AgileCamp Silicon Valley 2015: Why Scrum Teams Should Care About Kanban by Mahesh Singh

1. Scrum Teams: Why Should You Care
About Kanban?
Mahesh Singh
Co-founder, SVP – Product, Digité, Inc.

2. Agenda
¨ So what camp are you in?!
¤ Scrum is working GREAT! Now what?
¤ Yes, we are doing Scrum, but….
¤ What about Roadmap planning? Backlog pruning?
¤ Other challenges that real teams face ..
¨ The Really Important question
¨ What is Kanban and how can it help?
¨ So, should you consider Kanban?

3. First, a quick poll!
So What Camp Are You In?

4. Scrum is working Great!
¨ Regular cadence of Sprints and Releases
¨ Velocity is steady, ability to estimate project completion is
good.
¨ All stories getting completed within Sprints
¨ Sprint dates are not slipping
¨ Good quality working – ‘shippable’ software!

5. Questions to ask…
¨ Is the product meeting market/ customer needs?
¨ Are customers providing (enough) feedback?
¨ Are developers interacting with customers?
¨ Is response to change fast enough?
¤ What if some story’s spec changed in the middle of the Sprint?
¤ What if a story has to be dropped?
¤ What if a story has to be added?
¨ Is the importance of “keeping commitments” too much?

6. Consider the other side…
¨ Scrum, but….
¤ Consistent User Story leakage
¤ Consistent Sprint/ Release deadlines missed
¤ Uneven Velocity
¨ Organizational Challenges
¤ Implementing new Roles – Scrum Master, Product Owner, Team
¤ Too many ‘rituals’?

7. Questions in Agile Forums
¨ How to handle tickets during Sprint Planning?
¨ How to deal with tasks that are not User Stories but still need
to get done?
¨ How do I measure my Sprint velocity if half of the work is user
stories and half is defects?
¨ Can a “Project Manager” be a Scrum Master?
¨ Can a product manager/ business analyst be a Product
Owner?

8. Challenges Software teams have in Real Life
¨ Teams don’t just do user stories, they do other work as well
¨ Teams do different types of things in different ways (processes)
¨ The capacity for teams to do specific things is usually limited/
restricted for business reasons
¨ Teams already have other roles
¨ What about the Product Owners’ work?

9. So, Where Do You Stand??

10. The Important Question..
“Do We need to Improve?”

11. If Yes, Kanban can Help!

12. Some Questions to Ask Yourself
¨ Is your team constantly improving? Do you wish it would?
¨ Is it hard to agree on what to change? Is it even harder to
implement change?
¨ Do you find your team is constantly task switching? Is your team
getting burned out?
¨ Are you playing the guessing game and missing deadlines?
¨ Are you delivering the value you know you are capable of?

13. History
¨ Kanban was created by Taiichi Ohno for Toyota
¨ Kanban is a driver of Just In Time and Lean in the Toyota
Production System
¨ Kanban has been widely used in manufacturing for more than 50
years
¨ Applying Kanban to Knowledge Work? èThe Kanban Method
¨ Combines aspects of the Theory of Constraints and Lean and other
production techniques with Kanban
Taiichi Ohno W. Edward Deming Eli Goldratt David J. Anderson

14. What is Kanban?
Kanban – Japanese term for “signboard” or
“Billboard” that indicates “available
capacity (to work)” or a visual cue to
begin work.
Kanban System - A visual system for
managing work moving through a
process – the “value stream”

15. So Why Should you Care?
¨ Kanban will Help you get LEAN!
¨ Visualize and Map your Value Stream
¨ Continuous Flow
¨ Incremental Change, Continuous Improvement
¨ Be Data Driven

16. Visualize

17. Kanban Board – What’s Going On in my Value
Stream?
What is in Development or Testing? What is blocked? Who is overloaded? Are we
heading for problems? Who can help? What is ready to ship?
Testing maybe a
bottleneck.
Critical Issue still
being tested
WIP violation
TFS Integration is
held up.
Ready to be
released!

18. The Importance of Optimizing Flow

19. The Importance of Continuous Flow
¨ Prevent the Bullwhip
Effect
¤ Variations in flow
have a greater impact
in downstream
activities

20. Multitasking is Bad
“It’s unequivocally the case that workers who are doing multiple things at one time are
doing them poorly,” said Clifford Nass, director of the Communication Between Humans
and Interactive Media Lab at Stanford University.
“The human brain just really isn’t built to switch rapidly from one task to another.
Workers who constantly multitask are hurting their ability to get work done, even when
they are not multitasking. People become much more distracted, can’t manage their
memory very well.”
Companies that demand multitasking may be damaging productivity. “It would be a total
tragedy if when we have so much potential to make the work force more intelligent, we
are actually making the work force dumber,” Nass said. “Companies that are demanding
that workers multitask might not only be hurting their productivity, but may be making the
workforce worse thinkers.”
*Ruth Mantell, Wall Street Journal Market Watch, July 12, 2011, “Multitasking: More
work, less productivity”

