[email protected], @djaa_dja It’s antifragile too! It’s great for service delivery! 10 Years of Kanban What have we Learned? Presenter David J. Anderson LeanKanban.

[email protected], @djaa_dja

It’s antifragile too!

It’s great for service delivery!

10 Years of KanbanWhat have we Learned?


2004-2006 Microsoft XIT Sustaining Eng.

Deferred commitment pull system coupled to probabilistic understanding of lead time

• Improved productivity over 200%

• Greatly improved predictability

• Shortened lead times by ~90%

Use of Kanban systems is minimally intrusive for engineers. Process methodologies didn’t change

• PSP/TSP remained in use throughout


Conclusion

Kanban is good for service delivery


2006 Validating Evidence

Eric Landes at Robert Bosch copies XIT solution for intranet maintenance and produces similar results

HP Printer Firmware Division, Boise, Idaho, implements a kanban system as part of a Lean initiative and attributes 400% of an 800% productivity improvement to kanban. Lead times fall from 21 months to 3.5 months


Conclusion

Kanban and its resultsare repeatable


2007 Kanban Method Emerges

Kanban systems aren’t enough when there is too much variability in the workflow and too much heterogeneity of work types and trouble matching worker skills & experience

• Now known as a system liquidity problem

• Visual boards are introduced

• Kanban limits create stress & provoke process improvements

• Multiple classes of service emerge


2007 Kanban Method Matures

A combination of elements of Kanban such as system replenishment, classes of service, understanding cost of delay, transparency and metrics start to change entire company culture

Operations review drives BU wide improvements and starts to influence other BUs within the firm


Conclusion

The Kanban Method is a management system for

cultural change & improving organizational

maturity


2007 First Kanban Software

Digital Whiteboard application developed by Darren Davis at Corbis runs on top Microsoft Team Foundation Server

Workers run Digital Whiteboard on their desktop but continue to use physical boards in parallel


Conclusion

We need software to get good metrics easily and amplify the management

value of Kanban


2007 Kanban on Big Projects

$11 million budget project with up to 55 people, 16 month schedule, approximately 2400 user story scope

2-tiered kanban boards emerge to visualize parent-child dependencies in requirements

Introduces hybrid of dedicated teams and floating project personnel using avatars

• Specialists such as architects, UX

• Generalists who can help any team


Conclusion

Kanban is useful on large projects to improve

predictability.

More guidance on prioritizing backlogs is required at large scale.


Agile 2007 Conference

Kanban presented in the CwaC open space with 25 attendees. Online community starts with Yahoo! group kanbandev Early adopters of Kanban

are teams struggling with Scrum at Yahoo! coached by Karl Scotland, Joe Arnold & Aaron Sanders in UK, India & San Jose


2008 Personal Kanban Adaptation

If this is so good for our service delivery shouldn’t we be using it help us be more organized and get things done at a personal level?

Personal Kanban emerges as a concept

• At Modus Cooperandi offices in Seattle

• Elsewhere at firms such as IPC in London


2008 Scrumban

Corey Ladas coins the term “Scrumban” to describe organizations currently using Scrum who apply Kanban to evolve to uniquely tailored process solutions such as those at Yahoo!

In 2014, most people still don’t get this!

• Scrumban isn’t a process. It is a journey (or story) of organizations embracing evolutionary change and evolving away from canonical Scrum

It’s not Scrum or Kanban• But, Scrum+Kanban -

> Uniquely tailored unbranded process


2008 Early Adopters Emerge

Media, Internet, SaaS firms are primary early adopters

Media, Internet & SaaS firms suffer from acute, self-evident cost of delay and ‘tyranny of the timebox’ challenges. Kanban address these issues for them


2008 – Decision Filters for Leaders


2009


2009 Lean Kanban Conference

First community conference held in Miami. Only 58 attendees. Sponsored by Ultimate Software (who will continue to support us for the next 6 years)

Full day, single track of Kanban content includes case studies from

• Motley Fool• SEP• Inkubook /

Authorhouse• Phidelis• Yahoo!


