Many branches in the regions
• Multiple Help Desks
• Low process maturity level
• No SLAs with business
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5. If things would continue in the same direction, it would be matter of time when talks
about outsourcing IT would start.
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7. First agilist Walter Shewhart, Deming’s mentor
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8. Key players – manage closely
Important – keep satisfied
Affected – keep informed
Others – monitor
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9. People know issues well enough and often they also see possible solution
Involvement creates engagement – needed for quality input
Expert adds recommendations
CIO sets priorities
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10. What you get is your own strategic plan on the yourney towards business and IT
alignement.
While working on “the big picture” do not forget to show progress by implementing
quick-wins and building-up credibility.
This is where many “ITIL implementation“ projects fail and stuck in “analysis-
paralysis”.
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11. What is Kanban? (literally signboard or billboard) is a scheduling system
for lean and just-in-time (JIT) production.
Create Kanban board to visualise the effort and “pull the work” instead of work piling-
up.
Helps avoiding becoming bottleneck, idle or pending.
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12. Backlog + priorities
Goal
Decomposed tasks
Choosen for implementation and prioritised
In process
Done
Effect confirmed
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14. Define values instead of rules – give more space to the “commanders in the field”
“The commander in the field is always right and the rear echelon is wrong, unless
proved otherwise...” Colin Powell, Joint Chiefs of Staff of the USA
Ex We have listed all the agreed values/rules on one A4 paper and placed on the
board
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15. 1. Bring ideas - everybody shall top-up backlog
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16. 2. Participation - regular meetings, everybody tells:
A. Done
B. Planned
C. Barriers – need help with
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17. 3. Ownership - ‘Product Owner’ corrects priorities weekly, but does not micromanage
(self-managing team)
Initially CIO, later transferred to product owner
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18. 4. Decomposition to the chunks of work that can be done within a week.
Don’t define too small or too big tasks, be fair to other teammates.
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19. 5. Scope – ITSM programme
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20. 6. Limit number of tasks that have been started and are not finished
e.g. 2 per person
Can be flexible while team is working on “understanding” it’s capacity
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21. 7. Any agreed value/rule can be changed by the team decision, also possible to
remove or add new
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22. Apply and follow Lean principles.
What is Lean? Lean, is a production practice that considers the expenditure of
resources for any goal other than the creation of value for the end customer to be
wasteful, and thus a target for elimination.
Waste types - muda, muri and mura.
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23. In addition - Do it right the first time
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24. Also - Focus on what is important today / what matters
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25. Also – talk less, more action!
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26. Also - Always think about improvements and efficency
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27. Also – solve the root cause, not the side effects
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28. Also - Fight the waste
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29. Regularly review the efficiency of the process and implement improvements
Ex After several rounds of iterations came-up with following improvements:
1. Minimise time spent in front of the board by:
• Moving debates to separate meetings
• Strictly following agenda
• Avoiding waste in communication
2. Improve process of decomposition of goals to tasks by:
• Learning to define work into equal chunks (not too small, not too big)
• Preparing definitions of the decomposed tasks prior the meeting
• Updating backlog immediately when idea hits your head
3. No PC/phone during the meeting policy
4. Remove column “Effect approved” – waste
5. Do not avoid talking about barriers – ask others and PO for help
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30. Results - they are able to execute ITSM programme without costly consultants.
One was needed to kick this off ;)
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31. 10 Kanban boards and their context:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1638038/publikationer/10%20kanban%20boards%20and%
20their%20context/10%20different%20kanban%20boards%20and%20their%20conte
xt%20-%20mskarin.pdf
10 pitfalls when implementing Kanban:
http://gotocon.com/dl/goto-cph-
2011/slides/MattiasSkarin_10PitfallsWhenImplementingKanban.pdf
Introducing Kanban in Operations:
http://blog.crisp.se/mattiasskarin/files/slides/introducing_kanban_in_operations.pdf
By Mattias Skarin, Crisp
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32. Follow @vivanovs and let’s share our experiments!
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