Kanban introduction

Kanban - Introduction
2014-10-17, Tomas Rybing, Aptilo Networks
”Kanban is a method for managing knowledge work with an emphasis on just-in-time
delivery while not overloading the team members. In this approach, the process, from
deﬁnition of a task to its delivery to the customer, is displayed for participants to see and
team members pull work from a queue”, from Wikipedia - ”Kanban (development)”

Agenda
• Background - Lean
• Kanban and theories behind
• Context switching
• Little’s law
• Theory of constraints
• Feedback loops
• Kanban - Principles
• Visualize
• Limit WIP
• Manage ﬂow
• Other - Daily stand-up, planning, estimation, retrospectives and priority pyramid
• Summary
Kanban is Japanese and means ”sign” or ”index card”,
this picture taken from the book ”The Toyota way”

Background - Lean
• Lean principles originates from Toyota Production
System (TPS)
• Started in Japan after WW2, huge investments for
”moving assembly line” wasn’t possible
• Instead supermarkets were studied, they ﬁlled
their stock only when it was close to become
empty
• JIT (Just In Time) was born. Don’t build stock it will
hide problems in your process
• Kaizen - ”Continuous improvement”
• Muda - ”Waste”

What is Lean (a leantroduction☺)?
Flow
efficiency
Resource
efficiency
The
efficiency
m
atrix© Niklas Modig and Per Åhlström from ”Detta är lean”

What is Lean?
Flow
efﬁciency
Resource
efﬁciency

What is Lean?
Flow
efﬁciency
Resource
efﬁciency
This is Lean

Kanban and theories behind
• ”Tool for improving what you do every day” - Hammarberg
• Lightweight - Easy to start with (is evolutionary)
• Blend in with your current development process
• Theories behind
• Context switching
• Little’s law
• Theory of constraints
• Feedback loops

Context switching (1 of 2)
• Public Enemy No.1 in creative
work
• ”One thing at the time” is most
effective
• One project - 100% work time
• Two projects - 10% per project
spent in context switching
• Three projects - ”Forget about
it” (Johnny Depp from the movie
”Donnie Brasco”)
© Gerald Weinberg’s book ”Quality Software
Management: Systems Thinking”

Context switching (2 of 2)
• Report time on ticket
• Project One
• Project Two
• Update Delivery Tracker (Sharepoint)
• Project One
• Project Two
• Update Scorecard (Sharepoint)
• Project One
• Project Two
• Project One
• Update Delivery Tracker
(Sharepoint)
• Project Two
• Update Delivery Tracker
(Sharepoint)
A B

Little’s law
• Work in Process = Number of items
you work on at the same time
• Throughput = Average time to
complete each item (ex. 12 items/
month)
• Cycle time (or lead time) = Time
through the process for each item
• Cycle time (1) = 12 / 12 = 1 month
• Cycle time (2) = 6 / 12 = 0,5 month
• Reduce WIP to speed up work ﬂow
Work in process
Cycle time =
Throughput
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little's_law

Theory of constraints
• Any manageable system is being limited
in achieving more of its goals by a very
small number of constraints (bottlenecks).
• Or to simplify, ”a chain is not stronger than
it’s weakest link”
• Five focusing steps to address constraints
(not covered here)
• Short term - Maximize utilization of the
”bottleneck”
• Long term - Invest to ”remove” bottleneck
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_constraints

Feedback loops
• As short feedback loop as
possible!
• Feedback is the creator of
knowledge
• Delay causes extra work -
vicious circle Vicious circle
Slow feedback
More work
DelayHigh WIP
© Marcus Hammarberg www.marcusoft.net

Kanban - Principles
• Visualize
• Limit WIP
• Manage ﬂow

Visualize
• Kanban board - Whiteboard or
other empty wall space
• Columns represents steps in
work process
• Work tasks represented by
cards or stickies
• How to ﬁnd columns? Dry-run
a few tasks through your work
process
• Avatars
Team Kanban board
Personal Kanban boards @ Aptilo

Limit WIP
• WIP (Work In Process) means
all the work that you have
going on right now
• Limit WIP to secure ﬂow
• Set WIP limit - Pick a number
and try it out (then learn and
adjust)
• WIP per column or team/whole
board
• Stop starting, start ﬁnishing!

Manage ﬂow
• Flow is when each part of the work
moves from one value adding step
to another without any waiting times
or delays (cornerstone in TPS)
• Limit WIP
• Remove blockers (swarming)
• Continuous improvement - real
purpose of Kanban
• Retrospectives
• Root-cause analysis
• Toyota Kata
© Håkan Forss http://hakanforss.wordpress.com

Other• Daily stand-up
• Focus on tasks, not individuals
• Walk the board from right to left, to ”pull tasks”
• Planning
• Just-in-time planning
• Threshold triggered planning
• Estimation
• Planning poker
• T-shirt sizes
• Retrospectives
• Periodically - For continuous improvements to work process
Daily standup meeting

Priority pyramid (1 of 2)
• ”Human beings want three things
in life: sex, money and effective
prioritization” - Jim Benson
• Why keep a long list and decide
if a task shall be on position 36 or
37, the only things you care
about is your next upcoming
tasks
• Good sequencing decisions as
late as possible for the lowest
incremental cost
• Visualization! Enhancement of ”Priority ﬁlter” by Corey Ladas
http://leansoftwareengineering.com/2008/08/19/priority-ﬁlter/

Priority pyramid (2 of 2)
•☺

Kanban - Who else is using?
http://www.infoq.com/articles/kanban-operations-spotify
”Lean from the Trenches” book by Henrik Kniberghttp://www.infoq.com/articles/kanban-siemens-health-services

Summary
• Theories behind
• Context switching - Avoid if possible
• Little’s law - Cycle time (or lead time) = WIP / Throughput
• Theory of constraints - To find and handle bottlenecks
• Feedback loops - As short as possible
• Principles
• Visualize - Kanban board
• Limit WIP - For flow efficiency
• Manage flow - Continuous improvements of the work process

Kanban introduction

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