2009 Definition of Kanban Method

The Kanban Method is positioned as an approach to evolutionary improvement

Recognizing that kanban systems were part of a wider management system, the whole system is named for the use of kanban systems


2009 “Be Like Water”

Joe Campbell’s blog post inspires step 1 of the Ladder of Escalating Motivation for Change, and our primary strategy for resistance to change which is to avoid it

This will lead to the comparison of Kanban with Bruce Lee’s journey with Jeet June Do, and the development of Fitness for Purpose and the concept of an adaptive anti-fragile enterprise

http://joecampbell.wordpress.com/2009/05/13/be-like-water/

http://joecampbell.wordpress.com/2009/05/13/be-like-water/


2009 Cost of Delay• Beginning to understand

Cost of Delay as a qualitative taxonomy

• Introduction of sketches of cost of delay function shapes at Posit Science in San Francisco Better understanding of

classes of service emerges, including archetype set of 4 with names: Expedite, Fixed Date, Standard, Intangible


2009 More Validating Evidence

First case emerges which replicates the cultural effects observed in 2007 at Corbis

• IPC Media, London (Rob Hathaway, Indigo Blue)

First real evidence that the Kanban Method is a repeatable and predictable system of management


2009 Commercial Software

Entrepreneurs introduce commercial Kanban software products. Initial products come from fans who’ve followed the journey for years

Leankit Kanban from Nashville, Tenessee

Tools for Agile, Silver Catalyst, Pune, India


2009 Risk Assessment

Qualitative risk assessment methods introduced to provide “prioritization” for large projects and service delivery where cost of delay isn’t the most significant risk factor

Generalized definition of classes of service to include multiple risk dimensions

“A class of service is a set of policies that describe how an item should be treated based on its risk”


2009 Where to Start Guidance


2009 Real Options

Deferred commitment with kanban systems and concepts of Real Options from Chris Matts, Olav Maasen and others begin to converge • Chris Matts puts some

definition around Staff Liquidity concept

• Staff Liquidity presented at USC CSSE Research Review


2009 “Tyranny of the Timebox”

“Tyranny of the Timebox” concept emerges at Agile 2009 after Arlo Belshee/Jim Shore explain the discontinuity from discrete processes (timeboxes) to continuous processes (kanban systems)

• Simply making timeboxes smaller to improve agility would never lead you to adopt Kanban.

• Kanban was a discontinuous and non-obvious innovation in the Agile community


2009 Portfolio Kanban

First Portfolio Kanban example presented at Agile 2009

• There is no WIP limit at the portfolio level

• Limit WIP on projects, MMFs or MVPs doesn’t make sense


2010 – Kanban “blue book”


2010 Brickell Key Awards


2010 - STATIK

Recognizing the need to teach people how to get started with Kanban, training classes adopt the use of the STATIK exercises

STATIK = the Systems Thinking Approach To Implementing Kanban

• the method is presented at conference in 2012

• the acronym will not be introduced until 2013


2010 High Maturity Organizations

Kanban is recognized as a method that encourages adoption of higher maturity quantitative methods

Kanban is also recognized as a key part of accelerated organizational maturity improvement

• Published case studies talking decsribe CMMI ML1-ML2 in 3 months, ML2-ML3 in 9 months, ML3-ML5 in 9 months

• These timescales are “off the scale” compared to typical timescales for CMMI adoption


2010 Upstream Kanban

Initially in Belgium and France

Upstream Kanban will evolve into Discovery Kanban lead by Patrick Staeyert and his client Nemetschek Skia. Case study will be published in 2013


2010 Proto-Kanban

First recognized in the Posit Science case study in 2009, pre-kanban system implementations without a full pull system are recognized as an important part of the coaching toolbox

Richard Turner of the Stevens Institute coins the term “proto-Kanban” to describe these pre-pull system implementations that eventually evolve into full Kanban

3 Types of Proto-Kanban are eventually recognized

• Aggregated personal kanban

• Aggregated team kanban

• Per-person WIP limits


2010 IT Operations


2010 Break out from IT Sector

Stories of Kanban in HR/Recruitment, Sales, and other functions emerge

Medium-sized owner-managed firms begin to adopt Kanban enterprise wide

• e.g. Huddle Group, Argentina

In 2011 stories of legal firms using Kanban for case files emerged in UK and New Zealand


2011 Personal Kanban published

Wins a Shingo Prize!


