Session Title: The Heart of Kanban
Abstract: Feedback and cadence are two essential elements of control. Management of agile teams is no exception – particularly as its purpose is to help the business respond to the changing fitness landscape. Choosing the feedback loops and their cadences (the periods between feedback cycles) is the key to effective management, and this workshop will explore the actual feedback loops in participants’ businesses. Participants may be using agile methods like Kanban or Scrum, scaled frameworks like SAFe or LeSS, bespoke processes that have evolved uniquely within the business (perhaps guided by Kanban principles), or indeed no conscious or deliberate process at all. Nevertheless, feedback loops and cadences abound in controlling work. Scrum has a dominant cadence, defined by Sprint length. Kanban – described by one critic as an agile method without a cadence – in reality defines many of them. Other methods may use cadence-driven or event-driven feedback loops to achieve control, or like the “no deliberate process” approach, use instinctive feedback loops based on managers’ experience or preference. In all cases examining current processes and comparing them with a schematic feedback and cadence model, yields important insights that can generate improvements
The workshop will introduce a simple framework for applying systems thinking to management systems. Participants will be asked to apply the model to their own management systems, or those of others in their groups, and to compare results in four main areas:
Choosing the right work
Making the work flow
Ensuring the work’s right
Improving workflow
We’ll look at three typical scales – the agile team (proverbially 7 plus or minus two), and the multi-team service, and the multi-service layer, as addressed by management teams with wider responsibility.
This workshop will help leaders in organisations understand where feedback loops exist for managing the business, at what cadence these controls operate, and where opportunities exist for improvement. While providing some helpful and pragmatic models for future use, the workshop will also generate outputs that can be applied immediately and directly, and providing agendas for discussion and implementation.
7. 1.See work as flow
2.Start here
3.Visualise the work, the workflow, and
the policies
4.Improve the flow of value to customers
with validated changes
Change your
viewpoint
Don’t change the
starting point
Visualise and
improve!
11. Pool of Ideas Proposals Selected Development Acceptance Complete
Work Item
Visualise
the work
Visualise the
process
Visualise the
process
12. Requests Selected Development “Complete”
Discarded
Commitment
Ongoing Ready
4 6
Released
Receipt
Accepted
Request Delivery
Regular cadence
Acceptance
Ongoing Ready
Time in Dev (or Dev Time, or Cycle Time)
4
Customer Lead Time
System Lead Time
Time in Route to Live
Deferred
Commitment
Full scope
system
________
Options
56. 7±2
•
•
•
•
•
•
Abella, G., & Arvizu, S. (2019). How to Improve Complex and Creative Knowledge Work in
21st Century Organizations with Kanban. https://doi.org/10.22316/poc/04.1.06
Wageman, R. (2008). Senior Leadership Teams.
Harvard Business Review Press.
60. 1. Focus on the customer
…their needs and expectations
2. Manage the work; let people
self-organize around it
3. Evolve policies to improve
outcomes
Change policies experimentally to
improve customer satisfaction and
business outcomes
61. These practices all involve:
• seeing the current work, workflow and
policies
• improving the work, workflow and
policies in an evolutionary fashion
62. 1.See work as flow
2.Start here
3.Visualise the work, the workflow, and
the policies
4.Improve the flow of value to customers
with validated changes
63. 1. Understand what makes the service fit for purpose for the customer
2. Understand sources of dissatisfaction with the current system
3. Analyze demand
4. Analyze capability
5. Model workflow
6. Discover classes of service
7. Design the kanban system
8. Socialize the design and negotiate implementation
64. 1. See your organization as a network of
interdependent services
2. Scale out sequentially one service at a time
3. Design each service independently from first
principles using STATIK
4. Use feedback loops to improve the
organization's service delivery to its customers
Change your
viewpoint
Don’t change the
starting point
Visualise and
improve!
65. 1. The Sustainability Agenda
is about finding a sustainable pace and
improving focus
2. The Service Orientation Agenda
focuses attention on performance and
customer satisfaction
3. The Survivability Agenda
is concerned with staying competitive
and adaptive.
66. Kanban is a values-led method.
Respect for all the individuals
involved is necessary, not only for
the success of the venture, but for
it to be worthwhile at all.
69. Yes we Kanban!
…the dream of an empowered, self- organizing,
trusting, respectful workplace…
…the dream of organizations that deliver high
quality and delight customers with designs that
empower rather than frustrate…
…the dream of a workplace where cycle times
are so short that ideas are turned into valuable
functionality when they are needed…
Yes we Kanban!
David J Anderson
UK Lean Conference, 2009
70. This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND
