The document outlines a course on implementing Kanban to enhance workflow efficiency, detailing objectives such as describing Kanban, solving workflow problems, and selecting appropriate tools. It includes case studies, principles, practices, and metrics necessary for effective Kanban implementation, along with exercises to engage participants in understanding key concepts. Essential practices are emphasized, including visualizing work, limiting work in progress (WIP), and managing flow.

1. Implementing Kanban to
Improve your Workflow
jennifer.davis@getchef.com
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2. Introductions
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3. Introductions
• Name
• Current job role
• Experience with Kanban
• Expectations of this class
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4. Course Objectives and Style
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5. Course Objectives
• Upon completion of this course you will be able to
• Describe Kanban.
• Apply principles to solve workflow problems.
• Describe various tools.
• Choose the right tools for your team.
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6. Agenda
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7. Topics
• Qualifications
• Workflow
• Prepping for Success
• Intro to Kanban
• Metrics
• Online Tools
• Review
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8. Breaks!
• 10:30-11:00am Morning Break
• 12:30pm End of tutorial and Lunch
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9. Additional Questions?
• Kanban?
• Hadoop?
• Monitoring?
• Chef?
!
Ping me
Twitter: @sigje
Email: jennifer.davis@getchef.com
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10. Qualifications?
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11. Practitioner
“Excellence is an art won by
training and habituation…We
are what we repeatedly do.
Excellence, then, is not an
act but a habit.”
!
— Aristotle
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12. Case 1
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13. Team 1
• small
• semi-siloed from development and qe
• ~10 dev, ~3 qe, ~2 se, 1 product manager, 100s of
customers
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14. Goal
• Effective use of time
• No duplication of effort
• Improve customer experience
• Promotion to larger projects
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15. Solution
• Personal Kanban
• Dashboards
• Influence through visuals
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16. Factors for Success
• Trust
• Visual dashboards
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17. Case 2
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18. Team 2
• Small
• Siloed from development and qe
• ? dev, ? qe, 10 se, 1 product manager, 3 project
manager, open source, 100s of customers
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19. Goal
• Break down rigid single points of knowledge failure
• Reduce development friction
• Eliminate duplicate efforts
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20. Solution
• Team Kanban
• Incremental improvements
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21. Factors for Success
• Management buy in
• Training
• Effort to minimize “pushing”
• Weekly team syncs
• Proximity of team
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22. Workflow
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23. Workflow
Work that is ..
• orchestrated
• repeatable
• organized
• moving from one state to another.
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24. WIP
• Work in progress
• work that has had resources applied to it
!
• Resources are ..
• people, money,..
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25. Properties of Tasks
• name
• start date
• end date
• current state
• description
• priority
• owner
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26. TIP: Sample Task Handling
• What is it?
• Can you do anything with it?
• What is the next step?
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27. Properties of Projects
• same requirements as a task and are larger in
scope.
• may be comprised of more than one task.
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28. Task vs Project
Group Exercise
• What is the difference between a task and a
project?
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29. Additional property
• Size
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30. Interrupts
• Non planned work that comes in
• customer request
• incident
• request for help from coworker
• single point of knowledge (you) work
• high priority task push from manager
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31. Blocked work
• Work that can progress no further:
• dependent teams
• blocked by external team
• insufficiently qualified request
• blocked by requester
• dependent on SPOK
• blocked by team
• time dependent
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32. Work
Team Exercise
Time: 5 minutes
What does a typical work day look like for work that
you do specifically that is non-interrupt based?
Choose a speaker for the group to share summary.
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33. Interrupts
Team Exercise
Time: 5 minutes
Do you have interrupts and what are they?
!
Choose a (different) speaker for the group to share
summary.
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34. Done?
Group Exercise
• When is work done?
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35. Prepping for Success
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36. Environment
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37. Values
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38. Desire
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39. Motivation
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40. Connectedness
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41. Team Vs Individual
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42. Objectives
• Defined by the team. Not management.
• Defined by the team. Not individuals.
• Everyone has voice, opportunity to speak.
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43. Tip: Implement as a Team
Communication. Collaboration.
• Discuss objectives.
• Describe work.
• Define lanes.
• Define a task.
• Define a project.
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44. Tip: Elect a Champion
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45. Intro to Kanban
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46. Kanban
• “visual card”
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47. Kanban - Unit of work
• request
• issue
• defect
unit of work - specific to environment
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48. What is it ? A System.
• visual process management
• what to do
• when to do it
• how much to do
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49. What is it ? A Method.
• incremental, evolutionary process improvement
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50. 3 Principles
• Current Process.
• Incremental, Evolutionary Change.
• Respect current process, roles, responsibilities and
titles.
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51. 5 Core Practices
• Visualize.
• Limit WIP.
• Manage flow.
• Make policies explicit.
• Improve collaboratively.
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52. Kanban Principles
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53. 3 Principles
• Current Process.
• Incremental, Evolutionary Change.
• Respect current process, roles, responsibilities and
titles.
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54. Current Process
• Do you know what the current process is?
• Is it documented? Is it explicit? Is it clear?
• Has it been evaluated with team?
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55. 3 Principles
• Current Process.
• Incremental, Evolutionary Change.
• Respect current process, roles, responsibilities and
titles.
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56. Incremental Evolutionary Change
• How are you measuring current process?
• Is value clearly understood?
• Is work defined in value not cost?
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57. 3 Principles
• Current Process.
