Your team started using Kanban boards and visualizing your work a while back and, though everyone is happy about the increased visibility, your team is nowhere near the utopia other teams say they’ve achieved. Even worse, you don’t know why or how to get there!
Many teams hit this same plateau and stop, falling tragically short of the value that can be achieved with deeper Kanban implementations. This presentation shares tangible steps to take to help transform shallow kanban implementations into systems focused on flow and continuous improvement.
Predictability: No Magic Required - LeanKit Webinar (June 2017)Julia Wester
Knowledge work tends to be variable in nature and involves cross-functional teams collaborating on each step of the process. This makes project delivery hard to predict as work may be held up due to unforeseen blockers, hand-off delays, or approval cycles taking longer than expected.
In this webinar, I’ll provide guidance around choices you can make that impact your ability to meet your commitments with confidence.
You'll learn how to predict the cycle time of work before it's finished. I will also explain the basics of queuing theory, and the relationship between queue size, capacity utilization, and cycle times. Armed with this insight, you'll be able to:
* Monitor your workflow for leading predictability indicators.
* Make informed choices to maximize your value throughput.
* Forecast delivery with better accuracy using LeanKit data and analytics.
There's no magic required in achieving predictable delivery. The secret is using past performance data to predict future behavior.
Jumping off the hamster wheel with KanbanJulia Wester
You're running and running and running but the scenery never changes. You never actually get to your destination. So, you run faster and faster thinking that if you just try harder then you'll get there. Do you feel like you're living your life in a hamster wheel? You're not alone. Many teams face conditions that keep them feeling exactly the same way.
This presentation walks through the challenges from my 1st development manager role, but is presented as a holistic story by including the challenges and changes of the business we were embedded with. Specifically, unsustainable amounts of work, a constant barrage of emergencies, feeling forced into the percentage game, and high levels of specialization.
Defending against CDD: Chaos-Driven DeliveryJulia Wester
Have you heard of TDD? Well, many teams struggle with CDD: Chaos-Driven Delivery. That is, teams struggle with how to handle the constant onslaught of overwhelming amounts of work and begin to lose hope. The good news is that if you understand operating systems, you already know a great deal about how to tame the chaos!
Process management is an integral part of an operating system. The OS makes decisions about scheduling, sharing information between jobs, handling interrupts and multi-tasking. It also has to manage the resources of a process and be concerned with process synchronization, just as we mere humans do. This presentation will show you how to apply common concepts from operating system process management to the way teams process work.
Atlassian has been in hyper-growth for the last 5 years, exploding from 200 employees to over 1700. We've worked tirelessly to implement strategic planning while staying true to our agile roots and upholding our culture and values. To the surprise of no-one, it ain't easy. Learn about three practices we developed – and scaled – to help our teams deliver more compelling stories, and the strategic framework they all feed into.
RUFing it out with Customer Feedback: Knowing the “Why”Atlassian
On one hand, Net Promoter Scores (NPS) are great for gauging how customers feel – but they don’t provide any specific insights. On the other hand, unstructured comments from support tickets and similar sources are rich with detail – but with 15,000 comments per week coming in, it was impossible to categorize and understand what that information actually meant. We needed a better way. Join the head of our Voice of the Customer team, Sean Cramer, to learn about the innovative system Atlassian has built: RUF (Reliability, Usability, Functionality). RUF categorizes, measures, and prioritizes issues gleaned from not just Net Promoter feedback, but from all our sources of customer feedback. Come learn how your organization can take Atlassian’s learnings, and use them to build a similar system for your organization.
What Awesome Sauce Tastes Like: Getting & Keeping Your Teams Healthy... the A...Atlassian
Join Atlassian veterans Dominic and Ben for the story of how and why we created a little thing called the Team Health Monitor. They show you how you can use it to harness the power and increase the confidence of your own healthy teams.
Building Fast Growth Into Your Products Using Data-Informed DesignAtlassian
There's a thing called "time to value": how long it takes a team to uncover and realize value from a product. Atlassian learned this the hard way, discovering that more than half of new customers tried its products for less than 30 minutes – far too short a time to fully unlock their value. We approached and solved this problem using data-informed design – a combination of growth hacking, user research, data analytics, and A/B testing at scale – to dramatically increase customer engagement with our products. Come hear lead designer Alastair Simpson describe the variety of approaches we started with and how we learned which ones to pursue and which ones to discard. You'll learn how to design and centralise improved onboarding experiences that can be spread across all your products.
Building the Ultimate Full Company Growth TeamSean Ellis
The goal of any company with a valuable product is to scale adoption by qualified customers. This generally requires establishing a "north star metric" and managing growth against that metric. These slides show how you can build a core growth team that coordinates the efforts of the full company to drive sustainable growth. It is important that every idea be treated as a test. The more tests you run the more learning you gain for growing the company. But running a lot of tests requires a process that is explained in the slides.
Predictability: No Magic Required - LeanKit Webinar (June 2017)Julia Wester
Knowledge work tends to be variable in nature and involves cross-functional teams collaborating on each step of the process. This makes project delivery hard to predict as work may be held up due to unforeseen blockers, hand-off delays, or approval cycles taking longer than expected.
In this webinar, I’ll provide guidance around choices you can make that impact your ability to meet your commitments with confidence.
You'll learn how to predict the cycle time of work before it's finished. I will also explain the basics of queuing theory, and the relationship between queue size, capacity utilization, and cycle times. Armed with this insight, you'll be able to:
* Monitor your workflow for leading predictability indicators.
