How to use Kanban to establish a continuous delivery rhythm within your development project.

1. Establish a delivery
rhythm
Kanban - Chapter 8

2. Delivery rhythms in agile
software development projects
• Mostly fixed delivery rhythms (2 weeks e.g.)
• „Timeboxing“: Defining a backlog for a fixed
period
• „Heartbeat“ argumentation

3. Resulting problems
• Hard to build a backlog which fits exactly in
this fixed period
• A backlog gets pressed into a fixed period
• At the end of the iteration, there is mostly time
left or not all tickets are finished

4. Kanban uncuples
• Kanban separates prioritization, development
and delivery
• Kanban uncouples cycle time and prioritization
rhythm

5. Delivery costs
• Coordination costs
• Marketing, Sales, Training
• Transaction Costs
• All costs for delivering software to the
customer (deployment, shipping)
• Effort depends on the business model

6. Increasing the Delivery
Efficiency
• How to calculate the Delivery Efficiency?
• Delivery Efficiency in % = 100% x (Total Costs
of the release - (Coordination Costs +
Transaction Costs)) / Total Costs of the release
• How to optimize the efficiency?
• Increase the delivery rhythm
• Reduce Coordination and Transaction Costs

7. Defining a delivery rhythm
• You should know the delivery costs (easy) and
the value of the delivery (not as easy)
• Every team member must know that delivering
a software generates costs, which should be
reduces as much as possible
• The team shall make decision from these data
about the delivery rhythm

8. Increasing the delivery
efficiency
• Reduce transaction and coordination costs
• Establish modern software development and
deployment tools and processes
Reduce time to market
Generate more value

9. Fixed delivery rhythms or
spontaneous deliveries?
• Continuous and reliable delivery rhythms builds
confidence and reduce coordination costs
• Short delivery rhythms can make sense if
transaction and coordination costs are low
• The higher the majority level of an organization
is and the more confidence exist, spontaneous
deliveries can be an option

10. Conclusion
• Timeboxing can cause inefficient work in agile software projects
• Kanban uncouples delivery from development cycle time and
prioritization rhythm
• Delivery costs consist of coordination costs between internal and
external parties, and all costs
• Increase the delivery rhythm and reduce Coordination and
Transaction Costs
• Define a delivery rhythm
• Reduce transaction and coordination costs and establish modern
tools and processes
• Reduce time to market and generate more value