Kanban overview

1. Kanban Seminar
Aug 30, 2018

2. 2017-18 State of Scrum Report
Scrum only Scrum and Others No Scrum
Kanban
Hybrid (Waterfall & Agile)
Traditional Waterfall
Bimodal (Agile and Waterfall)
Lean

3. Plan-driven development
Requirement
Design
Development
Testing
Maintenance
Changes
Takes too long
Skipped
● You don’t realize any value until the
end of project
● You don’t seek approval from the
stakeholders until late in the day
● You leave the testing until the end
This approach is highly risky, often more costly and generally
less efficient than Agile approaches

4. http://agilemanifesto.org/
「Don’t just Do Agile, Be Agile」

5. What's “Scrum”?
- Split your organization into small, cross-functional, self-organizing
teams.
- Split your work into a list of small, concrete deliverables. Sort the
list by priority and estimate the relative effort of each item.
- Split time into short fixed-length iterations (usually 1 – 4 weeks),
with potentially shippable code demonstrated after each iteration.
- Optimize the release plan and update priorities in collaboration with
the customer, based on insights gained by inspecting the release
after each iteration.
- Optimize the process by having a retrospective after each iteration.
Split your
organization
Split your work
Split timeSprint
(1 - 4 weeks)

7. What’s “Kanban”?
- Visualize the workflow
- Split the work into pieces, write each item on a card and put on the wall
- Use named columns to illustrate where each item is in the workflow.
- Limit WIP (work in progress) − assign explicit limits to how many items may
be in progress at each workflow state.
- Measure the lead time (average time to complete one item, sometimes
called “cycle time”), optimize the process to make lead time as small and
predictable as possible.

8. Where you start “Kanban” from?
- Start from where you are now
- Applying Scrum, you have to change the existing process
(affecting to existing role, activity, artifact)
- Understand what happened and where you stand, and then improve
that.

9. What’s “Kanban”?
- Visualize the workflow
- Split the work into pieces, write each item on a card and put on the wall
- Use named columns to illustrate where each item is in the workflow.
- Limit WIP (work in progress) − assign explicit limits to how many items may
be in progress at each workflow state.
- Measure the lead time (average time to complete one item, sometimes
called “cycle time”), optimize the process to make lead time as small and
predictable as possible.

10. Visualize work first
- Makes hidden work apparent
- There may be more tasks even if you use JIRA or
Redmine
- You cannot solve the situation like “don’t know who
working on what” unless you clarify all task including
hidden tasks
- Write it down on sticky notes and put it on a large and
easy-read board in order of priorities.

11. Correct way to use Sticky note
- 1 thing 1 note
- Use sign pen, not ballpoint pen (To be able to see from far)
- Write carefully so others can see easily
- Don’t use multicolored notes without particular reason
- Peel notes by correct way

12. You see all work even if you hate it.

13. Map your workflow to the board
- Identify all the stages, from work entering to work leaving the team
- Don’t strive for perfection
- Inspect and adapt
- Work isn’t done until it’s producing value to the customer
- With a visualized workflow you can see:
- Status of work
- Potential problems such as work not progressing and piling up in
a stage

14. There may be
potential problems
You can see status of work

15. Work items
Common attributes are:
- Description of the work item
- ID in electronic systems
- Deadlines
- Who’s working on the item
- Type of work (bug or normal, for example)
Avatar
Type of work

16. What you can see now
- How many tasks you have
- What kind of tasks you have
- What status each task move on?
- Who are doing what now
You cannot improve what you cannot see
Why you have to make work visualized?

17. What’s “Kanban”?
- Visualize the workflow
- Split the work into pieces, write each item on a card and put on the wall
- Use named columns to illustrate where each item is in the workflow.
- Limit WIP (work in progress) − assign explicit limits to how many items may
be in progress at each workflow state.
- Measure the lead time (average time to complete one item, sometimes
called “cycle time”), optimize the process to make lead time as small and
predictable as possible.

