2. www.evogility.com.au @danploeg
dploeg@evogility.com.au
Daniel Ploeg brings over 20 years of experience in the
software industry leading teams and improvements in a
variety of industries. Daniel focuses on allowing teams and
their broader organization to evolve to their own unique
form of agility that is appropriate for their context.
Kanban Coaching Professional
Accredited Kanban Trainer
Accredited Kanban Consultant
LinkedIn
About Me
4. www.evogility.com.au @danploeg
dploeg@evogility.com.au
The Company - Business
FicTitious
• Provide Portal and Mobile applications to manage
electronics and engineering equipment
• Started 10 years ago in Australia – then launched in
Asia, US and Europe
• The company revenue stems from data monetisation as
well as custom application projects
• Company leaders are looking to “scale up” the
operations with new products and penetrate more deeply
into European and Asian markets
21. www.evogility.com.au @danploeg
dploeg@evogility.com.au
Part 1: Results
As it turns out, the feature wasn’t really fit for
market. It took over six months to release. A few
customers went with it, but most of them were
after different items that had a different payoff
curve.
Potential customers for the other feature that
Sales was waiting on have been lost.
Team morale is down – they thought they’d built
a killer feature, but all the time it took to get it to
market meant they couldn’t service it or adjust
quickly enough.
28. www.evogility.com.au @danploeg
dploeg@evogility.com.au
Part 2: We can do better
Product Management pain points:
• Delays to the release
• Customer response was poor
• Revenue was not as expected
• It seemed to take a lot of effort to get
everyone aligned
29. www.evogility.com.au @danploeg
dploeg@evogility.com.au
Part 2: Technology teams
Points of dissatisfaction (as per results, plus):
• Different Teams need to be engaged to
support a feature
• We had rework once legal / marketing got
involved
• We were still context switching with our old
work (& we let down the Sales team)
33. www.evogility.com.au @danploeg
dploeg@evogility.com.au
HR Pain points
• Process is far too long
– Often waiting for internal approvals applicants have accepted
another offer and need to restart the process
– Can take months to finally get new engineers online
• HR people are tired of rework
• Restarting searches puts extra strain on other work being
done by HR
• Holds up work on features and capabilities that bring in new
revenue for the company
35. www.evogility.com.au @danploeg
dploeg@evogility.com.au
Marketing Pain points
• Pulled in many directions at once (no focus)
• Internal reviews hold things up
• Find out late about upcoming Features
• Executives see them as “slow to respond” – tasks take
too long and they “hold up” releases
37. www.evogility.com.au @danploeg
dploeg@evogility.com.au
Legal pain points
• The in-house lawyer gets requests late which makes it hard to
outsource legal requests
• Scott is often up until midnight working and is approaching burnout
• Due to the late nights Scott is pretty sure the quality of his work has
degraded and he’s worried he’s missed important points
• Product is tired of enduring rework for “late breaking” legal advice
• There’s a general feeling that everyone is always waiting for the
request to be completed by legal (long lead times)
40. Part 2: The next idea • Validate problem
• Transparent & involve others
• Identify dependent teams
Upstream
• Not pulled until involved teams
have capacity to start (other
items are finished first)
• Better collaboration due to
synchronized start
• Idea validated and adjusted once
it hit the market
Delivery
41. www.evogility.com.au @danploeg
dploeg@evogility.com.au
Part 2: Outcomes
• Teams were not overwhelmed with work
– Defects in validation dropped 25%
• Spending less time coordinating activities
• Reduced time to market
– Due to lack of rework and associated delays time to market has
been reduced by 50%
• Market fit and revenue was stronger due to initial analysis
upstream
43. www.evogility.com.au @danploeg
dploeg@evogility.com.au
Further Information
Title Author URL
Essential Kanban Condensed David J Anderson and
Andy Carmichael
https://kanbanbooks.com/
Kanban (the “Blue” book) David J Anderson https://www.amazon.com/Kanban-
David-J-Anderson-
ebook/dp/B0057H2M70
Kanban Guide Kanban University https://resources.kanban.university/kan
ban-guide/
The Kanban Maturity Model David J Anderson &
Teodora Bozheva
https://www.kanbanmaturitymodel.co
m/
Editor's Notes
The Product Manager, Angela, has thought of a new idea for a feature we can bring to market. She thinks that if we can get it out to market in the next 3 months, we should be able to generate significant new revenue through Asia and Europe.
Angela talks to Jeff and Abhishek, tech leads from the mobile and portal teams whom she trusts to “get the job done”. They said – “Hey that sounds cool – I think we should be able to start on that next week”
A couple of weeks after starting, Abhishek lets slip in a team lead meeting that they’re working on this – which is news to the engineering manager Steve.
Steve talks to Angela about this to try and understand what it’s all about.
They agree to give it a shot and proceed with the feature.
Steve figures he needs a few more people to help out with this new idea and set about looking for a few new hire FTE engineers.
Amalie from HR proceeds to start the hiring process.
However, it takes over 8 weeks to get someone selected after a few attempts.
Christine from sales is getting annoyed – another feature that she was promised for her prospective sales still hasn’t arrived. She can’t close several deals without this.
Christine calls a meeting with Angela and Steve to figure out when she will get the feature. She’s told engineers have switched to the new feature and her one now won’t be ready for at least 4 months.
Jeff told Angela the new feature is probably about two weeks away, so get ready to launch. Angela decides to run it by Scott the in -house lawyer.
Scott says that he’s full up this week and may be able to take a look at it next week. When he finally gets round to it, he notices a problem that will take another 4-6 weeks to rectify.
After adjusting the product to meet legal / safety requirements, Angela talks to Mandy the head of the Marketing team.
“We’ve heard rumors of this new feature, but don’t know the details”.
It seems it’s going to take marketing some time to get this new feature ready.
Angela has a meeting with Christine and it doesn’t go well. Christine informs her that the customers waiting for the other feature have gone to a competitor.
“Actually, now that we’re looking at the detail of the feature, I don’t think our current customers will go for it. We’ll need to look for new customers to try this on.”
Technology Results:
Teams are more focused on finishing current features
Collaboration has improved – enables smoother coordination between the teams
Understanding flow across the whole system has allowed Steve to make a number of policy changes
Rules around starting items are a lot clearer
Lead times have reduced for feature development
Results:
Reduced the amount of restarted searches by 85%
Lead time (not including notice period) of onboarding someone has been reduced by 65%
HR people have had more time freed up for other work
Kanban applied to other work requests as well to balance overall workload
Results:
Marketing are now preparing capabilities for launch and timing to coincide with release
Lead times have reduced as much of the blocking caused by internal review has been removed
Marketing staff have been completed more requests faster as a result of the changes
Results:
Scott finishes work at a reasonable hour (6PM).
Not so much “rushing” caused by late breaking work – quality has started to improve
Triage ensures that the key risk items get attention first
Delivery of legal requests has had reduced lead time by 35% and increased throughput
Starting to put together “standard” responses & automation to avoid repetitive work