* Make informed choices to maximize your value throughput.
* Forecast delivery with better accuracy using LeanKit data and analytics.
There's no magic required in achieving predictable delivery. The secret is using past performance data to predict future behavior.
Jumping off the hamster wheel with KanbanJulia Wester
You're running and running and running but the scenery never changes. You never actually get to your destination. So, you run faster and faster thinking that if you just try harder then you'll get there. Do you feel like you're living your life in a hamster wheel? You're not alone. Many teams face conditions that keep them feeling exactly the same way.
This presentation walks through the challenges from my 1st development manager role, but is presented as a holistic story by including the challenges and changes of the business we were embedded with. Specifically, unsustainable amounts of work, a constant barrage of emergencies, feeling forced into the percentage game, and high levels of specialization.
Defending against CDD: Chaos-Driven DeliveryJulia Wester
Have you heard of TDD? Well, many teams struggle with CDD: Chaos-Driven Delivery. That is, teams struggle with how to handle the constant onslaught of overwhelming amounts of work and begin to lose hope. The good news is that if you understand operating systems, you already know a great deal about how to tame the chaos!
Process management is an integral part of an operating system. The OS makes decisions about scheduling, sharing information between jobs, handling interrupts and multi-tasking. It also has to manage the resources of a process and be concerned with process synchronization, just as we mere humans do. This presentation will show you how to apply common concepts from operating system process management to the way teams process work.
Atlassian has been in hyper-growth for the last 5 years, exploding from 200 employees to over 1700. We've worked tirelessly to implement strategic planning while staying true to our agile roots and upholding our culture and values. To the surprise of no-one, it ain't easy. Learn about three practices we developed – and scaled – to help our teams deliver more compelling stories, and the strategic framework they all feed into.
RUFing it out with Customer Feedback: Knowing the “Why”Atlassian
On one hand, Net Promoter Scores (NPS) are great for gauging how customers feel – but they don’t provide any specific insights. On the other hand, unstructured comments from support tickets and similar sources are rich with detail – but with 15,000 comments per week coming in, it was impossible to categorize and understand what that information actually meant. We needed a better way. Join the head of our Voice of the Customer team, Sean Cramer, to learn about the innovative system Atlassian has built: RUF (Reliability, Usability, Functionality). RUF categorizes, measures, and prioritizes issues gleaned from not just Net Promoter feedback, but from all our sources of customer feedback. Come learn how your organization can take Atlassian’s learnings, and use them to build a similar system for your organization.
What Awesome Sauce Tastes Like: Getting & Keeping Your Teams Healthy... the A...Atlassian
Join Atlassian veterans Dominic and Ben for the story of how and why we created a little thing called the Team Health Monitor. They show you how you can use it to harness the power and increase the confidence of your own healthy teams.
Building Fast Growth Into Your Products Using Data-Informed DesignAtlassian
There's a thing called "time to value": how long it takes a team to uncover and realize value from a product. Atlassian learned this the hard way, discovering that more than half of new customers tried its products for less than 30 minutes – far too short a time to fully unlock their value. We approached and solved this problem using data-informed design – a combination of growth hacking, user research, data analytics, and A/B testing at scale – to dramatically increase customer engagement with our products. Come hear lead designer Alastair Simpson describe the variety of approaches we started with and how we learned which ones to pursue and which ones to discard. You'll learn how to design and centralise improved onboarding experiences that can be spread across all your products.
Building the Ultimate Full Company Growth TeamSean Ellis
The goal of any company with a valuable product is to scale adoption by qualified customers. This generally requires establishing a "north star metric" and managing growth against that metric. These slides show how you can build a core growth team that coordinates the efforts of the full company to drive sustainable growth. It is important that every idea be treated as a test. The more tests you run the more learning you gain for growing the company. But running a lot of tests requires a process that is explained in the slides.
Cutting Through the Noise: Breaking Down Hierarchical Communication Channels ...Atlassian
As organizations grow to 100's of employees, expand to multiple offerings, or step out into multiple geographies, they can naturally develop siloed and hierarchical communication channels which hinder transparency, scale, and operational agility. Learn how Atlassian has tackled these problems by creating simple, highly visible, and cross-cutting communication channels all while helping to empower teams and encourage autonomy; built using the power of JIRA and using microservices as the vehicle to generate customised views and weekly communications tailored to each user.
The Biggest Growth Opportunity is Right Under Your NoseSean Ellis
These slides were used for a webinar about driving growth by improving the conversion performance of your website. The slides focus on identifying why someone visits your website and uncovering the key issues that prevent conversions. The webinar was presented by Qualaroo CEO Sean Ellis and UserTesting CEO Darrell Benatar about
Agile Marketing Meetup: Moving Beyond the Marketing Plan So You Remain RelevantSean Ellis
Annual marketing plans can't keep up with the rapidly changing landscape of digital marketing acquisition channels and tactics. To remain relevant, CMOs and marketing teams need to completely rethink their marketing/growth approach. This presentation highlights the agile process that today's fastest growing companies are adopting - from building the right team to executing an agile marketing process.
Growth Hacking: The Human Operating System for Martech (Marketing Technology)Sean Ellis
In the last 10 years, several multibillion dollar companies have emerged with virtually no traditional marketing. These slides highlight the key growth hacking tactics that these companies are using. They then explain how you can adopt the processes and team to discover transformative growth levers for your business.
