Kanban: No Answers, Just Questions

@ralfhh

Kanban: No Answers, just questions

Ralf Kruse
agile42 | The Agile Coaching Company

www.agile42.com |

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Agenda
• The great thing about
questions and what
makes a question great?
• Their is no perfect
Kanban system, only
systems striving for
perfection
• Practices: Their intention,
my questions and
hopefully yours
agile42 | We advise, train and coach companies building software

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The great thing about questions
... and what makes a question great?
• Questions help to make people think and reﬂect
• the inquirer don’t need to understand the full context
• ... and still can create fresh perspectives

Is ... ?

• What makes a question great?
• It hasn’t one answer and is open ended
• create greater possibility for expanded learning and fresh perspective
• Good questions are likely to trigger discovery, clariﬁcation and action

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Tuesday, August 2, 2011


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Their is no perfect Kanban system,
... only systems striving for perfection

Kanban ... more than a Board
Ag

ree
to
now evol purs
u do
uti
hat yo
on ue in
th w
wi
ary cr
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Start
ch eme
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nt
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ec
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Res s, res
Leade
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k loop
role
edbac
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w
ge ﬂo
Mana

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is
Visual

iP

Limit W

Ma

ies e
e polic
k

Implem

xplicit

en

tively,
abora lly
l
ve col
a
Impro experiment
evolve


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Kanban practices

• Visualise
• Limit WIP
• Manage ﬂow
• Make policies explicit
• Implement feedback loops
• Improve collaboratively, evolve experimentally


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Visualise
• The workflow of knowledge work is
inherently invisible.
• Visualising the flow of work is core
to understanding how work
proceeds
incl. bottlenecks & queues
Questions
• What where your problems, variances etc. in
the last month? Do such things reflect in your
board?
• How much work are u doing next to your
board? Is this critical to understand your flow?

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Limit Work in
Progress (WiP)
• Limits help to avoid taking more
work than you can handle
• Limits help to recognise
problems earlier (stop-the-line)

Questions
• Do you have Limited your work in a way
that you avoid queues and bottlenecks?
• Does you reach your Limits from time to
time, to give you signs of dysfunctions?

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Manage flow
• better flow = faster value delivery
• you want to improve it, so you need
to measure it
• changes can be evaluated to have
positive or negative effects on the
system
Questions
• How do you know if your work flows better
or worse through your Kanban system?
• How do you use the measurements as an
input/feedback for improving the flow?

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Make policies explicit
• All involved people know on how to
let the work ﬂow
• Until the mechanism of a process
is made explicit it is often hard or
impossible to hold a discussion
about improving it.
Questions
• Are policies clearly understood and
visualized close to the board?

What means Done?
Priority / Next to pull?
WiP Limits?

• Are you following the agreed
changes?

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Implement feedback
loops
• to periodically take stock of where
you were, where you are, and where
you want to go next
• create needs for improvement
and triggers adaptations
• a feedback loop tells us that change
is taking us in the right direction
Questions
• How do you get overall feedback, that you
are on the right track?
• Do your Daily Stand-Ups help to get the
complementory information to know the
next best thing you can Do?

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Improve collaboratively,
evolve experimentally
• Most systems can’t be improved by
one perspective, it’s often only possible
to create sustainable improvements
collaboratively
• experiments help to discover
improvements based on experience
• scientiﬁc method can make discussions
on improvements more objective
Questions
• Do you and your colleges have the same
direction and are you working continuously
on it?
• How do you ﬁnd new improvement
opportunities?

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Conclusion ...


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Kanban: No Answers, Just Questions

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