20190923 AgileDC 2019 Conf Kanban AntiPatterns: What you don't know can hurt you

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Kanban Antipatterns:
What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You
Craeg Strong
CTO, Ariel Partners
September 23, 2019
Washington, DC

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Agenda
• Introduction
• Analysis of Anti-Patterns and Discussion of Alternatives
– Pre-Assignment
– Blocker Column
– Missed Queues
– Expedite Exploitation
– Lobotomized Board
– Board Designed by Megamind
– Losing Ground
– Mixing Apples and Oranges
• Wrap Up

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Craeg Strong
Software Development since 1988
Large Commercial & Government Projects
Agile Coach / DevOps Engineer
Kanban Trainer / SpecFlow Trainer
Performance & Scalability Architect
Certified Ethical Hacker
New York & Washington DC Area
CTO, Ariel Partners
AKT, KMP, CSM, CSP, CSPO,
ITILv3, PMI-ACP, PMP, LeSS, SAFe
www.arielpartners.com
cstrong@arielpartners.com
@ckstrong1

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Antipattern 1: Pre-Assignment
Backlog Analyze Implement Verify Done
Doing Done Doing Done
MKKM
PC
AB
DP CS
CWPC
(6) (3)(4)
EW
IL
WF
RO
MKKM
PC
AB
DP
CS
CW
PC
© Copyright Ariel Partners 2019 *sales@arielpartners.com ((646) 467-7394

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Analysis
1. Ensuring everyone has something to do,
esp. with distributed teams
2. Maybe we have a fixed deployment interval
or replenishment interval a la scrum
3. Ensuring we don’t get starved for a
particular specialist resource by
“forecasting” needs in advance
4. Planning cross-training by assigning
mentor + mentee to items normally done by
senior resource alone
1. Suggests work is being pushed rather than
team allowed to pull
2. Limits options: what if someone else
becomes available before assigned
resource?
3. Increases psychological need to pull
additional work in rather than helping others
finish, i.e. “stop starting, start finishing”
Why is this an antipattern?
What good intentions
could lead to this?

MKKM
PC
AB
DP CS
CWPC
(6) (3)(4)
Refactoring: Maximize Pull Optionality
EW
IL
WF
RO
© Copyright Ariel Partners 2019 *sales@arielpartners.com ((646) 467-7394 6

(6) (3)(4)
WC Benefits System
Disability Case Management
Compliance System
Refactoring: Visualize Work Item Types
7

Cross-Training Up Next
MKKM
PC
AB
DP CS
CWPC
(6) (3)(4)
Refactoring: Plan for Cross-Training
EW
IL
WF
RO
IL
RO DP
KMVictor
Pauline
FC
KG

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Antipattern 2: Blocker Column
Ready Analyze (3) Implement (2) Verify (2) Done
Doing Done DoneDoing
Blocked (6)

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Analysis
1. Allows team to continue working while they
are waiting on external resources
2. Team wants to appear responsive to
business when they present higher priority
work items
3. I can take a new, small work item and get it
done quickly since my current work item is a
lot bigger than I thought. It all has to get
done anyway, right?
1. Can’t tell where blocked items were/are in
the workflow
2. May conflate different kinds of blockers, or
non-instant availability items
3. Items may be “forgotten” in blocked column
purgatory; team may miss opportunities to
unblock
could lead to this?

Refactoring: Named Blocker Area
(common cause)
Waiting on App Store
Approval
Late against SLA
11

Refactoring: Blocker Flags
(special cause and common cause)
Waiting on
clarifications
from legal
Need server
upgrade
Waiting for
Defect
Resolution

Refactoring: Queue for Non-Instant Availability Resource
Ready Analyze (3) Implement (5) Ready to
Approve (8)
Done
Test (5)
Approval activity
happens
“on the line.”

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Antipattern 3: Missed Queues
Ideas Hypothesize
(10)
Refine
(7)
Explore
(4)
Ready for
Implementation
Validate
(4)

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Analysis
1. Just starting out with Kanban
2. Want to limit WIP, but either not familiar with
CONWIP or our software does not support
CONWIP
3. We don’t like to use the word “done” until the
very end
1. Can’t tell which items are actually being
worked on, versus waiting for the next stage
2. No easy way to add queues to account for
downstream blockers, e.g. non-instant
availability like approval
3. Difficult to compute flow efficiency
could lead to this?

Refactoring: Add Ready Queues
Ideas Hypothesize
(10)
Refine (7) Explore (4) Ready for
Implementation
Validate
(4)
Ready
In
Progress Ready
In
Progress

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Antipattern 4: Expedite Exploitation
a. Using the expedite lane for non-expedite work. Show the examples from Dan
Vicanti actionable agile metrics.
Options Discover (8) Implement (10) Verify (6) Done
Expedite

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Analysis
1. Team wants to appear responsive to
business when they present higher priority
work items.
2. Team needs to hit a high priority deliverable
3. Business lost confidence in team’s ability to
deliver according to a schedule, so all fixed
date deliverables are “pre-expedited.”
1. Overusing expedite causes large variations
in cycle time
2. Dan Vicante calls this “flow debt” which
creates less predictability in your process.
Flow debt is when cycle time is artificially
reduced for some items of work in progress
by borrowing cycle time from other items of
work in progress
3. Expedited items typically skip parts of the
workflow, which could lead to quality issues
could lead to this?