Making Sense of Organization Impediments @ LKCE2015Ken Power
Slide deck from my talk at Lean Kanban Central Europe 2015 in Munich. The talk covered sense making, complexity, deep democracy, the CDE model, and how to connect these to understand what is happening in your organization. Some of the analysis in this talk has a particular focus on using these approaches to understand strategy and organisation impediments.
Better Payroll Days Ahead with Automated, Cloud-Based Time and Attendancenettime solutions
Processing payroll may not be a day at the beach, but it doesn’t have to be a chore. According to the IRS, 33% of employers make costly payroll errors each year that result in billions of dollars in penalties. Why does this happen? We all know that payroll isn’t just about adding up the hours an employee works over a period of time, multiplying those hours by a rate, and then cutting the employee a check. There is a seemingly endless list of variables to factor in, such as local, state and federal labor law compliance (such as the ACA); PTO accruals; job costing; expense tracking for items such as tips or uniform deductions; and the list goes on and on. Multiply all of that by different pay policies for different groups of employees, and take into account union versus non-union workers, and the payroll process becomes even more complicated. In this free webinar, nettime solutions will show you how using automated, cloud-based time and attendance with web service integrations will convert your payroll processing chores into big wins for your company by eliminating errors, improving productivity, and maintaining data integrity so that payday is a great day for everyone involved.
Working from the bottom of the backlog - 1% dayPriyanka Bhasin
This talk was given at Last Conference, Melbourne on 30/06/2016.
All teams usually work on the top items of their backlog but we decided to dedicate one day to work from the bottom of the backlog, and that day was a 1% day.
Usually, the backlog of every product team comprises of cards that can qualify as “quick wins”, yet they do not see light of the day. This mainly happens because team and product owners want to work on things that provided maximum customer value. However, it is important to remember that some of these small improvements can actually delight your customers hence making a big difference.
This talk was our experience report of how we ran this experiment at a product team by putting the entire team on fixing these long impending quick wins. Criteria of selection was simple – anything that could move from “to do” to “done” in a day. It did require some prep work in order to execute the experiment successfully. But the result was fantastic, we managed to move a sizeable amount of cards to the “done” state, the team as a whole feels motivated and we are now looking forward to more such collaboration opportunities ahead of us.
Detox your team: a low-conflict language for discussin and managing toxic beh...Ken Power
Slide deck from my Agile 2015 session in Washington DC, exploring toxic behaviours. The session takes people through four specific toxins that show up in teams and organisations, and goes on to discuss some ways to detox your team.
Agile efforts typically begin in engineering but become stagnant when they fail to expand to other parts of the organization. This talk will explore the individual systems that must thrive for an entire organization to be agile. The four core elements that must exist for agility to scale with longevity and purpose are: alignment to strategy, customer-first values, lean discovery practices, and capacity for change. We will take an in depth look at how each element operates with agile methods and what is required for them to evolve within the business. Gain an understanding of how to move beyond following practices in isolation in order to achieve harmony in the full embrace of reciprocal agile principles at scale.
Why businesses are moving towards remote working?Vartika Kashyap
Remote work is on the rise. Today, almost 3% of the global workforce work at least half their hours from home. Now a days, it is becoming more commonplace for companies to offer their employees flexibility around when and where they work. Check out this presentation to know why businesses are moving towards remote working.
Are you working remotely? Tell us what you think about remote work.
WCSD 2015: Milestones and Delivery. Tough Conversations and Scope CreepWes Chyrchel
In the Web Development Business we constantly struggle with communication. In this presentation I show you how to fix that. I believe we have been trying to solve the wrong problem. Instead of throwing another piece of software at it to patch the solution, I suggest we try a new approach. I break things down into "What we say" to our clients, "How we say it" and "When we say it." By connecting with our clients and being their advocate, the whole perspective changes. The result is a lasting partnership that virtually eliminates all client problems.
To adapt, or not to adapt - that is the question!Roland Driesen
When building business application you know it will require some changes in the lifecycle of the application. Every year new laws, new insights and/or new business models need to be implemented in less time. How flexible is your solution when it is hard coded, smart coded or built using third party tooling like regular components, Nintex or K2. Roland Driesen will explain how you can make your application more flexibel and adaptive. He will explain the possible choices when to hard code or when to use a workflow engine (or combine) using a decision matrix. André Krijnen will then explain the different available options including the pro's and con's per option and real life scenario's.
Taming the Chaos: Beyond the Quick WinsJulia Wester
So, your team uses visual boards and everyone loves the quick wins gained through increased visibility. But, you’re nowhere near the utopia you read about in the books or hear about at conferences. Even worse, you don’t know why or how to get there!
Many teams hit this same plateau and become stagnant, falling tragically short of the value that can be achieved with a system focused on flow. Come learn tangible steps to transform shallow visual systems into systems focused on getting results through flow and continuous improvement.
For publishers the status quo of their business model is no longer acceptable, but how does a publishing company without any previous product management function introduce Lean within the enterprise? This talk will share how to introduce Lean in an environment with a limited understanding of the product management and give you methods for overcoming obstacles created by legacy corporate infrastructure.
Cutting Through the Noise: Breaking Down Hierarchical Communication Channels ...Atlassian
As organizations grow to 100's of employees, expand to multiple offerings, or step out into multiple geographies, they can naturally develop siloed and hierarchical communication channels which hinder transparency, scale, and operational agility. Learn how Atlassian has tackled these problems by creating simple, highly visible, and cross-cutting communication channels all while helping to empower teams and encourage autonomy; built using the power of JIRA and using microservices as the vehicle to generate customised views and weekly communications tailored to each user.
