Kanban Cadences & Information Flow

@lki_jlrCopyright Lean Kanban Inc.janice@leankanban.com
Kanban Cadences
& Information Flow
Presenter
Janice Linden-Reed
Lean Kanban Central
Europe
Munich, Germany
November 2015

Introduction

Kanban is a way to organize and manage work

How does Kanban work?
Observe the current situation
including performance and service
delivery expectations
Identify risks and pain points and
improvement opportunities
Apply techniques to adjust how
we manage demand and capability
to meet expectations of our
customers
Measure to see the result
Techniques to apply include
WIP limits
Class of service
Capacity allocation
Decoupled commitment
Reversible commitment
System Liquidity
Flow Efficiency
Bottleneck management
Dependency management
Variability type management
more++

ESP Management System
A complete management system for improving communication,
collaboration, and decision making across an organization.
ESP gives the organization a way to respond faster
with greater business agility.
ESP coordinates strategic initiatives
with current capability to deliver

Elements of Enterprise Services Planning
Kanban
Feedback Loops: Cadences
Probabilistic Forecasting
Risk Management
Shape Demand and Improve Capability

What are the activities of ESP Cadences
Information Flow?
Take data and other input collected from each kanban system
Observe signals that adjustment to the system is needed
 You aren’t delivering work when you promised it
 Your customer has some new dissatisfaction or new request
Or, consider current status and decide how to move forward
 What work is ready to be delivered? What should be pulled next?
 How can we cope with a new competing product?
Discuss and decide on actions
 Policy changes
 Apply techniques to shape demand or modify capacity
 etc
Communicate decisions

Treat each service separately
Demand
Observed
Capability
Demand
Demand
Observed
Capability
Observed
Capability

ESP Feedback Loops
Mechanism to
Consider existing outcomes
Compare them to desired outcomes
Is our current service delivery “fit for purpose” in the
eyes of our customers?
Is our current capability driving our strategic goals as
a business?

Scaling Principles
1. Scale out in a service-oriented fashion one service at a time
2. Design each kanban system from first principles using STATIK, do not
attempt to design a grand solution at enterprise scale
3. Use the Kanban Cadences as the management
system that enables balance, leading to better
enterprise services delivery.

Strategy
Review
Risk
Review
Monthly
Service
Delivery
Review
Bi-WeeklyQuarterly
Kanban
Meeting
Daily
Operations
Review
Monthly
Replenishment/
Commitment
Meeting
Weekly
Delivery
Planning
Meeting
Per delivery cadence
change change
change
change
change
change
change change
change
info
info
info
info
info
info
info
info
info
change info
Kanban CadencesDoing things better
Focus on Service Delivery
Doing
the
right
things
Getting things done!

Strategy
Review
Risk
Review
Monthly
Service
Delivery
Review
Bi-WeeklyQuarterly
Kanban
Meeting
Daily
Operations
Review
Monthly
Replenishment/
Commitment
Meeting
Weekly
Delivery
Planning
Meeting
Per delivery cadence
change change
change
change
change
change
change change
change
info
info
info
info
info
info
info
info
info
change info
Kanban Cadences
Focus on Service Delivery
Improvement/Evolutionary Set
Service Delivery Set

Flow of Information and Change
Flow of changes
• Actions and Decisions
made at one meeting
that will have a direct
effect on data reviewed,
capability observed and
discussions held in
other meetings.
changeinfo
Flow of information
• Information delivered
from one feedback
mechanism to another.
The information is
considered for possible
decisions.

Roles

Roles Are Emerging In Kanban & ESP
Ready
for
Engin-
eering
F
I
Comm-
itted
D
4 Ongoing
Development
Done
3
J
K
12
Testing
Verification
3
L
Commitment point
4 -
Requi-
rements
Analysis
2412 -
Risk
Analysis
4824 -
Pool
of
Ideas
∞
Service Delivery ManagerService Request Manager
Discarded
O
Reject
P Q
Marshals Options Manages Flow
Done

The 7 Kanban Cadences

The following meeting descriptions are just
typical configurations!
You should adjust frequency cadence, duration,
attendees based on your organization’s needs.
You are likely to adjust them over time.
Caution!

