Session Title : Kanban for Business: "A (very large) Experiment" Session Overview: Ultimately, many, if not most, of our IT Enterprise Agility initiatives come to a stop because business 'simply doesn't get it' or does not support it enough to show significant business impact and value. We have seen this in Agile, and we are beginning to see the same with Kanban. What happens if a Kanban coach takes on a Business role, and starts driving Kanban from there? What shape does Kanban take, if it is to be implemented to accelerate responsiveness and growth in a diverse, $20M+, 600+ person portfolio? What does a Kanban even represent, if some of the outcomes desired are business metrics? Session Overview :

1. Kanban for Business
Avinash Rao
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2. Its always the Business, isn’t it?
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3. “How has your Kanban improved the business?”
• Bragging about a project delivered with 30% additional scope with the same team and timeline using
Kanban
(to anyone who would listen)
• Account Manager: “So, tell me, Mr. self-proclaimed-hotshot, if Kanban is so great, how would you
improve my business? IT is getting more complex, because the world and business is getting more
complex everyday!”
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4. So that got me thinking.
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5. So that got me thinking.
Me: “So what is it you actually do, Mr. Account Manager?”
AM: “Simple. 1. Increase Revenue. 2. Reduce Costs.”

6. What is Kanban?
• Visualization
• Matching capacity and work
• Flow
• WIP limits
• Improve collaboratively
• Surely, any business would benefit from this approach?
• And, isn’t the business where most of these transformation efforts fail, anyway?
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7. An Opportunity
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8. A Business role in a Complex account, in a Complex market
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9. Tough:
• Market, Customer, Environment
• Tough, actually means in a lot of cases, Complex
• “Run it like your own company!”
But mere paas Kanban hai!
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10. Tough:
• Market, Customer, Environment
• Tough, actually means in a lot of cases, Complex
• “Run it like your own company!”
But mere paas Kanban hai!
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ME

11. Round 1: When you have a Hammer, the World is Full of Nails!
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12. So what is an Business, exactly?
• Sales
• Delivery
• What’s the nearest nail? Accelerate Sales process
• What’s the nearest nail? Customer complaints about Delivery
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13. So I did what any Kanban guru (ahem!) would do.
• Boards everywhere, visualize everything
• Hammer, Hammer, Hammer.
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14. After a week: Drinking from a Firehose
1. It was just Data
2. It was too much to process
I wasn’t an Coach anymore.
And how exactly does this improve the business?
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15. 15

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ME

17. Take 2: Kanban of Kanbans
• If there is a Scrum of Scrums, surely, there is a Kanban of Kanbans?
• Problem solved - Only the key items from the individual boards!
• Hmm … what key items?
• Is a delay account threatening? Is a missed dependency?
• What if there is new business in the same area – does that show up in the same Kanban?
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18. Actually, its more complex than that …
Relationship
Sales
Delivery
Operations
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19. Round 3: It’s a Portfolio, stupid!
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20. Local Optima
• In a portfolio, how do we influence each Actor’s behavior?
• A board for each interaction?
• The right level of abstraction is in place, but will we have a collection of local optima?
• There is a Services Supply Chain!
• Are Supply Chain measurements the same as the Portfolio components?
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21. Take 4: I need LEAN
• Process maps to deep-dive into the end to end process
• Process team focused again on the projects – while the indicators are primarily on the projects, the
metrics and actions are often elsewhere
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22. And now, Round 5
• What does a Kanban mean, really?
• Andons
• Supply Chain measures
• Examples
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23. 23
Questions?
Thank you!