The Biggest Growth Opportunity is Right Under Your NoseSean Ellis
These slides were used for a webinar about driving growth by improving the conversion performance of your website. The slides focus on identifying why someone visits your website and uncovering the key issues that prevent conversions. The webinar was presented by Qualaroo CEO Sean Ellis and UserTesting CEO Darrell Benatar about
Agile Marketing Meetup: Moving Beyond the Marketing Plan So You Remain RelevantSean Ellis
Annual marketing plans can't keep up with the rapidly changing landscape of digital marketing acquisition channels and tactics. To remain relevant, CMOs and marketing teams need to completely rethink their marketing/growth approach. This presentation highlights the agile process that today's fastest growing companies are adopting - from building the right team to executing an agile marketing process.
Growth Hacking: The Human Operating System for Martech (Marketing Technology)Sean Ellis
In the last 10 years, several multibillion dollar companies have emerged with virtually no traditional marketing. These slides highlight the key growth hacking tactics that these companies are using. They then explain how you can adopt the processes and team to discover transformative growth levers for your business.
Making Sense of Organization Impediments @ LKCE2015Ken Power
Slide deck from my talk at Lean Kanban Central Europe 2015 in Munich. The talk covered sense making, complexity, deep democracy, the CDE model, and how to connect these to understand what is happening in your organization. Some of the analysis in this talk has a particular focus on using these approaches to understand strategy and organisation impediments.
Better Payroll Days Ahead with Automated, Cloud-Based Time and Attendancenettime solutions
Processing payroll may not be a day at the beach, but it doesn’t have to be a chore. According to the IRS, 33% of employers make costly payroll errors each year that result in billions of dollars in penalties. Why does this happen? We all know that payroll isn’t just about adding up the hours an employee works over a period of time, multiplying those hours by a rate, and then cutting the employee a check. There is a seemingly endless list of variables to factor in, such as local, state and federal labor law compliance (such as the ACA); PTO accruals; job costing; expense tracking for items such as tips or uniform deductions; and the list goes on and on. Multiply all of that by different pay policies for different groups of employees, and take into account union versus non-union workers, and the payroll process becomes even more complicated. In this free webinar, nettime solutions will show you how using automated, cloud-based time and attendance with web service integrations will convert your payroll processing chores into big wins for your company by eliminating errors, improving productivity, and maintaining data integrity so that payday is a great day for everyone involved.
Working from the bottom of the backlog - 1% dayPriyanka Bhasin
This talk was given at Last Conference, Melbourne on 30/06/2016.
All teams usually work on the top items of their backlog but we decided to dedicate one day to work from the bottom of the backlog, and that day was a 1% day.
Usually, the backlog of every product team comprises of cards that can qualify as “quick wins”, yet they do not see light of the day. This mainly happens because team and product owners want to work on things that provided maximum customer value. However, it is important to remember that some of these small improvements can actually delight your customers hence making a big difference.
This talk was our experience report of how we ran this experiment at a product team by putting the entire team on fixing these long impending quick wins. Criteria of selection was simple – anything that could move from “to do” to “done” in a day. It did require some prep work in order to execute the experiment successfully. But the result was fantastic, we managed to move a sizeable amount of cards to the “done” state, the team as a whole feels motivated and we are now looking forward to more such collaboration opportunities ahead of us.
Detox your team: a low-conflict language for discussin and managing toxic beh...Ken Power
Slide deck from my Agile 2015 session in Washington DC, exploring toxic behaviours. The session takes people through four specific toxins that show up in teams and organisations, and goes on to discuss some ways to detox your team.
Agile efforts typically begin in engineering but become stagnant when they fail to expand to other parts of the organization. This talk will explore the individual systems that must thrive for an entire organization to be agile. The four core elements that must exist for agility to scale with longevity and purpose are: alignment to strategy, customer-first values, lean discovery practices, and capacity for change. We will take an in depth look at how each element operates with agile methods and what is required for them to evolve within the business. Gain an understanding of how to move beyond following practices in isolation in order to achieve harmony in the full embrace of reciprocal agile principles at scale.
Why businesses are moving towards remote working?Vartika Kashyap
Remote work is on the rise. Today, almost 3% of the global workforce work at least half their hours from home. Now a days, it is becoming more commonplace for companies to offer their employees flexibility around when and where they work. Check out this presentation to know why businesses are moving towards remote working.
Are you working remotely? Tell us what you think about remote work.
WCSD 2015: Milestones and Delivery. Tough Conversations and Scope CreepWes Chyrchel
In the Web Development Business we constantly struggle with communication. In this presentation I show you how to fix that. I believe we have been trying to solve the wrong problem. Instead of throwing another piece of software at it to patch the solution, I suggest we try a new approach. I break things down into "What we say" to our clients, "How we say it" and "When we say it." By connecting with our clients and being their advocate, the whole perspective changes. The result is a lasting partnership that virtually eliminates all client problems.
To adapt, or not to adapt - that is the question!Roland Driesen
When building business application you know it will require some changes in the lifecycle of the application. Every year new laws, new insights and/or new business models need to be implemented in less time. How flexible is your solution when it is hard coded, smart coded or built using third party tooling like regular components, Nintex or K2. Roland Driesen will explain how you can make your application more flexibel and adaptive. He will explain the possible choices when to hard code or when to use a workflow engine (or combine) using a decision matrix. André Krijnen will then explain the different available options including the pro's and con's per option and real life scenario's.