• Incremental, Evolutionary Change.
• Respect current process, roles, responsibilities
and titles.
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58. Respect Current State
• Find the current value.
• Not forceful.
• What people want vs How to get there
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59. Review Question
• What are the 3 principles?
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60. Kanban Practices
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61. 5 Core Practices
• Visualize.
• Limit WIP.
• Manage flow.
• Make policies explicit.
• Improve collaboratively.
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62. Work Unit
• Individual Card
• PostIt
• Color - Type
• Flags
• Blocked work
• Small PostIts
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63. Operations Cards
Team Exercise
Time: 10 minutes
Use PostIts and flags to
mock up a legend for
work items.
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64. Tip: Standardize
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65. Visualize - Avatar
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66. Visualize - Sample Boards
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67. States of Work
• specific to environment
• up for discussion within team
• can change overtime
• reflects now not what you want it to be
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68. Visualize - Sample Boards
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69. Visualize - Grid with Legend
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70. Visualize - Evolutionary
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71. Visualize - Automation
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72. Tip: Yes and ..
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73. Operations Board
Team Exercise
Time: 10 minutes
Use large PostIt to mock
up a SysAdmin board.
Don’t forget to add
your legend.
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74. 5 Core Practices
• Visualize.
• Limit WIP.
• Manage flow.
• Make policies explicit.
• Improve collaboratively.
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75. Limit WIP.
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76. Limit WIP - Why?
• Identify bottlenecks
• Weakest link in chain
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77. 5 Core Practices
• Visualize.
• Limit WIP.
• Manage flow.
• Make policies explicit.
• Improve collaboratively.
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78. Manage flow
• Measure flow of work items through states.
• How fast are we creating value, minimizing risk, and
avoiding cost of delay in predictable manner?
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79. 5 Core Practices
• Visualize.
• Limit WIP.
• Manage flow.
• Make policies explicit.
• Improve collaboratively.
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80. Make policies explicit.
80
Story In Progress:
Acceptance criteria are identified.The
story has been divided into tasks.The
“started” date has been recorded.

81. Make policies explicit.
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82. 5 Core Practices
• Visualize.
• Limit WIP.
• Manage flow.
• Make policies explicit.
• Improve collaboratively.
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83. Improve collaboratively.
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84. Improve collaboratively.
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85. Review Questions
• Give me an example of the most basic kanban
board.
• Why do we need to make policies explicit?
• Why do we make incremental changes?
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86. Meetings with Kanban
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87. Lean Coffee
• Draw “To Do, Doing, Done” on white board.
• Spend 5 minutes to write topics on sticky notes.
• Vote on topics with stickers. Each person gets 2
votes.
• Prioritization of topics based on votes.
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88. Metrics
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89. Metrics
• Why?
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90. Metrics
• What?
• cumulative flow
• type distribution
• efficiency
• average cycle times
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91. Cumulative Flow Diagram
count of cards in particular state/lane for each day in
a specific time interval.
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92. Cumulative Flow Diagram
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93. Distribution
• Count of cards organized by state, task type, or
owner.
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94. Card Distribution
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95. Card Distribution
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96. Efficiency
• relative status (in process, waiting, completed..) of
WIP over time.
• % of work
• gauge efficiency trends
• reduce ratio of work items waiting to be queued
versus items actively processed
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97. Efficiency Diagram
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98. Average Cycle Time
• cycle time - time take to move a task from start to
finish including wait time.
• average cycle time - specific to an interval of time
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99. Little’s Law
N = XR
• N - number in system
• X - Throughput
• R - average time in system
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100. Utilization Law
U = XS
• U - % of time processing tasks
• X - Output Rate Tasks/Unit of time
• S - Mean service time
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101. Applying Metrics
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102. Level 1
• Increase Throughput
• Increase Resource Utilization
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103. Level 2
• Decrease Variability
• sizing
• cycle time
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104. Group Activity
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105. Tools and Resources
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106. • RescueTime
• Trello
• Leankit
• Rally
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107. RescueTime - Time tracking
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108. RescueTime - Time tracking
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109. LeanKit - Kanban
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110. LeanKit - Kanban
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111. Trello - Kanban
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112. Rally - Scrum
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113. Dominica DeGrandis
• http://www.ddegrandis.com
• DevOps Kanban game
• Public and private training
• Youtube videos
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114. Review
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115. Workflow
Work that is ..
• orchestrated
• repeatable
• organized
• moving from one state to another.
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116. 3 Principles
• Current Process.
• Incremental, Evolutionary Change.
• Respect current process, roles, responsibilities and
titles.
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117. 5 Core Practices
• Visualize.
• Limit WIP.
• Manage flow.
• Make policies explicit.
• Improve collaboratively.
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118. Thank you
• Contact: jennifer.davis@getchef.com
• Twitter: @sigje
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119. Credits
• Washing the dishes - https://www.flickr.com/photos/mulazimoglu/3863835843/in/photostream/
• Kanban (im Team) - https://www.flickr.com/photos/otacke/
• Kanban avatars - https://www.flickr.com/photos/ninetomorrows/6925604157
• Productivity kanban - https://www.flickr.com/photos/orcmid/3879259373
• Kanban a week later - https://www.flickr.com/photos/alq666/3388196910
• explicit policies kanban board - https://www.flickr.com/photos/dexter_mixwith/6353937575
• team vs individual - http://www.flickr.com/photos/levork
!
!
!
!
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