Session Title: Practical Ideas for a Successful Kanban Adoption @ Scale
Abstract: The talk will share the story of a failed Kanban adoption and what could have been done to prevent the failure. Practical tips on helping large-scale Kanban adoptions succeed will be shared. The learning largely points to various complementary change management focus areas that can be undertaken to support and promote Kanban in large enterprises. Examples of what these change management initiatives may look like will also be shared.
2. Our Kanban journey and
scale
• Large enterprise
• 30 years of legacy
• 25000 global employees
• 130+ boards
• 2500+ users
• 300+ teams
• 2012-2014
3. Challenges faced
• Fear of transparency
• Stagnation at low maturity level
• Solutioning for long-standing blockers
• Local Optimization
• Individual Super-heroism
• Leadership as a title, not an attribute
• Introducing explicit WIP
5. Fear of Transparency
• Discomfort with moving beyond initial
Visualization on Kanban boards
• A culture where failure is penalized
• Focus on creating psychological safety
6. Creating Safety, Supporting
Transparency
• RED TAPE DAY event in multiple locations
• Big Visible Boards displaying the items
• Roles/titles no bar
• Bring up a Red Tape item, get a candy
• Reinforce Radical Candor and Transparency
7. Stagnation at a low
maturity level
• No pull for small evolutionary change,
complacency
• A culture of waiting to be told what to
do next
• Focus on creating a learning
organization
8. Creating a Learning Organization,
For Continuous Improvement
• Create multiple avenues to pique curiosity
• Promote self-learning outside the
traditional classroom – curated podcasts,
videos, books, articles, blogs
• Support leaders to lead the change
without coaches
• Communities to promote agility
9. Solutioning Approach for
Long-standing blockers
• Big blockers (made explicit by
Kanban) got heavy responses which
were expensive and slow
• An approach that relied heavily on
analysis and “getting it all right”
• Promote a culture of Learning-by-
doing
10. Creating a Culture of
Experimentation, To tackle
blockers
• Long-standing blockers don’t have
obvious solutions
• Promote small experiments to find the
way forward
• Promote Learn-By-Doing
• Teach how to design small experiments
and support that through
Experimentation boards
11. Local optimization
• Long Queues at structural boundaries, local
accountability
• Organization structured around Functions
• Promote systems thinking and having a structure to
promote that
12. Org Structure changes,
To remove silos
• Centers of Excellence and associated
Towers of Knowledge disbanded
• Expertise moved into the teams
• Informal communities set up to help
with knowledge retention
13. Individual Super-
heroism
• No swarming behavior on blockers, high WIP
• Individual super-heroism valued and rewarded
• Performance evaluation and reward systems that
value individual success over team success
14. Performance Evaluation changes, To
promote Team Behavior
• Reducing individual super-heroism and traditional
approaches to performance evaluation were in
conflict
• Folding in the following is an experiment in progress
• 360 degree feedback
• Part of the goals are team goals based on the team’s
performance
• Pairing as a norm
• Mobbing, Swarming as events
15. Leadership as a title,
not an attribute
• Success was shared but failure had
individual ownership
• All new ideas and direction came from
title-wielding leaders
• Hierarchical culture and a culture of
assigning blame
• Promote leadership at all levels
16. Leadership as an attribute and not title,
To promote Leadership at all levels
• For encouraging acts of leadership at all levels -
• Leaders must lead by example
• High tolerance for failure
• Collective responsibility and ownership
17. Establishing Explicit
WIP limits
• Only implicit WIP limits
• Trying to perfect the math to decide the right WIP
limit
• Start with a thumb rule, iterate rapidly from there
18. Introducing Explicit
WIP limits
• Start with a simple WIP limit and gradually tweak it
as we go
• We start with a simple WIP limit of - Number of
People * 1.5
19. In Summary
Help Kanban Adoptions succeed
with complementary change management efforts
To promote Visualization and Transparency … Create Safety
To avoid Stagnation at low maturity level … Create a Learning Organization
For a viable Solutioning approach for long-
standing blockers
… Promote Learning-By-Doing
To avoid local optimization … Break functional silos
To prevent Individual Super-heroism … Create supporting performance
evaluation systems
To encourage leadership as an attribute
and not a title
… Promote leadership at all levels
For introducing explicit WIP limits … Start with a thumb rule and iterate
rapidly