Taming the Chaos: Beyond the Quick WinsJulia Wester
So, your team uses visual boards and everyone loves the quick wins gained through increased visibility. But, you’re nowhere near the utopia you read about in the books or hear about at conferences. Even worse, you don’t know why or how to get there!
Many teams hit this same plateau and become stagnant, falling tragically short of the value that can be achieved with a system focused on flow. Come learn tangible steps to transform shallow visual systems into systems focused on getting results through flow and continuous improvement.
For publishers the status quo of their business model is no longer acceptable, but how does a publishing company without any previous product management function introduce Lean within the enterprise? This talk will share how to introduce Lean in an environment with a limited understanding of the product management and give you methods for overcoming obstacles created by legacy corporate infrastructure.
Building compelling business cases for Design SystemsLaura Van Doore
This talk was originally presented at Web Directions Summit 2018 in sunny Sydney.
Design Systems have reached peak popularity. It’s no secret that the topic of Design Systems have been an outrageously popular topic over the past few years. Every design team has either built one, is building one, or wants to build one. But it’s not designers who we have to convince when it comes to investing in the build of a design system. Especially if we aren’t lucky enough to be in an organisation where design has a ‘seat at the table’. How can we sell the benefits of a design system with more focus on appealing to upper management, who may not see the same benefits we do?
This talk is aimed primarily at designers, but may also interest product managers, front end developers & other roles core to a product team. It will be of most benefit to those who are either looking to introduce a design system into their organisation, or to bolster their case to increase the business investment in an existing design system. The aim of the session is to equip the audience with the right tools & mindset to effectively sell a design system project to higher levels of business function within their organisation.
What I Learned About Software Marketing and Growth After 2 Years in Venture C...Kyle Lacy
This deck is being used for a presentation at High Alpha's Marketing Forum in Indianapolis on 1/2/17. I've spent the past two years working at OpenView, a venture capital firm based in Boston.
The lessons I learned watching the partners, my colleagues, portfolio CEOs, countless pitch meetings and hundreds of conversations between leadership teams was invaluable.
Here are a few.
Talk given at Confoo16: Too many teams are working themselves to the bone day after day with no relief in sight. Too often, this unsustainable pace becomes permanent and work continues to pile on top of everything that's already in progress. Julia will share how Kanban helped teams at TBS and F5 Networks deliver more, reduce stress and tame the craziness of the new normal. Learn concepts you can adapt and apply to your context to make the everyday better!
Viktor Bezhenar @ Kharkiv PM Day - Delegation and Empowerment: Lessons Learnedviktor_bezhenar
Spoken on the great conference Kharkiv PM Day in March 2017. Described my experience in buiding self-motivated and empowered teams. Audience liked this one a lot - ready to share my knowledge on this topic anytime!
Pitfalls Of An Agile Transformation - Presented for Dallas Agile Leadership N...Agile Velocity
David Hawks, CST, CSC, presented at the February Dallas Agile Leadership Network. Use these pitfalls for a smooth (relatively) Agile transformation or to jumpstart a stalled change.
This presentation was delivered at our "Eleven Nights" event in Hobart on August 29th.
Eduardo Nofuentes & Martine Sholl shared practical, real-world insights on our eleven steps for high-performing teams.
Scalability is currently a big topic in the agile world. Most agile methods and practices often reach their limits when one wants to “agilize" more than a few teams, let alone one wants to achieve real agile collaboration of several hundert people.
The main problem is that many agile methods focus on the team. Kanban follows a completely different path - Kanban is not a team method! Kanban is a management method which focuses on generating value. "Manage work and not workers" is one of the key messages of the Lean Kanban management philosophy. Therefore, scalability is not a real topic within Kanban: if you focus on value generation of work, scaling Kanban simple means doing more Kanban - it’s inherent scalable.
In this session I show how one could use Kanban at scale. Besides the general schematic explanation I will also show a case study where Kanban is used to coordinate work of more than 200 people.
Content Marketing Succes: Turn stakeholders into allies, not pitfallsKoen Verbrugge
A lot of content marketeers start on exiting projects only to encounter internal resistance, which slows down the momentum and leaves both the company and the marketeer with a fatigue. Avoid the bottlenecks pro-actively, overcome these pitfall by incorporating these 4 steps into your workflow & create a fertile environment for content marketing growth.
Growing your business can be hard work. But, it becomes even harder when you continually focus on “areas for improvement”… There is an alternative; it is called a “Bright Spots Approach”.
In this presentation you will learn:
- Why you should focus more on bright spots
- How other companies are successfully using bright spots to grow faster
- Why bright spots focus will also help you fix the weak spots in your company
- How you can get started quickly
In this webinar, I’ll show you how to choose the right metrics to measure your team’s effectiveness and encourage the right behaviors. Then, I’ll explain how metric-driven coaching can help teams understand their process and highlight areas for improvement.
Watch the webinar here: http://leankit.com/blog/2016/03/metric-driven-coaching/
Scrum, Kanban, or Scrumban: Which Is Right for You?TechWell
Agile is on everyone’s minds today, as more and more organizations are eager to reap the benefits of rapid iterations using customer-centric approaches. Organizations tend to run to Scrum first because it is the most recognized agile framework. But is Scrum always the right answer for a team and a business? Heidi Araya discusses the types of scenarios and projects in which Scrum may not be a good fit. She shares other frameworks—including Kanban and Scrumban—as potential alternatives to consider to ensure teams and projects select the right fit and can deliver great software efficiently. Some considerations include organizational culture, size of teams, team composition, types of work, industry requirements, overall project size, and type of project. Go back to your organizations and confidently select the right frameworks for your current and future roles and projects—and explain to management why the framework chosen is appropriate.