Getting Things Done:
The Service Delivery Meetings

Replenishment Meeting

Purpose: To decide what to select from the pool of
options, commit to next, and to replenish the input
buffer for the Kanban system
Cadence: Weekly
Duration: 20 to 30 minutes
Participants: The service delivery manager or the person
responsible for facilitating the delivery planning meeting;
together with service delivery personnel who can assess
technical and dependency risk and advise on scheduling,
sequencing and batching of items
Inputs: Observations from Kanban Meetings and Service
Delivery Reviews may result in changes to behavior at
Replenishment Meetings. Decisions from Strategy Review
such as policy changes and portfolio changes.
Outputs: Decisions regarding what to pull next plus
system changes sent to the Daily Kanban Meeting

Activities/Discussion
What’s new since the last meeting?
Inspect any submissions to the pool of options/ideas, or the “ready for delivery”
buffer
Ensure that items that are available for selection are correctly classified for risk
and requested classes of service are appropriate. Correct any mistakes
How many kanban slots are available and of what type/class? What kanban signals
do we have?
Filter the available pool of options by type, class, schedule window to gain an
initial list of candidates for selection
Ask stakeholders to select a short list of candidates based on initial filtering
Given the anticipated lead time, is it possible to form a consensus on the most
important items for selection?
If, not arrange to vote for selection

Example
Observations from Kanban Meetings and
Service Delivery Reviews may result in changes
to behavior at Replenishment Meetings.
For example, a high discard rate resulting in
work items being moved to the “trash can” has
been shown to change stakeholder behavior and
result in a tightening of the “definition of ready”
used to assert that a work item is available for
selection at the Replenishment Meeting.

[Daily] Kanban Meeting

Kanban Meeting
Purpose: To observe and track the status of
the work (not the workers). To observe the flow
of work.
Cadence: Daily
Duration: 10-20 minutes
Participants: The immediate service group or
team doing the work (4-50 people). Facilitated
by Service Delivery Manager
Inputs: Decisions from Replenishment Meeting
and from Delivery Planning Meeting. Decisions
and new initiatives from Strategy Review.
Outputs: Progress reported to Delivery
Planning Meeting and to Service Delivery
Review

Kanban Meeting
Activities:
Board will show the state of work and whether it is actively
being worked on, is queuing or is blocked or waiting for some
other reason.
The Service Delivery Manager will “walk the board” iterating
across the tickets from right (most close to completion) to left
(most recently started).
The SD Manager may solicit a status update on a ticket or
simply ask if there is any additional information that is not on
the board and may not be known to the team.
Attention is given to items blocked or delayed. The team will
discuss briefly who is working an issue and when it will be
resolved. There will also be a call for any other blocking issues
that are not on the board and for anyone who needs help to
speak up.

Kanban Meeting
More mature teams may only discuss blocked items, and not
discuss every ticket on the board.
The Service Delivery Manager must take responsibility for
resolution of blocking issues. They will ask who is assigned to
resolve it and when will it be resolved.
Clearly defined escalation paths and policies are important for
unresolved issues.
After Meeting: The participants spontaneously meet around
an issue or problem observed during the Kanban Meeting.
Their goal is to discuss it and seek resolution. Happens
immediately after the Daily Kanban Meeting.

Delivery Planning Meeting

Purpose: To plan downstream delivery and form a delivery manifest.
Cadence: Varies, based on delivery cadence
Duration: 1-2 hours
Participants: Facilitated by the person playing the role of Service Delivery
Manager. Any other interested parties should be invited including those
who receive and accept the delivery, and anyone involved in the logistics
of making a delivery. Specialists are present for their technical knowledge
and risk-assessment capabilities. Managers are present so that decisions
can be made.
Inputs: Information from Daily Kanban Meeting on which items are
potentially available to deliver. Risk considerations from Risk Review which
might affect delivery decisions.
Outputs: Decisions on which items to deliver, communicated to Daily
Kanban Meeting. Information on issues with delivery sent to Risk Review.

Discussion (Kata)
Which items in the system are (or will be) ready for release?
What is required to actually release each item to production?
What testing will be required post-release to validate the
integrity of production systems?
What risks are involved?
How are these risks being mitigated?
What contingency plans are required?
Who needs to be involved in the release and present during
the push to production (or other delivery mechanism)?
How long will the release take?
What other logistics will be involved?