21. Stop Starting! Start Finishing!
¨ Pull
¤ Work can be started when there is capacity
¤ Team members “buy in” when pulling a task
¤ Unplanned tasks do not disrupt the system
¨ Limit WIP
¤ Balance demand with throughput
¤ Establish Cadence – Continuous Even Flow
¤ Reduce task switching and multitasking
¨ One Piece Flow/ Minimum Marketable Features
¤ Transfer of one piece of work at a time rather than batches
¤ Reduce partially done work and overload
¤ Deliver more often with higher value

22. Kanban is Evolutionary!
¨ Kanban recomends
¤ Start with What you Have
¤ Implement PULL
¤ Evolve/ Improve Gradually
¨ Kanban is
¤ Transparent
¤ Team Based Change
¤ Scientific Experimentation

23. What is Lean?
¨ Preserve and deliver value
¨ Eliminate waste
¨ Any resources not being used to drive value are being
wasted
¨ Continuously reflect and improve

24. How Do you Become Lean?
¨ The 5 Pillars of Lean
1) Map the Value Stream
2) Pull
3) Continuous Flow
4) Continuous Improvement
5) Deliver Value

25. Kanban to Lean
Kanban Applied The 5 Pillars of Lean
¨ Value Stream Mapping ✔
¨ Pull ✔
¨ Continuous Flow ✔
¨ Continuous Improvement ✔
¨ Deliver Value ✔

26. Kanban Knows No Boundaries
¨ Internally We Also Use Kanban for
¤ HR
¤ Finance
¤ Sales
¤ Marketing
¨ People use Kanban for all of the above PLUS
¤ Legal Transaction Management
¤ Book Publishing
¤ Video Game Development
¤ Personal Kanban
¤ And more

27. Tackle Those Questions with Kanban
¨ Constantly Improve
¨ Incremental Change
¨ Less Task Switching, Smooth Out Flow
¨ Deliver on Time for Higher Value
¨ Be Lean

28. Am I Lean Now?

29. Applying Kanban To Scrum

30. Scrum and Kanban
¨ Start with what you have
¤ Release Planning
¤ Sprint Planning
¤ Epic/ Story/ Task decomposition/ planning
¨ Visualize your workflow
¤ Model as much of the workflow detail as possible
¨ Look for Opportunities for Improvement
¨ Include Upstream/ Downstream Processes
¨ Make changes to the detailed process as needed

31. The Typical Scrum Process

32. Kanban enables greater Visualization

33. Kanban enables greater Visualization

34. Kanban enables greater Visualization

35. Kanban Facilitates multiple Work-items

36. Kanban facilitates Multiple Teams

37. Upstream Kanban – Product Owner’s Backlog
Management
Roadmap Board
Dev Board

38. Kanban enables Changes till “Last Responsible
Moment”
¨ Kanban helps you focus on Cost of Delay
¨ Allows changes in priority of what needs to be worked on
based on CoD
¨ Enables Product Owners/ Management to make changes
based on shifting Market/ Business priorities

39. Kanban helps Reduces Multitasking &
Facilitates FLOW
Flow

40. Kanban Board – What’s Going On in your Value
Stream?
What is in Development or Testing? What is blocked? Who is overloaded? Are we
heading for problems? Who can help? What is ready to ship?
Testing maybe a
bottleneck.
Critical Issue still
being tested
WIP violation
TFS Integration is
held up.
Ready to be
released!

41. Kanban Provides Valuable and
Unique Insight

42. Kanban provides Predictability
Cumulative Flow Diagram

43. Kanban Provides Avg. Completion Time
Lead/ Cycle Time Analysis

44. Kanban provides Waste Analysis
Blocker Clustering

45. Kanban helps measure Flow
Flow Efficiency

46. Kanban provides Statistical Insight
Cycle Time Distribution

47. Kanban provides Statistical Insight
Cycle Time Control Chart

48. To Commit or not to Commit?
¨ Better to make Commitment in advance for a Release?
¨ Or, to make a Release when there are enough (code)
Commits?!

49. Over a period of time, Kanban can help you -
¨ Instead of pre-committing to a Release Scope, make Releases
when sufficient work has been completed
¨ Establish a reliable cadence of delivery (code deployment or
production release)
¨ Deliver more, deliver more often
¨ Remove all friction related to User Story leakage and missed
deadlines
¨ Improve overall Team Productivity
¨ Reduce stress-levels in Teams and Management

50. So, Should You Consider Kanban?

51. What’s your Team’s “Lean Quotient”?
¨ How does it control multitasking/ task-switching? How does it
Limit WIP?
¨ How does it minimize Waste? (Wait time, unallocated time,
blocked time?)
¨ How (well) does it identify bottlenecks and constraints?
¨ How good is the FLOW of work in your Team?

52. Should you look at Kanban?
¨ Yes – IF you want/ need to –
¤ Study and analyze Flow
¤ Identify bottlenecks
¤ Define system constraints (WIP Limits)
¤ Improve Flow and Throughput (Velocity)
¤ Reduce Time to Market (Cycle Time)
¤ Improve team Morale and Productivity

53. Mahesh Singh
Co-founder, SVP – Product, Digité/ SwiftKanban
mahesh@digite.com/ @maheshsingh
www.swiftkanban.com
Thank You!