7 Things Agile Leaders and Executives Do Differently - Agile Australia 2016 b...Dipesh Pala
One of the keys to a successful enterprise Agile transformation is the support of executive leadership, which is more than simply providing approval. The Agile executive enables, empowers and engages rather than controls.
According to one recent survey, more than one in three organisations claim that the lack of leadership engagement within their businesses is plaguing their journey towards sustainable organisational agility.
With a special focus on executives and leaders, this presentation will be draw upon more than a decade of Agile transformation experiences in multiple organisations across eight countries, and will share real-life case studies and insights to illustrate the key things that Agile leaders need to do differently.
Be inspired by knowing what serves to catalyse and nourish progress – and what does the opposite.
DevOps Days SLC 16: Stop running with sharp metricsJulia Wester
There are a thousand metrics floating around and it is difficult to tell what is truly important. Whether you’re the person who is being measured by something that doesn’t quite make sense or the leader that is trying to figure out just how the heck to show to others that her team is successful, there are a lot of questions out there and a lot of people that are just feeling injured by metrics.
Julia Wester will share examples of good and bad techniques for using data when coaching teams. Come, listen and learn how to avoid the pitfalls of managing by numbers, including how to identify and avoid vanity metrics, how to choose metrics that drive desired behaviors, and ways to visualize balanced team metrics that enable continuous improvement.
Specific ServPoints should be tailored for restaurants in all food service segments. Your ServPoints should be the centerpiece of brand delivery training (guest service) and align with your brand position and marketing initiatives, especially in high-labor-cost conditions.
408-784-7371
Foodservice Consulting + Design
The case study discusses the potential of drone delivery and the challenges that need to be addressed before it becomes widespread.
Key takeaways:
Drone delivery is in its early stages: Amazon's trial in the UK demonstrates the potential for faster deliveries, but it's still limited by regulations and technology.
Regulations are a major hurdle: Safety concerns around drone collisions with airplanes and people have led to restrictions on flight height and location.
Other challenges exist: Who will use drone delivery the most? Is it cost-effective compared to traditional delivery trucks?
Discussion questions:
Managerial challenges: Integrating drones requires planning for new infrastructure, training staff, and navigating regulations. There are also marketing and recruitment considerations specific to this technology.
External forces vary by country: Regulations, consumer acceptance, and infrastructure all differ between countries.
Demographics matter: Younger generations might be more receptive to drone delivery, while older populations might have concerns.
Stakeholders for Amazon: Customers, regulators, aviation authorities, and competitors are all stakeholders. Regulators likely hold the greatest influence as they determine the feasibility of drone delivery.
Comparing Stability and Sustainability in Agile SystemsRob Healy
Copy of the presentation given at XP2024 based on a research paper.
In this paper we explain wat overwork is and the physical and mental health risks associated with it.
We then explore how overwork relates to system stability and inventory.
Finally there is a call to action for Team Leads / Scrum Masters / Managers to measure and monitor excess work for individual teams.
Senior Project and Engineering Leader Jim Smith.pdfJim Smith
I am a Project and Engineering Leader with extensive experience as a Business Operations Leader, Technical Project Manager, Engineering Manager and Operations Experience for Domestic and International companies such as Electrolux, Carrier, and Deutz. I have developed new products using Stage Gate development/MS Project/JIRA, for the pro-duction of Medical Equipment, Large Commercial Refrigeration Systems, Appliances, HVAC, and Diesel engines.
My experience includes:
Managed customized engineered refrigeration system projects with high voltage power panels from quote to ship, coordinating actions between electrical engineering, mechanical design and application engineering, purchasing, production, test, quality assurance and field installation. Managed projects $25k to $1M per project; 4-8 per month. (Hussmann refrigeration)
Successfully developed the $15-20M yearly corporate capital strategy for manufacturing, with the Executive Team and key stakeholders. Created project scope and specifications, business case, ROI, managed project plans with key personnel for nine consumer product manufacturing and distribution sites; to support the company’s strategic sales plan.
Over 15 years of experience managing and developing cost improvement projects with key Stakeholders, site Manufacturing Engineers, Mechanical Engineers, Maintenance, and facility support personnel to optimize pro-duction operations, safety, EHS, and new product development. (BioLab, Deutz, Caire)
Experience working as a Technical Manager developing new products with chemical engineers and packaging engineers to enhance and reduce the cost of retail products. I have led the activities of multiple engineering groups with diverse backgrounds.
Great experience managing the product development of products which utilize complex electrical controls, high voltage power panels, product testing, and commissioning.
Created project scope, business case, ROI for multiple capital projects to support electrotechnical assembly and CPG goods. Identified project cost, risk, success criteria, and performed equipment qualifications. (Carrier, Electrolux, Biolab, Price, Hussmann)
Created detailed projects plans using MS Project, Gant charts in excel, and updated new product development in Jira for stakeholders and project team members including critical path.
Great knowledge of ISO9001, NFPA, OSHA regulations.
User level knowledge of MRP/SAP, MS Project, Powerpoint, Visio, Mastercontrol, JIRA, Power BI and Tableau.
I appreciate your consideration, and look forward to discussing this role with you, and how I can lead your company’s growth and profitability. I can be contacted via LinkedIn via phone or E Mail.
Jim Smith
678-993-7195
jimsmith30024@gmail.com
Artificial intelligence (AI) offers new opportunities to radically reinvent the way we do business. This study explores how CEOs and top decision makers around the world are responding to the transformative potential of AI.