Refactoring: Swim Lanes and Reduced WIP
Expedite
VIP System (5)
Maintenance (4)
Reducing WIP increases
cycle time, decreasing
need to Expedite

Refactoring: Fixed Date Class of Service
Expedite
VIP System (6)
Maintenance (3)
Automatically Becomes
Expedite when Date Gets
Near

Refactoring Ideas
 Capture and make visible expedite policies
 Reduce WIP so that cycle time is low– so there is less
temptation to abandon work
 Gain agreement to finish work in progress before
starting Expedite

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Antipattern 5: Lobotomized Board
To Do Doing Done

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Antipattern 5: Lobotomized Board
To Do Doing Done
A: analyze
A: codeA: peer
review
A: test
A:
integrate
with ext
A:
document
B: analyze
B: code
B: peer
review
B: test
B:
integrate
B:
document
B:
upgrade
schema C: analyze
C: code
C: peer
review
C: test C:
document
C: obtain
charts
C: install
server21

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Analysis
1. Need to keep everyone busy, esp.
distributed teams
2. Moving from Scrum
1. No insight into where things are in the
workflow. We have to read all the tasks in
order to find out.
2. Difficult to understand overall progress
without referring to external chart e.g.
burndown
3. No insight into where the bottlenecks are.
How do we know where to add resources?
could lead to this?

Refactoring: Add Progress Indicator
Backlog Ready Doing
Done
<50% 50%-90% 90%+

Refactoring: Add Workflow Steps
Backlog Ready Analyze Implement DoneReady for
Approval
Done
In
Progress
Done
In
Progress
Test

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Antipattern 6: Board Designed by MegaMind
Ready Analyze
Doing Done
Develop
Manual Test
Doing Done
Peer Review
Manual Test
Doing Done
Develop
Gherkin Test
Peer Review
Gherkin Test
Develop
Code
Peer Review
Code
Document
Doing Done
Integration
Test
UAT
UAT
Prep
UAT
In
Process

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Analysis
1. Fully analyzed workflow
2. Previously missed steps
3. New to Kanban systems analysis
1. Board becomes so busy, we can no longer
see a clear message
2. Some items that look serial may actually
happen in parallel sometimes– we may be
tempted to move items backward through
the workflow
3. May lead to too much WIP since there are a
lot of places to put stuff
could lead to this?

Refactoring: Enhance Ticket Design
Ready Analyze
Doing Done
Implement
Doing Done
Integration
Test
UAT
UAT
Prep
UAT
In
Process
X
X
X X
Gherkin Test
Manual Test
Coding
Documenting
Req. Done

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Antipattern 7: Losing Ground
Ready Analyze
Doing Done
Implement
Doing Done
Test Done

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Analysis
1. Finding defects in a feature, we don’t want
to call it done
2. Buyer’s remorse– pulled a ticket but realize I
want another one
3. Customer indicates they want something
else higher priority
1. First– this may be appropriate behavior for a
given level of Kanban process maturity
2. It may indicate that columns are being used
as waterfall-style steps, rather than
knowledge-gaining stages
3. Moving tickets backwards is pushing work
into an area which may already be at full
capacity.
4. If we are abandoning work, we may lose the
ability to measure impact of that
could lead to this?

Refactoring: Record/Clone Abandoned Tickets
Ready Analyze
Doing Done
Implement
Doing Done
Test Done
B
A
Clone
of A
B
Abandoned
Original
A
Clone Ticket and
move to
Abandoned.
Retro Topics:
 Why did we abandon A?
 What was the impact?
 How could we avoid in future?

Refactoring: Block Ticket for Defects
Ready Analyze
Doing Done
Implement
Doing Done
Test Done
Defect
In A
A
Abandoned
Defect
In A
KMPs will recognize
this pattern from
GetKanban
Defect may or may
not be expedited

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Antipattern 8: Mixing Apples And Oranges
Ready Analyze
Doing Done
Implement
Doing Done
Integration
Test
UAT
UAT
Prep
UAT
In
Process
B
A
C
D
Feature Project
User
Story

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Analysis
1. Want to keep the board design simple
2. Many different workflows, hard to separate
out
1. (If using electronic tool) Difficult to set WIP
limits, because columns have more than one
issue type, and the types are order of
magnitudes different in size.
2. Board is busy
3. Cycle time metrics may be more difficult to
compute
could lead to this?

Refactoring: Multi-Level Board
Ready In Progress Done
B
Initiatives 50%
D
A
80%
Ready Analyze
Doing Done
Implement
Doing Done
Integration
Test
UAT
Prep Doing
Initiative
A (16)
Initiative
B (10)
Done
Done
May be 2 linked boards,
or one board with
swim lanes
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Parting Thoughts
Don’t just copy another board, analyze
Lessons learned, current pain points
Sources and pattern of demand
Delivery capability
Workflow
Classes of service
Make sure your board speaks to you
If you encounter a bad situation and the board didn’t telegraph
it, time to review the board design!
Use swim lanes, colors, and card design

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Discussions, Q & A
Craeg Strong
Savant Financial Technologies, Inc.
d/b/a Ariel Partners
Cell: (917) 992-0259
cstrong@arielpartners.com
www.arielpartners.com
@arielpartners
Thank You!

20190923 AgileDC 2019 Conf Kanban AntiPatterns: What you don't know can hurt you

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