2011 Large Scale Enterprise Adoption

Business unit wide adoption begins to emerge at firms such as

• Petrobras• McKesson• Vanguard• Amdocs


Appropriateness

An understanding emerges for appropriate conditions for adoption, including…

• System dynamics (or mechanics)

• Cultural, organizational, social, psychological factors

• Complexity factors


2011 Lean Kanban University established

edu.leankanban.com

Accredited Kanban Trainer program inaugurated with 16 founding member companies and over 20 AKTs• Standardized “practitioner”

curriculum published


2012 Data AnalysisCommunity starts reporting data analysis on lead time distributions showing tails that are 5x to 10x greater than the mean

Flow efficiency metric comes back into fashion as it is evident that size, complexity or skills/experience of workers don’t correlate to lead times

• Increased focus on sources of delay: queues, blocking issues, dependencies


2012 Optimal Exercise Point

By understanding the cost of delay and the lead time distribution we can make a risk-based assessment of the best time to start something

If we can’t start at the optimal time we can understand whether to start an item earlier or later based on the nature of the cost of delay, or decide to discard the option


2012 Kanban Kata

Hakan Forss points out similarity to Kanban feedback loopsand Rother’s Toyota KataService Delivery Reviews

(SDRs) become a formal part of the method. These are also known as System Capability Review but this name was dropped as being too internally focused


2012 Depth of Kanban Assessment

Hakan Forss challenges the idea that deep Kanban emerges linearly from visualization to experimental improvement as practices are added

A multi-dimensional model of depth of Kanban assessment emerges in both an absolute practice-based form and a relative assessment form. In 2014, it is updated to take more a values-based, observed outcome form


2012 Little’s Flaw

Dan Vacanti and Frank Vega’s work on the origins of Little’s Law in queuing theory and understanding from Savavge & Danzinger’s The Flaw of Averages shows us why it’s an appropriate tool for understanding flow in creative work

Dimitar Bakardzhiev helps us understand why consistency of system performance allows us to use it as a forecasting tool.

Understanding consistency of system performance becomes vital to reliable Little’s Law based forecasting & capacity allocation


2012 Kanban System LiquidityKanban system liquidity can be measured as the volume of pull transactions in the system and the laminar/turbulent nature of flow understood from its derivative.

We don’t get it quite right in 2012 but watch out for liquidity becoming a core metric in forecasting tools in 2015

System Liquidity meets Reinertsen’s criteria for a good metric

• Simple• Self-generating• Relevant • Leading Indicator

And it is a global metric which isn’t subject to local optimization


2012 Lessons in Agile ManagementThe heavily under-rated book that underpins the Kanban Coaching Masterclass and most of the theory behind the Kanban Method


2012 Crossing the Chasm Kanban


2012 Cost of Delay UpdatesStill using sketches including the market payoff function and understanding its sensitivity to time Qualitative Cost of Delay

assessment now has 3 dimensions

• Function shape• Order of magnitude in

size• Shelf-life


2013 Statistics & SimulationLead time histograms observed to be Weibull distributions

Monte Carlo simulation introduced as an optional feature in leading Kanban software products

Troy Magennis wins Brickell Key Award for this work


2013 – Kanban Agendas


2013 Fitness for PurposeService-orientation allows us to ask what makes a service “fit for purpose”

Fitness criteria are metrics that measure things customers value when selecting a service again & again

• Delivery time• Quality• Predictability• Safety (or conformance

to regulatory requirements)


