This document describes a workshop on using Personal Kanban to effectively achieve goals in 2011. The workshop aims to define problems with learning and development, cover the basics of Kanban, discuss designing a personal Kanban board, and give people confidence to try Kanban for themselves. It outlines common workload issues and introduces Personal Kanban and timeboxing as techniques to help manage activities. The document then provides details on setting up a personal Kanban board, including defining goals, designing cards, and adapting the board over time.

1. Personal Kanban:
A worshop for an effective 2011
...or how to make your goals flow
into achievements :-)
LeanAgileMachine.com

2. Goals
● Define the problems faced when learning and
developing
● Cover the basic of Kanban
● Discuss the design choices for my Kanban
● The layout & values of my personal kanban boards
● Explain how cards are designed to add greater value
● Give people confidence to try for themselves

3. What is the problem...
● Never have enought time to get everything done
● Always more to learn
● Something urgent comes up
● New opportunities arise
● Friends dragging you to the pub
● Work to do, bills to pay, kids to feed...
● Window of opportunity for ”Getting stuf done”
is limited

4. Cant you just pull your
finger out!
● Too many things on todo list never get done
● Busy all week but dont remember what I did / learnt
● Working harder and longer not cutting it
● Battling monsters from the id:
● overactive interest and imagination
● Internet addiction
● Attention deficit dissorder (?)
● Need to cycle 200km a day

5. So workload is a problem
● What techniques could I used to help?
● Muddle along and hope for the best
● Change my career (tube driver)
● Change my life (retreat to monestry)
● 2 techniques used to manage activities
● Personal Kanban
● Pomedero – Time boxing

6. Why try Personal Kanban
● To lean more about Kanban
● Be able to introduce kanban technique to others
● To focus my training so I learn more
● Study one thing at a time
● Make sure I have learnt something – achieve goals
● It seemed like a good idea at the time
● Kanban is fun, cool, creative and viral

7. What is Kanban ?
● A way to manage dependant events
● Make your work visible
● Limit your work in progress
● Avoiding multi­tasking – its inefficient
● Pull system
● only work on a task once previous task is complete
● Help work to flow
● continuously and predictably deliver value

8. Simple design

9. Can be applied to
Software development

10. Software projects design

11. Starting your board
● Find a suitable space to make a board
● Use a whiteboard
● Large area with sticky notes
● Fridge with cards and fridge magnets
● Layout the board design
● Plan (backlog)
● Doing
● Done

12. Simple Board layout

13. Visualising your situation
● Add all your current work
● Things should get messy
● Add things you just recently completed
● Helps with sense of achievement / gives confidence
● Put all the things you know you want to start doing
in planning

14. Messy board example
● JR0cket board messy

15. Starting to organise your board

16. What are your goals
● GROW approach to establishing goals
● Goal – statement of what you want to achive
● Reality – where are you in relation to the goal
● Options – what are the ways to achieve the goal
● Way forward – try one of the options
● Example goal
Persuade everyone I know..
to use open source software...
as their prefered choice for work and play

17. Goal Lanes

18. Inline Goals

19. Card design
● Card can have more than a title
● Details of task
● Aims, activities, outcomes
● Due dates
● Related tasks / goals

20. Example card

21. Lane design
● Value Stream mapping
● What activies do you do to get things done
● Example:
● Personal study / development
● Any suggestions from the audience ??

22. Adapt and change
● Think about your WIP limits
● Think about your card design (write on both sides if
you need)
● Where you keep your board
● Should be visible but not distracting

23. Kanban design for study

24. How did I build my Kanban
● Started simple with: Plan – Do – Done
● Used scrap of paper for initial design
● Built a simple board and started using it
● Evolved into Plan – Do – Check – Act
● Evaluated deficits in board and enhanced
● Used online Kanban
● So I dont need to cary a large whiteboard around
● Blogged what I had done to get feedback

25. Starting from scratch

26. Created basic lanes

27. Plan – Doing – Done

28. Started adding task cards

29. First card on the board, cool

30. Is something ready to
study?
● Identify completed work between seperate board
lanes
● Spilt the study board lane into two
● First new lane is the waiting state
● Second lane is the study activity

31. Edit the board design

32. Split the study lane

33. Tasks are progressing
smoothly

34. Several minutes later
After adding a few tasks to the
board....

35. Oh dear, my monsters are
back

36. So What is missing ?
● I have a Kanban board
● I am breaking my tasks down into relatively small
chunks
● But I still have far too much to do...

37. Lets apply the WIP !!!
● To sudy effectively I need to focus
● To focus I need to work on 1 thing at
once
● To work on 1 thing at once I need:
Work In Progress
Limits

38. Refactor the tasks on
Kanban

39. Add WIP Limits to Kanban

40. WIP Limits now applied

41. How do I know if I've learnt?
● Need a Check step after study
● Encourages continuous improvement
● A lean principle
● Lets create a new lane on the board as a review
stage

42. Add a Check Lane with WIP

43. Move tasks into new lane

44. Have a board, what next?
● Defined task cards in more detail
● Limited by the tool I'm using though
● Pomodoro technique for time boxing tasks
● Value stream mapping?
● Considered overkill for simple set of events

45. Defining the task card
● Set goal of task
● Identify measure to check if goal reached
● eg. Can write a Kata in Scala
● eg. Can design a Kanban board using VSM
● eg. Write a summary of the book on blog, stating
why it is a valuable read
● Identify resources to assist training
● Identify scope of training
● refactor task into multiple cards if too big

46. Why Pomodoro
● Limited time helps concentration
● starting this presentation this morning focused me
● Easier to set and measure goals for a time boxed
activity
● Helps break down tasks into managable chuncks

47. Pomodero – Timeboxing
tasks
● Useful tool to focus mind on a goal
● Helps stick to WIP limits and Idea of flow
● Tasks have varying time limits during flow
dependant on size of task
● Review: 5 – 15 minutes
● Study: 30 minutes – half a day
● Evaluate: 15 minutes – 1 hour
● Blogging: continuous activity

48. Other learning techniques
● For programming languages
● Kata
● Dojo's
● TDD / BDD
● Speed reading
● Attending / Giving SkillsMatter talks & courses
● Blogging and Tweeting
● leanagilemachine.com
● @JR0cket

49. Summary
● I found Kanban increased my training effectiveness
● I learnt alot about Kanban
● I got feedback on my techniques by blogging
● I got lots of feedback from this talk (hopefully)
● Its time for the pub if you dont have any
questions ?

50. Resources
● LeanAgileMachine.com – lean agile blog
● JR0cket.com / JR0cket.co.uk – tech stuff
● SkillsMatter.com – podcasts, talks, courses
● PersonalKanban.com – the resource for personal
kanban
● LimitedWIPSociety.org – please get involved
● The Goal – Eliyahu M. Goldratt – great read
● Theory of Constraints – Eliyahu M. Goldratt

51. PUB
● Hat and Feathers
● Left out of SkillsMatter
● On the corner at main crossroads
● Walk to bar and buy several drinks – if you ask me a
good question I may buy you a drink or two