The document summarizes highlights from a six-week course on personal Kanban. The course covered two chapters per session over six sessions. Participants actively practiced Kanban by visualizing their work and limiting work-in-progress using Kanban boards. An exercise was described where participants estimated properties of marbles in cups to learn about defining work in smaller chunks to improve flexibility and efficiency. Overall, the course helped participants focus on value, eliminate waste, and make better decisions using Kanban principles.

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Highlights from Six Weeks Practicing Personal Kanban
Keil Wilson, agileLNK & Nelnet

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• A way to focus deeply on one agile subject
• Kanban is a regular community request
• Chose a 6-week facilitated course format
• Met one night per, one hour per night
• Each session covered two chapters
• Sessions were hands-on, collaborative and interactive
• Participants would actively practice Kanban

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Rules of Personal Kanban
• Personal Kanban focuses on two simple rules:
1. Visualize Your Work
2. Limit Your Work-in-Progress (WIP)

4. Talladega Nights – Driving Blindfolded

5. We use real-time
information every day in
our lives.
Visualizing work allows us
to measure our progress
and adjust to changing
conditions.
Imagine using your cell
phone without a battery
percent remaining icon.
Could you trust it?

6. Understand state
without knowing all of
the details.

7. • Remove completed work
from your view…leaving
behind more work.
• Require attention to a lot of
details.
• Due Dates
• Category
• Project
• Priority
• All of this needs constant
review.

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Split into teams. Record estimates in your notebook for the following…
1. Open bag, but do not empty marbles. Looking into bag, estimate:
a) …# of White Marbles
b) …# of marble colors
c) …which color has the most marbles
d) …how long would it takes to move all marbles from bucket 1 to 2, then 2 to 3, then 3 to
4
i. Moving one marble at a time
ii. Moving all of one color before moving the next
2. Pour marbles into cup one and repeat estimates
3. Organize marbles by type into each cup and repeat estimates.

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Split into teams. Record estimates in your notebook for the following…
1. Open bag, but do not empty marbles. Looking into bag, estimate: [Unplanned
Projects]
a) …# of White Marbles
b) …# of marble colors
c) …which color has the most marbles
d) …how long would it takes to move all marbles from bucket 1 to 2, then 2 to 3, then 3 to
4
i. Moving one marble at a time
ii. Moving all of one color before moving the next
2. Pour marbles into cup one and repeat estimates [To-Do Lists]
3. Organize marbles by type into each cup and repeat estimates. [Kanban Board]

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14. • Improve focus
• Reduce context
switching penalty
• Complete something
• Stop STARTING and
Start FINISHING

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Rules
• You have 40 seconds to complete the objective
• You may only move one marble at a time
• All marbles of a color must complete the move from cup to cup
together
• You cannot dump marbles from one cup to the next en masse
• Teams can organize themselves however they wish
• Marbles must move from cup 1 to 2, then 2 to 3, then 3 to 4
Points
 Each marble is 1 point
 All marbles of a color
must be in last cup for
points to count
Objectives
1st Pass: Move all marbles from one cup to the next, entire set must move together
2nd Pass: Move all of one color from one cup to the next, colors must move together
3rd Pass: Move individual marbles of one color from one cup to the next, colors must move
together
BONUS - Now Green is worth double points, how does your strategy change?

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Rules
• You have 40 seconds to complete the objective
• You may only move one marble at a time
• All marbles of a color must complete the move from cup to cup
together
• You cannot dump marbles from one cup to the next en masse
• Teams can organize themselves however they wish
• Marbles must move from cup 1 to 2, then 2 to 3, then 3 to 4
Points
 Each marble is 1 point
 All marbles of a color
must be in last cup for
points to count
Objectives
1st Pass: Move all marbles from one cup to the next, entire set must move together
2nd Pass: Move all of one color from one cup to the next, colors must move together
3rd Pass: Move individual marbles of one color from one cup to the next, colors must move
together
BONUS - Now Green is worth double points, how does your strategy change?
[Defining work in smaller chunks improves flexibility and efficiency. This is limiting WIP.]

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• Worked in 1-week iterations
• Reviewed challenges and successes at the start or each session
• Attendees updated boards based on reading and experience applying Personal
Kanban

18.  Productivity
 Getting a lot of work done, but is it the right work?
 Kanban helps us limit WIP (reducing context switching) helping us
accomplish more.
 Efficiency:
 Your work is easily done, but is it the right work?
 Kanban helps us focus on our value stream, eliminating wasteful
activities from the process.
 Effectiveness
 Getting the right work done at the right time (right now).
 Kanban makes our options more obvious and quickly gives us
information to make better decisions.
* Kanban helps us feel joy about both what we HAVE and HAVE NOT
accomplished.

19. • Improvement requires reflection.
• Can you remember everything you
completed over the last week?
• Ever filled out a timesheet?
• Reviewing completed work for
patterns, we can reduce risk and
learn:
• How much effort do tasks require?
• Are certain types of tasks
predictable?
• Are completed tasks adding value?

20. Pull – Moving tasks to a
ready state.
• What’s the difference
between push and pull
systems?

21. • Portable Kanban
• How do you keep the board visible as you move from
home to office and etcetera?
• Many decided to go electronic
• Set your bowser’s homepage to your Kanban board
• Set your Kanban app to launch at startup
• Ain’t Nobody Got Time for That!
• Making time to organize is counter intuitive
• Everyone should just know what to do
• You have to make the time to organize and plan on a
regular schedule
• I Don’t Control My WIP
• Outside forces (like my boss) heap work on me all the
time
• $#!? happens, so accept what you can’t control
• Control what you can
• Ask when work is truly needed
• Delegate when possible
What didn’t work and how did we
adapt?

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Questions or Comments?

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 Personal Kanban: Mapping Work | Navigating Life: book by Jim Benson
 KanbanFlow: online Kanban board. Free & premium versions
 LeanKit: online Kanban board (and more). Free & premium versions
 Trello: online project organization tool. Free & premium versions
 * In my opinion, KanbanFlow provides more features for free than the other tools. Trello is not really
Kanban focused like the other two are (e.g., no WIP limit tracking). I’m sure there are a dozen other tools
I could be considering. Use some of your powerful Google-fu to do your own research and find a tool you
like. - Keil