Test
Ready
F
N
K
M
L J
F
Forecast tickets completed for delivery
E
I
G
D
Discarded
I
Ideas
Dev
Ready
5
Ongoing
Development Testing
Done
3 35
UAT
Delivery
Ready
∞ ∞
100% confidence
70+% confidence

Test
Ready
F
N
K
M
L J
F
Boost class of service on marginal tickets
to ensure delivery
E
G
D
Discarded
I
Ideas
Dev
Ready
5
Ongoing
Development Testing
Done
3 35
UAT
Delivery
Ready
∞ ∞
100% confidence
Fixed date CoS
provides 100%
confidence
I

Delivery Planning Daily Kanban Meeting
Ask “which items [from the Kanban board] do we believe will be
completed in time for delivery on [delivery date]?” This can be done using
Monte Carlo simulation built into high quality Kanban software tools, or it
can be done in a more qualitative manner by asking team members how
things are flowing.
In this situation, all items committed for delivery at Delivery Planning
effectively become fixed delivery date class of service items. Ideally this
should be made explicit and visualized appropriately.
As a consequence the queuing discipline on the kanban board is affected.
What and how workers at the kanban board choose pull items will be
changed for a temporary period until the delivery is made from the system
to the customer(s).

Doing the Right Things and
Doing Things Right:
The Improvement Set

Strategy Review

Strategy Review
Purpose: Are we in the business we want to be in AND do we have the
capability to be in that business? Are our goals achievable?
Cadence: Quarterly
Duration: ½ day
Participants: Customer-facing staff; senior leaders; product and portfolio
managers
Input: Current capability information from Service Delivery Review and
Ops Review. Also informed by input from Replenishment meetings, most
likely related to business risk, capacity allocation or demand shaping
policy. Input from customer-facing staff.
Output: New information and decisions brought into Operations Review
and Service Delivery Review with “fitness for purpose” information and
KPIs (Key Performance Indicator metrics).

Strategy Review, example
Example 1
Existing strategy pursues seasonal, short-shelf life opportunities with
fixed delivery dates. Current capability: lead times are too long and
highly unpredictable. As a result, many opportunities are missed
partially or completely.
Decision may be made to readjust the allocation of the portfolio for
more medium and long-term opportunities better suited to current
capability.
Example 2
Customer-facing staff reports on reasons why customers order from
us. Cluster the narratives and compare with existing market
segmentation. Make adjustments if new customer segments have
appeared.

Service Delivery Review

Purpose: Look at whether we are delivering according to customer
expectations. Looks at a single kanban board.
• Compare current capabilities against fitness criteria metrics and seek to
balance demand against capability and hedge risk appropriately.
Cadence: Twice a month
Duration: ½ hour
Participants: Conducted by the Service Delivery Manager (SDM) often
includes Service Request Manager, customers and other external
stakeholders together with representatives of the delivery team
Inputs: Progress and data from Daily Kanban Meeting; Decisions from
Operations Review. Actions from Risk Review.
Outputs: Findings reported at Operations Review.

Activity
A focused discussion about system capability
Review against fitness criteria metrics, e.g. current capability versus
lead time SLA with 60 day, 85% on-time target
Discuss shortfalls against (customer) expectations. Analyze for
assignable/special cause versus chance/common cause
Discuss options for risk mitigation & reduction or system design
changes to improve observed capability against expectations
What services do we currently provide? Which service requests /
work items types do we accept?
What are the service level expectations of each work item type?

Discussion
What is our current capability to delivery each type?
Lead time distribution
Delivery Rate
System Liquidity Level
Transaction volume, volatility, immediacy
Flow efficiency
Quality
Delay Risk (from blocker) as likelihood and impact
Service level expectation, due date performance
Questions relating to process improvement
What have your team achieved since last meeting?
What do you need help with from a colleague?
What do you need help with from the supervisor or service delivery manager?
Does it need escalated?

Service Delivery Review,
example
Discovery from Service Delivery Review
It there were a lot of Fixed Date items but a long tail
in lead time distribution then the customer might
choose to schedule the fixed date items earlier or to
reduce the quantity of Fixed Date items by changing
their strategy.

Operations Review

Operations Review
Purpose: “Systems of Systems” level review. Disciplined
review of demand and capability for each kanban system with
a particular focus on dependencies and dependent effects.
Cadence: Monthly
Duration: 2 hours
Participants: Service Delivery Manager and Service Request
Manager for each kanban system. Senior management. Senior
business owners or customer representatives. Downstream
mid-level managers. Functional managers and senior
individual contributors representing each kanban system.
Product Mgr, Portfolio Mgr, Project Mgr.

