AgileCamp Silicon Valley 2015: Why Scrum Teams Should Care About Kanban

Scrum Teams: Why Should You Care About Kanban? Mahesh Singh Co-founder, SVP – Product, Digité, Inc.

Agenda

¨  So what camp are you in?! ¤  Scrum is working GREAT! Now what?

¤  Yes, we are doing Scrum, but…. ¤  What about Roadmap planning? Backlog pruning?

¤  Other challenges that real teams face ..

¨  The Really Important question

¨  What is Kanban and how can it help?

¨  So, should you consider Kanban?

First, a quick poll!

So What Camp Are You In?

Scrum is working Great!

¨  Regular cadence of Sprints and Releases ¨  Velocity is steady, ability to estimate project completion is

good.

¨  All stories getting completed within Sprints

¨  Sprint dates are not slipping

¨  Good quality working – ‘shippable’ software!

Questions to ask…

¨  Is the product meeting market/ customer needs? ¨  Are customers providing (enough) feedback?

¨  Are developers interacting with customers?

¨  Is response to change fast enough? ¤  What if some story’s spec changed in the middle of the Sprint? ¤  What if a story has to be dropped?

¤  What if a story has to be added?

¨  Is the importance of “keeping commitments” too much?

Consider the other side…

¨  Scrum, but…. ¤  Consistent User Story leakage

¤  Consistent Sprint/ Release deadlines missed ¤  Uneven Velocity

¨  Organizational Challenges ¤  Implementing new Roles – Scrum Master, Product Owner, Team ¤  Too many ‘rituals’?

Questions in Agile Forums

¨  How to handle tickets during Sprint Planning? ¨  How to deal with tasks that are not User Stories but still need

to get done?

¨  How do I measure my Sprint velocity if half of the work is user stories and half is defects?

¨  Can a “Project Manager” be a Scrum Master? ¨  Can a product manager/ business analyst be a Product

Owner?

Challenges Software teams have in Real Life

¨  Teams don’t just do user stories, they do other work as well ¨  Teams do different types of things in different ways (processes)

¨  The capacity for teams to do specific things is usually limited/restricted for business reasons

¨  Teams already have other roles

¨  What about the Product Owners’ work?

So, Where Do You Stand??

The Important Question..

“Do We need to Improve?”

If Yes, Kanban can Help!

Some Questions to Ask Yourself

¨  Is your team constantly improving? Do you wish it would?

¨  Is it hard to agree on what to change? Is it even harder to implement change?

¨  Do you find your team is constantly task switching? Is your team getting burned out?

¨  Are you playing the guessing game and missing deadlines?

¨  Are you delivering the value you know you are capable of?

History

¨  Kanban was created by Taiichi Ohno for Toyota ¨  Kanban is a driver of Just In Time and Lean in the Toyota

Production System ¨  Kanban has been widely used in manufacturing for more than 50

years

¨  Applying Kanban to Knowledge Work? èThe Kanban Method ¨  Combines aspects of the Theory of Constraints and Lean and other

production techniques with Kanban

Taiichi Ohno W. Edward Deming Eli Goldratt David J. Anderson

What is Kanban?

Kanban – Japanese term for “signboard” or “Billboard” that indicates “available capacity (to work)” or a visual cue to begin work.

Kanban System - A visual system for managing work moving through a process – the “value stream”

So Why Should you Care?

¨  Kanban will Help you get LEAN!

¨  Visualize and Map your Value Stream ¨  Continuous Flow ¨  Incremental Change, Continuous Improvement ¨  Be Data Driven

Visualize

Kanban Board – What’s Going On in my Value Stream?

What is in Development or Testing? What is blocked? Who is overloaded? Are we heading for problems? Who can help? What is ready to ship?

Testing maybe a bottleneck.

Critical Issue still being tested

WIP violation

TFS Integration is held up.

Ready to be released!

The Importance of Optimizing Flow

The Importance of Continuous Flow

¨  Prevent the Bullwhip Effect ¤  Variations in flow

have a greater impact in downstream activities

Multitasking is Bad

“It’s unequivocally the case that workers who are doing multiple things at one time are doing them poorly,” said Clifford Nass, director of the Communication Between Humans and Interactive Media Lab at Stanford University. “The human brain just really isn’t built to switch rapidly from one task to another. Workers who constantly multitask are hurting their ability to get work done, even when they are not multitasking. People become much more distracted, can’t manage their memory very well.” Companies that demand multitasking may be damaging productivity. “It would be a total tragedy if when we have so much potential to make the work force more intelligent, we are actually making the work force dumber,” Nass said. “Companies that are demanding that workers multitask might not only be hurting their productivity, but may be making the workforce worse thinkers.”

*Ruth Mantell, Wall Street Journal Market Watch, July 12, 2011, “Multitasking: More work, less productivity”

Stop Starting! Start Finishing!