2013 Kanban Lens


2013 Kanban Values

Transparency Balance Collaboration

CustomerFocus Flow Leadership

Understanding Agreement Respect


2014 Kanban from the Inside


2013 Scale-free understandingEliminating unbounded queues

• Proto-kanban to full workflow kanban

• Coupling interdependent network of kanban systems

Andy Carmichael’s Smallest Possible Definition of Kanban

See Flow,Start Here,

With visible work & policies, validate improvements

Core practices renamed “general practices” with specific practices at different scales

• Personal/team Kanban• Service Delivery /

Workflow Kanban• Portfolio Kanban


2014 Kanban Litmus Test


2014 Risk ReviewRisk Review is added as a feedback loop to the Kanban Method

Klaus Leopold pioneered the process of harvesting & custering blocker tickets.

He goes on to experiment with other ways of visualizing & harvesting delay data


2014 Fitness for Purpose Review

Regular recurring meeting with front-line staff

• Perhaps performed at different organizational levels to roll-up information in larger scale organizations

Review customer stories• Do they map to existing

clusters?• Or, do we see emerging

new clusters?

Review Fitness criteria• Do we perceive customers of a

given cluster/segment are happy and consider us “fit for purpose”

• What services or product features or service delivery expectations have emerged or changed?


2014 What we now know!






Modern Management Framework

All of this knowledge is more than just kanban systems or what we ever dreamed of as Kanban

Hence, we packaged it all up as the Modern Management Framework

• Emphasize that Kanban is a management system and not a process

• A framework because it is continually extending as we learn more


Modern Management Framework


Modern Management FrameworkThe Modern Management Framework is applicable to all creative services and knowledge worker service industries To be flippant…

• “Kanban should be bigger than Agile!”

• Not measured as part of the Agile market at all


We need tools!


A vision from 2003In 2003, I described my work with Feature-driven Development (FDD) & Agile Management as “like MRP for Knowledge Work” Instead Don Reinertsen said,

“you have all the pieces in place to adopt the use of kanban systems”


Kanban to MRP


A vision for 2015We now have all the pieces in place to start managing modern business where employees “think for a living” and make decisions – knowledge worker businesses – and managing them with the rigor, anticipation and risk awareness that I envisaged in 2003

I now call this future visionEnterprise Services Planning

(ESP)


Kanban to ESP


ESP – Anticipating Demand, Allocating CapacityD

em

and

ObservedCapability

Dem

and

Dem

and

ObservedCapability

ObservedCapability

Looking downstream, you want the system to help you anticipate

and manage dependenciesLooking upstream, you want the system to help you anticipate and

manage demand

Combine the two, and across the organization you smooth flow

end-to-end and help keep demand in balance withoverall system capability


Enterprise Services Planning“The Future of Kanban”


Thank you!


About

David Anderson is an innovator in the management of 21st Century businesses that employ creative people who “think for a living” . He leads a training, consulting, publishing and event planning business dedicated to developing, promoting and implementing new management thinking & methods…He has 30 years experience in the high technology industry starting with computer games in the early 1980’s. He has led software organizations delivering superior productivity and quality using innovative methods at large companies such as Sprint and Motorola.

David defined the Modern Management Framework and originated the Kanban Method an adaptive approach to improved service delivery. His latest book, published in 2012, is, Lessons in Agile Management – On the Road to Kanban.

David is MD of David J. Anderson & Associates Ltd., a consulting and training firm operating globally offering management training solutions for 21st Century businesses whose employees make performance defining decisions daily.


Acknowledgements

Kanban has been a community effort from scores of people some of whom are mentioned explicitly in this presentation others too numerous to mention here have been given credit along the way.

However, none of this would have been possible were it not for the dedication, passion and energy of Janice Linden-Reed who has worked tirelessly to build the community since 2009. She is a founder of the Limited WIP Society and recipient of the Honorary Brickell Key Award for community contribution.


David J Anderson& Associates, Ltd.


Told you! Antifragile!

I can’t believe he didn’t mention

Cynefin!


[email protected], @djaa_dja It’s antifragile too! It’s great for service delivery! 10 Years of Kanban What have we Learned? Presenter David J. Anderson LeanKanban.

Documents

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team slide