Inputs: Summary findings from Service Delivery Reviews for
all kanban systems in the network. Business performance
information from Strategy Review such as financial reports,
customer satisfaction surveys. Ongoing improvement
initiatives from Risk Review about system-wide changes.
Outputs: A list of improvement suggestions/actions/decisions
or required changes to strategy with designated owners sent
to Service Delivery Review and to Strategy Review.
Dependent impact on tail risk for a lead time distribution, to
Risk Review, to inform prioritizing risks for reduction
mitigation or contingency planning.
Operations Review

Operations Review
Activity/Discussion
Look at performance, capability, and dependencies between
multiple kanban systems
Dependencies understood. Interdependent effects exposed
Kaizen events suggested by attendees
Improvement opportunities assigned to managers as last
agenda item

Risk Review

Risk Review
Purpose: Look at problems that put our delivery capability at
risk.
Cadence: Monthly
Duration: 1-2 hours
Participants: Facilitated by a Service Delivery Manager or a
Kanban coach; Anyone with information or experience of
recent blockers. Service delivery managers. Project and
program managers. Customer-facing managers are optional.
Might have managers from dependent services.

Inputs: Issues from a network of kanban systems from Ops Review
and individual kanban systems from Service Delivery Review.
Decisions from Delivery Planning Meeting.
Outputs: Information from Risk Review may inform Delivery
Planning as it may not be wise to assert an item will be ready for
delivery and make a commitment if there is a tail risk that cannot
readily be managed and effectively avoided for a specific work item.
Actions decided at Risk Review, specifically risk reduction,
mitigation or contingency plans, may enable changes in service
delivery and kanban system design and hence change requests flow
from Risk Review to Service Delivery Review and Operations
Review.
Risk Review

Risk Review
Activities
Cluster blocker tickets from the last month
Cluster blockers based on the stories behind
the delay
Each cluster represents a risk
Analyze likelihood & impact
Identify the risks most impacting the tail of
the lead time distribution and focus on those
Review risk management policies
Identify Likelihood & Impact
Root Cause Analysis

Risk Review example
We may need to understand where the tail of a lead time
distribution most directly affects a failure to satisfy customers
and poor performance against service level expectations.
Actions that trim the tail of a lead time distribution will have
the effect of reducing average lead time and shifting it to the
left on the distribution curve. As a consequence of this, it may
be possible to change capacity allocation for a given type of
work, or alter the capacity allocation for a specific class of
service.

Risk Review
Discussion
How much risk do we want to take?
Do we have the correct risk assessment framework?
Have we identified the right risk dimensions?
Are our assessment taxonomies for risk dimensions providing
us with actionable information? Do they need modified?
Which risks do we want to hedge? How should we allocate
our portfolio or product mix across those risks? In which
percentages for each category?

Risk Review, continued
Review classes of service
 Are they still appropriate? Are they being used? Have any exceptions
been made? Is there a new pattern? Need for a new class of service?
Review blockers
 Prioritize mitigation & reduction actions based on blocker cluster
analysis
 Review risk hedging policies
 Consider whether recently observed demand fits with historic patterns
and capacity allocation is still appropriate
Review demand shaping policies
 Should we adjust policies that bifurcate demand on dependent or
shared services?

Types of blocked items
Blocked with an issue internal to our system (and within our
political control)
Blocked due to an issue outside our system but within our
firm (requires collaboration and possibly political capital to
resolve)
Blocked due to an issue external to our firm, typically with a
vendor, regulator, customer, or perhaps a political issue such
as a forthcoming election
Risk Review, continued

What do you do with the insights from
Kanban Cadences?

Pain point identified: Do you know what to do?
Missing deadlines
Poor predictability – can’t say when work will be
finished
Overburdened, too busy
Dealing with dependencies
Shifting priorities
Quality issues
Customer dissatisfaction
…

Do you know techniques to improve?
Lead time distribution improvement
Flow efficiency improvement
Risk profiling for portfolios
System and staff liquidity
WIP limits
Class of Service
Capacity allocation
Options management
Kanban systems volatility
Risk types; variability types
Forecasting with utility graph functions
…

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https://improuv.com/kanban/schulung/enterprise-services-planning-program
MUNICH, Germany – 14-18 March 2016

ESP 5-Day Training Class – class at your location
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Enterprise Services Planning Executive Summit
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Kanban Leadership Retreat
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Thank you!

Kanban Cadences & Information Flow

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