¨  Pull ¤  Work can be started when there is capacity ¤  Team members “buy in” when pulling a task ¤  Unplanned tasks do not disrupt the system

¨  Limit WIP ¤  Balance demand with throughput ¤  Establish Cadence – Continuous Even Flow ¤  Reduce task switching and multitasking

¨  One Piece Flow/ Minimum Marketable Features ¤  Transfer of one piece of work at a time rather than batches ¤  Reduce partially done work and overload ¤  Deliver more often with higher value

Kanban is Evolutionary!

¨  Kanban recomends ¤  Start with What you Have ¤  Implement PULL ¤  Evolve/ Improve Gradually

¨  Kanban is ¤  Transparent ¤  Team Based Change ¤  Scientific Experimentation

What is Lean?

¨  Preserve and deliver value

¨  Eliminate waste

¨  Any resources not being used to drive value are being

wasted

¨  Continuously reflect and improve

How Do you Become Lean?

¨  The 5 Pillars of Lean 1)  Map the Value Stream 2)  Pull 3)  Continuous Flow 4)  Continuous Improvement 5)  Deliver Value

Kanban to Lean

Kanban Applied The 5 Pillars of Lean

¨  Value Stream Mapping ✔

¨  Pull ✔

¨  Continuous Flow ✔

¨  Continuous Improvement ✔

¨  Deliver Value ✔

Kanban Knows No Boundaries

¨  Internally We Also Use Kanban for ¤  HR ¤  Finance ¤  Sales ¤  Marketing

¨  People use Kanban for all of the above PLUS ¤  Legal Transaction Management ¤  Book Publishing ¤  Video Game Development ¤  Personal Kanban ¤  And more

Tackle Those Questions with Kanban

¨  Constantly Improve

¨  Incremental Change

¨  Less Task Switching, Smooth Out Flow

¨  Deliver on Time for Higher Value

¨  Be Lean

Am I Lean Now?

Applying Kanban To Scrum

Scrum and Kanban

¨  Start with what you have ¤  Release Planning

¤  Sprint Planning ¤  Epic/ Story/ Task decomposition/ planning

¨  Visualize your workflow ¤  Model as much of the workflow detail as possible

¨  Look for Opportunities for Improvement

¨  Include Upstream/ Downstream Processes

¨  Make changes to the detailed process as needed

The Typical Scrum Process

Kanban enables greater Visualization

Kanban enables greater Visualization

Kanban enables greater Visualization

Kanban Facilitates multiple Work-items

Kanban facilitates Multiple Teams

Upstream Kanban – Product Owner’s Backlog Management

Roadmap Board

Dev Board

Kanban enables Changes till “Last Responsible Moment”

¨  Kanban helps you focus on Cost of Delay

¨  Allows changes in priority of what needs to be worked on based on CoD

¨  Enables Product Owners/ Management to make changes based on shifting Market/ Business priorities

Kanban helps Reduces Multitasking & Facilitates FLOW

Flow

Kanban Board – What’s Going On in your Value Stream?

What is in Development or Testing? What is blocked? Who is overloaded? Are we heading for problems? Who can help? What is ready to ship?

Testing maybe a bottleneck.

Critical Issue still being tested

WIP violation

TFS Integration is held up.

Ready to be released!

Kanban Provides Valuable and Unique Insight

Kanban provides Predictability Cumulative Flow Diagram

Kanban Provides Avg. Completion Time Lead/ Cycle Time Analysis

Kanban provides Waste Analysis Blocker Clustering

Kanban helps measure Flow Flow Efficiency

Kanban provides Statistical Insight Cycle Time Distribution

Kanban provides Statistical Insight Cycle Time Control Chart

To Commit or not to Commit?

¨  Better to make Commitment in advance for a Release?

¨  Or, to make a Release when there are enough (code) Commits?!

Over a period of time, Kanban can help you -

¨  Instead of pre-committing to a Release Scope, make Releases when sufficient work has been completed

¨  Establish a reliable cadence of delivery (code deployment or production release)

¨  Deliver more, deliver more often

¨  Remove all friction related to User Story leakage and missed deadlines

¨  Improve overall Team Productivity

¨  Reduce stress-levels in Teams and Management

So, Should You Consider Kanban?

What’s your Team’s “Lean Quotient”?

¨  How does it control multitasking/ task-switching? How does it Limit WIP?

¨  How does it minimize Waste? (Wait time, unallocated time, blocked time?)

¨  How (well) does it identify bottlenecks and constraints?

¨  How good is the FLOW of work in your Team?

Should you look at Kanban?

¨  Yes – IF you want/ need to – ¤ Study and analyze Flow ¤ Identify bottlenecks ¤ Define system constraints (WIP Limits) ¤ Improve Flow and Throughput (Velocity) ¤ Reduce Time to Market (Cycle Time) ¤ Improve team Morale and Productivity

Mahesh Singh Co-founder, SVP – Product, Digité/ SwiftKanban mahesh@digite.com/ @maheshsingh www.swiftkanban.com

Thank You!