Public Speaking Tips to Help You Be A Strong Leader.pdfPinta Partners
In the realm of effective leadership, a multitude of skills come into play, but one stands out as both crucial and challenging: public speaking.
Public speaking transcends mere eloquence; it serves as the medium through which leaders articulate their vision, inspire action, and foster engagement. For leaders, refining public speaking skills is essential, elevating their ability to influence, persuade, and lead with resolute conviction. Here are some key tips to consider: https://joellandau.com/the-public-speaking-tips-to-help-you-be-a-stronger-leader/
The Team Member and Guest Experience - Lead and Take Care of your restaurant team. They are the people closest to and delivering Hospitality to your paying Guests!
Make the call, and we can assist you.
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Foodservice Consulting + Design
Once upon a time there was a team. The team already used visualization and WIP limits, but the WIP limits weren't based on any math. They were just guesses based on what that team could accomplish (not any of the teams they depended on). They knew things were getting stopped up at one point in the process, but they didn't know what to do about it besides yell at the other two teams involved.
This team was wading in the shallows of Kanban and process improvement.
First, let me clarify that taking small, evolutionary steps towards a goal is something Lean coaches counsel people to do all the time. Sometimes the best (and maybe even only) way too get started is to implement a very thin layer of something good.
In certain cases, trying to make too big of a change to your current process - like implementing a full-fledged, deep kanban implementation - could cause you to crash and burn in what I call “the pit of despair.” (show pic of J-Curve) No one wants that to happen.
“This would have denied these businesses significant improvements and the workforce genuine relief from challenging circumstances.” (http://www.djaa.com/tolerance-3-are-we-doing-kanban-or-not)
So, we know shallow kanban implementations happens, and we know they are not necessarily bad. But, what exactly is a shallow kanban implementation comprised of? There are 4 indicators you often see…
The first characteristic is that you have a visualization of your work. That deserves congratulations! You are probably already experiencing some level of improved conditions like less status reporting and being able to show the board to support challenging conversations.
The key is that this is the first time you can really see the magnitude of your entire work demand. It may not be a pretty picture, but it shows reality.
The second characteristic relates to scope: The work being visualized on your Kanban board is that of an individual person or that of an individual team. If you are one of the few orgs that visualizes work across multiple teams early on, there isn’t a focus on improving how to work across team lines. You’re still trying to get your own team’s house in order first.
The third characteristic concerns WIP limits. WIP stands for work-in-process. IF you limit WIP in a shallow implementation, it usually serves to provide relief from overburdening individual people rather than to foster any deeper flow of work through your system.
The fourth and final characteristic is that we often have abandoned feedback. We say we seek out feedback, but that search rarely translates into actionable outcomes. Occasional improvements do happen, of course, but there is no continual focus.
If you’re in a shallow implementation, don’t dismay! The key is to ensure that you don’t let stagnation set in. There’s this concept called entropy that really helps us understand the insidious nature of the status quo. Entropy says that everything is in a constant state of decay. This means there’s no standing still. You have to work to stay in place.
Improvement isn’t free. Its not something someone does for you. It’s not a management-only activity. If you want better outcomes, you have to work to make it happen. Not once, but over and over and over again. You can never be complacent.
That’s why we’re here today… to give you ideas for taking those next leaps forward.
Let’s check in on our team in the story. When we last left, they needed to find their way past the current conflicts to get to deeper understanding of their process and why their results weren’t as stellar as they really wanted.
After a lot of frustration, the conversation started to right itself when the folks doing the queue replenishment asked what the bottleneck was in the process and what it’s throughput was. Then they asked if there were any apps or services that didn't have to go through that step. Once armed with this deeper information, they ended up limiting the number of items in the system that would EVER have to go through that step, but they allowed in a few more of the other types of work items. Essentially they were subordinating everything to the bottleneck. You could have said their decision filter (explain) was “will this worsen the bottleneck?”
Now they were starting to think about FLOW! They were finding their way to deeper Kanban waters.
Fortunately you’re here and can learn from experiences of teams like the one in our story. You can avoid at least some of the frustrations previous teams have gone through by embracing some core Lean/Kanban concepts. So, I want to take the rest of the time to introduce three key concepts and give you some tangible steps for each that you can take to make progress towards achieving the elusive results you’re looking for.
Key concept #1 is: Think like a system rather than an isolated team.
You’re here because you know about, or are at least intrigued by, DevOps. This movement is an exercise in beginning to think like a system. Why is that important
…
Here are some tips to get started:
Identify which teams impacts your team’s ability to get work done & vice versa. (DevOps itself was born by an exercise in realizing that Dev and Ops impacted each other. Start there but keep widening your view. Who else impacts each other? How do you impact each other?)
One of the most important things to do is to build strong, reciprocal relationships with teams you rely on and those that rely on you. The easiest place to start may be to find the teams who need things from you and ask how you can best help... then progress to the ones you need things from.
Your street cred from dealing with the teams who need something from you will hopefully provide some social capital you can spend with the teams you need something from!
Send team ambassadors to each other’s team meetings or standups. Figure out what each can do to visualize emerging issues and best manage dependencies.
Visualize key cross-team information like:
Handoffs of work from one team to another
Information about work items that can give downstream teams a heads up on potential issues that are coming their way.
Check your metrics to ensure what you’re measured by doesn’t drive you to take actions that help you, but hurt others.
The next core concept is to focus on the flow of CUSTOMER VALUE.
