Kanban at Polopoly

ksse@polopoly

How we re-did the despair section to a task force team

Polopoly – Web Content Management

Polopoly – the enterprise

Software product company

Enterprise web content management

Demanding customers: DN, Expressen, SVT, NRK, SJ...

Product development

Support

Professional services

Started Scrum-ing 2008

Problem with Scrum

"No Interference, No Intruders, No Peddlers - No person outside the team can change the scope or nature of

the work the team is doing during the sprint" (Schwaber & Beedle)‏

Scrum – the dome

The team commit builds on trust

A closed door politics

A Scruming team can only respond to external changes between sprints: the door is only opened every fortnight

All is not calm outside

Things happens all the time

Bugs in released software

Difficult support questions

Projects needing help

A lot of despair

What to do?

As a ScrumMaster you should protect the team(s).

What to do when you can not handle all the panic yourself?

We wanted to create a taskforce team: T3

To Serve and Protect

Requirements

Always ready to serve

Small stories handled one at a time

JIT planning

Protect the other teams

Staffed from different departments (doing service)‏

Constantly learning and self-organizing

But it could not be Scrum. No batch and deliver at all

We had to find another model/process

The Toyota Way: Teams

From Scrum to Lean - looking at Toyota

Sort of like a plant at Toyta

One vehicle at a time

Signaling needs for an item with a kanban system

The Scrum board becomes a signaling system for JIT planing and delivery

Kanban

KSSE

We found a small bunch of people working with defining a process like this for software engineering

Kanban System for Software Engineering

Kanban System for Sustaining Engineering

Focus: Use the visual signaling system as an engine to drive the process

Kanban properties (infoq)‏

Physical: It is a physical card. It can be held in the hand, moved, and put into or onto something.

Limits WIP: It limits WIP (Work-In-Process), i.e. prevents overproduction.

Continuous Flow: It notifies needs of production before the store runs out of stock.

Pull: The downstream process pulls items from the upstream process.

Self-Directing: It has all information on what to do and makes production autonomous in a non-centralized manner and without micro-management.

Visual: It is stacked or posted to show the current status and progress, visually.

Signal: Its visual status signals the next withdrawal or production actions.

Kaizen: Visual process flow informs and stimulates Kaizen.

Attached: It is attached to and moves with physical parts supplied.

T3 kanban board7

queuesmax 12 tp

To be planned

WorkIn

Process

Work In Wait State

Done

DOD:ed this week

Emerg-ency slot

Story card

T3 wiki (DOD)‏

Takt

We still have a daily Scrum to go through last days work and speak about what is coming

We have a retrospective every week to get a feeling of closure often

TODO

Measure Cykle time better

Better work with impediments

Probably more ... inspect and adapt

Read more...

•http://del.icio.us/peter.antman/kanban