2. Once upon
a time...

3. Jean - François
IT Dev background
Team lead
Agile virus
CSM + CSPO
Continuous
improvement
Pragmatic

4. Context
Business Process Re-engineering
Architectural Renewal
Unstable legacy apps

5. Government Stereotypes
Slow decision making

6. Government Stereotypes
Fire fighting
http://www.flickr.com/photos/roberto_ferrari/139349655/

7. Government Stereotypes
Election Fever
http://www.flickr.com/photos/andresrueda/3407340937

8. Government Stereotypes
Low personal motivation
http://www.flickr.com/photos/code_martial/4145914957/

9. Context
Agile coaching efforts
• Planning
• Communication
• Process visualization
• Continuous improvement
• Stakeholder management
• Self-organization

10. Context
Why me?
A man without government for 327 days!

11. One month ago in Poland
A man without government for 291 days!

12. the Results
Agile made problems visible
Fight for resources / priority
Disruptions made planning hard >
expectations not met
Big variety of work
Specialists
Not giving good customer service

13. Need for Change
Focus was too narrow
suboptimizing
input
WE output
THEM THEM

14. Kanban adoption
1 pilot product
How do we start?
“Draw the workflow!”

15. Kanban adoption
1 st attempt

16. Kanban adoption
2 nd attempt

17. Kanban adoption
Initial workflow

18. Improving
1st Retrospective
• WIP limits well respected –+ visualization of issues
• Missing visualization of detailed tasks
• Missing a planning meeting

19. Improving
1st Retrospective (cont’d)
• Needed different level of feature detail
Business request:
“Customers have to be able to fill in a reservation,
send it to the planning department and get a
confirmation email with pdf attachment”

20. Agile team would split this into:
1. As a user I want to fill in a new reservation...
2. As a user I want to send my reservation...
3. As a user I want to receive an e-mail
confirmation with my reservation in pdf
attachment so that I ...

21. Suppose we used user stories in the
flow:
As a user I As a user I As a user I want
want to fill want to send to receive an
in a new my e-mail
reservation reservation... confirmation ...
TOO Low TOO Low TOO
Not all
Level for Level too OK OK Low
applicable
Stakeholders early Level
READY Analysis DESIGN DEV TEST VALI PROD
2 2 1 2 2 1

22. Improving
1st Retrospective (cont’d)
• Walking the board took longer than daily
standup
• Big difference in size of work items
• Need for progress visualization

23. Improving
Result

24. Improving

25. Improving

26. Discoveries
2nd Retrospective
• Easier prioritization
• Easier validation

27. “A politician needs the ability
to foretell what is going to happen
tomorrow, next week, next month,
and next year.
And to have the ability afterwards
to explain why it didn't happen.”
W. Churchill

28. Discoveries
2nd Retrospective (cont’d)
• Limitations of the physical task
board
• Bigger teams ~ distributed
• More administration ~ measuring
• Progress visualization

29. Discoveries
2nd Retrospective (cont’d)
• Lost focus

30. Discoveries
2nd Retrospective (cont’d)
• WIP limits + pull made things happen
• People idle causes action!
WIP limits enable more cross-
functional collaboration

31. Discoveries
2nd Retrospective (cont’d)
• Still fight for resources / priorities
Why? Step out, watch from
customer viewpoint

32. 1 project asks to put stuff in queue
& prioritize
What about non-project related
work?
Confusing for stakeholders

33. Hybrid
KANBAN
SCRUM
1 st
Release
New Product
Development Product Maintenance & Extension

34. Service Levels
1. % of total capacity / project

35. Service Levels
2. Classes of service / project

36. Service Levels
No percentiles yet
No cost of delay yet

37. The Future
Full Kanban flow? With cadance?
Product Development +
Product Maintenance & Extension
Faster & smaller deployment

38. The Future
1st step to DevOps?

39. In many organizations today
dev dev dev sys sys sys
READY ... ... ... ... ... ... PROD
2 1 2 3 2 1

40. In some organizations tomorrow?
dev sys dev sys dev sys
READY ... ... ... ... ... ... PROD
2 1 2 3 2 1

41. Afterthoughts
Is Kanban less
team focused?

42. Afterthoughts
Do you need this
in a highly mature,
stable business setting?

43. Afterthoughts
What added value
would Kanban bring
in Government?

44. Conclusion
We owe it to ourselves!
Government must keep trying to
improve
We’re paying for it!