Initially, Kanban helps relieve overburdening for the people through visualization and some basic WIP limits. So, now you may feel like you can breathe and consider what’s next. What’s next is to shift focus away from teams or team members to a focus on flow of work through your system. (Ideally valuable work - but that’s a whole ‘nother talk!)
Here’s a question to put you in the right frame of mind for embracing flow: Do you think it's more important to always be busy or to finish important things? Pro tip: The latter is usually the right answer :)
Where we get into trouble is thinking that ensuring everyone is super busy will result in the speedy delivery we’re looking for. Unfortunately, that’s wrong almost all the time in our lines of work. So, let’s change how we visualize our work to encourage focus on the right thing -- smooth, quick journey for a piece of valuable/important work from start to finish.
Update your visualization to focus on the work, not the people.
What does this mean specifically? Some examples:
Move away from any lanes or columns named by person. Focus on what happens to the work instead. (show side by side: before and after)
Card types (or colors of cards) represent an aspect of the work - category of work, risk factor, etc.
The next thing we have a tendency to do is focus on how to improve the active time we spend on a piece of work. However, data shows that, before there’s a focus on flow, most of the time in the lifecycle of a piece of work is spent in a waiting state, not an active working state. So, next steps would be to:
Implementing a pull system and stop pushing work down the line
In essence, we want to stop pushing work onto people’s laps when they’re not ready to take it. One of the most telling things about depth of kanban maturity is if you have a full-fledged, end-to-end pull system.
Begin to implement a pull system by adding buffers for managing flow and signaling pull
That means we need to limit what we start! Starting work isn’t necessarily the best use of our time if there’s no one there to receive it:
Add WIP limits to constrain how much work gets started
If you don’t have any WIP limits, start!
WIP limits make us focus so that we finish what we start. If we start too much, we are constantly moving between multiple pieces of work, making each take much longer. That’s exactly the opposite of what we said we usually want! Sometimes constraints, like WIP, are our friend.
If you have per-person WIP limits, start limiting work for the overall “Doing” section of the board.
How much can the whole team have in progress at one time? You don’t have to start out knowing how much work should be in each workflow step at one time, but at least start by limiting how much can be in progress in total.
Choose a limit that you will hit sometimes, but not all the time.
If you never hit your WIP limit, it’s not doing its job to encourage you to improve
If you always hit your WIP limit you’re likely to either start ignoring them or remove them completely.
The next thing we have a tendency to do is focus on how to improve the active time we spend on a piece of work. However, data shows that, before there’s a focus on flow, most of the time in the lifecycle of a piece of work is spent in a waiting state, not an active working state. So, next steps would be to:
Implementing a pull system and stop pushing work down the line
In essence, we want to stop pushing work onto people’s laps when they’re not ready to take it. One of the most telling things about depth of kanban maturity is if you have a full-fledged, end-to-end pull system.
Begin to implement a pull system by adding buffers for managing flow and signaling pull
Go ahead and define create policies for how you will handle emergencies before you have the emergency! These may override normal process and operate differently.
That means we need to limit what we start!
If you don’t have any WIP limits, start!
WIP limits make us focus so that we finish what we start. If we start too much, we are constantly moving between multiple pieces of work, making each take much longer. That’s exactly the opposite of what we said we usually want! Sometimes constraints, like WIP, are our friend.
If you have per-person WIP limits, start limiting work for the overall “Doing” section of the board.
How much can the whole team have in progress at one time? You don’t have to start out knowing how much work should be in each workflow step at one time, but at least start by limiting how much can be in progress in total.
Choose a limit that you will hit sometimes, but not all the time.
If you never hit your WIP limit, it’s not doing its job to encourage you to improve
If you always hit your WIP limit you’re likely to either start ignoring them or remove them completely.
Constantly assessing and improving conditions to enable better flow
Establish a habit of improving using cadences.
This helps ensure the continual part.
Specific feedback events to hold on a consistent cadence:
Kanban Standups (multiple times per week, if not daily)
goal is to move work to the right
Invite people from upstream and downstream teams
Retrospectives (bi-weekly as a cadence, can do adhoc if a big problem emerges)
goal is to determine most impactful impediments and design experiments
Don’t forget to consider feedback from other teams when designing experiments.
Ops Reviews (monthly):
goal is to reflect on the past month as well as trends over time.
Key metrics (speed to complete work; # and pattern of unexpected problems; etc.)
How you improved the flow of value for the organization since the last review. (small or large. Inside your team or the cross-team impacts).
Get input from all as many people as possible
Don’t just have the team talk together, solicit feedback from everyone impacted by the team. Teams that are dependent on your work, teams that asked for the work, actual customers outside of the organization. Spread a wide net.
Stay focused on outcomes
Don’t let feedback fall into a black hole. Participating in any type of feedback loop should feel useful. Ask yourself often if your feedback mechanisms are just there to tick a box or if they are actually providing value to both those giving feedback and those receiving it.
To ensure it provides value, feedback sessions should be facilitated to ensure the focus is on actionable outcomes. One of my favorite tips from an agile coach was that the end result of each retrospective should be an experiment. As gratifying as it might feel in the moment, just venting doesn’t provide long-term value. It can actually worsen morale.
It doesn’t have to be large, but if you don’t end with an idea of some kind of better way to move forward, and an idea of how it will be implemented (or a mandate to design the experiment), what was the result of your feedback session?
Promote everyone to the status of “flow scientist.”
Everyone is responsible for continuous improvement. It is not a management activity!