18. Lead Time / Cycle Time / Work in progress
Lead time
Cycle time for
development and test
Number of WIP = 5

19. Little’s Law
If you reduce number of work in progress, cycle time also reduce.

20. Effects of too much WIP
- Increase risk (a competitor release it earlier...)
- More overhead (I have to adjust a lot again…)
- Lower quality (What happened with that bug?)
- Decreased motivation (There are a lot of WIP…)

21. Limit work in progress
Limit WIP, and Stop starting and start finishing

22. How to decide the number of WIP
- A lower WIP is generally better. As a rule of thumb:
- Too-high WIP leaves work idle
- Too-low WIP leaves people idle
- Limiting WIP will surface improvement opportunities
- Acting on them leads to better flow
- WIP limits are not rules — they are triggers for discussions
- There’s no one right WIP limit for a team
- Inspect and adapt

23. What’s “Kanban”?
- Visualize the workflow
- Split the work into pieces, write each item on a card and put on the wall
- Use named columns to illustrate where each item is in the workflow.
- Limit WIP (work in progress) − assign explicit limits to how many items may
be in progress at each workflow state.
- Measure the lead time (average time to complete one item, sometimes
called “cycle time”), optimize the process to make lead time as small and
predictable as possible.

24. Metrics
- Metrics are not improvements—they help you know if you are improving
- Two common and useful metrics are:
- Lead time — the time for the whole workflow
- Throughput — how much or how many work items you complete over a
period of time
- Use balanced metrics (ex. Lead-time and Num of bugs in live environment)
- Use metrics to improve—not to punish

25. Two powerful visualization
Cumulative flow diagram (CFD)Statistical process control (SPC)

26. How to make work flowed well
- Limiting work in process
- Reducing waiting time
- Ensuring that work is ready
- Making the work items smaller and similarly sized
- Removing blockers
- Tracking blockers
- Swaming
- Avoiding rework
- Value demand and failure demand
- Cross-functional teams
- Daily standup

27. - Bottlenecks set the pace for the entire flow
- Increasing throughput upstream from the bottleneck will just pile up work in a
queue in front of it
- Increase throughput downstream from the bottleneck is futile because there
won’t be enough input to work on
- Theory of Constraints is a management theory built around managing
bottlenecks
1/ Identify the constraint
2/ Exploit the constraint
3/ Subordinate other work
to that decision
4/ Elevate the constraint
5/ Rinse and repeat
Bottlenecks
Dev Test Deploy ReleaseDesign

28. Queues and Acceptance criteria
Clarify the
acceptance criteria
Indicate tasks can
be move to the next

29. How to take care of urgent work
- Common way to handle special cases
- Such as work that is urgent
- Often visualized as a separate lane on the board
- Policies around that lane might be:
- Only one item can be in the lane at the time
- Max one expedite item per week
- Don’t count the expedite lane against the WIP limit

30. Daily standup
- Focus on the work rather than the workers
- Scrum:
- What did you do yesterday?
- What are you going to do today?
- Do you have any impediments that hinder you from doing that?
- Kanban:
- What do we need to do to move the work item closer to done?
- Who is going to do it?
- Walk the board, right to left
- Focus on smells and deviations
- “Is all your work on the board?”
- “Do we work on the right things?”
- “Do we understand our work?”
- Encourage spontaneous kaizen meetings after the daily standup

32. T-shirt size estimates
- Estimate work in groups like T-shirt sizes
- S, M, and L are most commonly used
- Use XS and XL only if needed
- Relative estimations
- Track data and project based on real data,
for example: “S takes 3-5 days”

33. Transition from iteration-based process
- Iteration- or flow-based: which is better? There’s no way to tell.
- If you have a backlog of items that are the only things you work on, then
an iteration-based approach would be suitable.
- If you manage items that might come to you at any time, you might be
better off with a flow-based approach, without the start and stop of
iterations.
Iteration-based Kanban board

35. A sample of team issues
- We often deliver late
- Estimates are often inaccurate
- Team is swamped with work
- Priorities is unclear
- Work is coming to the team from everywhere
- Unclear who’s working on what

36. Workshop “Pass the Pennies”
Worker WIP 20 5 1
Worker1
Worker2
Worker3
Worker4
First
TOTAL