10 Years of Kanban - Amazon Web Services

[email protected], @djaa_dja

It’s antifragile too!It’s great for service

delivery!

10 Years of KanbanWhat have we Learned?

PresenterDavid J. Anderson

LeanKanban UKNovember 2014


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 requirementsIntroduces 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 CwaCopen 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

§ BBC and IPC Media in London§ NBC Universal in LA & New York§ Motley Fool in Washington DC

area§ Constant Contact (Boston) &

Ultimate (Ft. Lauderdale), both SaaS firms

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

§ Agile Decision Filter• Make progress with imperfect

information• Encourage a high trust culture• Treat WIP as a liability rather than an

asset§ Lean Decision Filter

• Value trumps flow• Flow trumps waste elimination• Eliminate waste to improve efficiency,

do not pursue economies of scale


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

§ Principles• Start with what you do now• Agree to pursue evolutionary change• Initially, respect existing roles,

responsibilities & job titles§ Practices

• Visualize, Limit WIP• Manage Flow, Make Policies Explicit• Implement Feedback Loops• Improve collaboratively, evolve

experimentally

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 AssessmentQualitative 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

§ Enterprise scale Kanban adoption: where do you start?• Must be highly visible• Must not be mission critical• Must be

1) in so much pain, no one cares what you try,

2) management keen to “go Lean”,3) management wish to shift risk

up/down value stream


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 (kanbansystems)

• Simply making timeboxessmaller 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

§ BBC recognized as first large scale adopter of Kanban replicating the viral spread seen at Corbis but on a much larger scale

§ David Joyce of the BBC recognized together with Alisson Vale of Phidelis as first winners of the Brickell Key Award

§ Best Kanban implementations are in UK & Brazil


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 NemetschekSkia. 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

§ IT Ops people begin appearing in classes

§ They want to design aggregated personal kanban boards• Specialist workers often dedicated to

single work-item type• Refactor to lanes for types, multi-

skilled workers with avatars§ Demand analysis & capacity

allocation become even more important• Especially for unplanned, irrefutable

work (push)


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 AdoptionBusiness unit wide adoption begins to emerge at firms such as

• Petrobras• McKesson• Vanguard• Amdocs


AppropriatenessAn 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 loopsandRother’s Toyota Kata Service 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 AssessmentHakan 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 FlawDan 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

§ Compelling reason to buy• Senior people

§ make promises I can keep§ Improved governance

• Middle managers§ Up-manage with confidence – answer the

hard questions§ Down-manage with confidence – make

the hard decisions• Individual contributors/Line managers

§ Relief from abusive environment (over-burdening)


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

§ Survivability• Resilience/anti-fragility• Evolutionary capability

§ Service-orientation• Fitness criteria metrics• Workflow• service level expectations

§ Sustainability• Relief from over-burdening


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

Learn to view what you do now as a set of services (that can be improved):

• What to look for…§ Creative work is service-oriented§ Service delivery involves workflow§ Workflow involves a series of

knowledge discovery activities• What to do…

§ Map the knowledge discovery workflow

§ Pay attention to how & why work arrives

§ Track work flowing through the service


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 kanbansystems

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

1. Have managers changed their behavior?

2. Has the customer interface changed?

3. Has the customer contract changed?

4. Has the service delivery business model changed?

If you can’t answer yes to at least 2 of these questions you aren’t doing Kanban yet!


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

Klaus Leopold pioneered the process of harvesting & custeringblocker 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!

§ Kanban systems are applicable for almost any creative or knowledge work service delivery workflow

§ The Kanban Method is appropriate wherever an evolutionary approach to change is desirable

§ Kanban works in low and high maturity organizations but basic maturity or converged workflow steps are required to model and implement a kanban system



§ Use of Kanban consistently shows 200-800% productivity gains and 50-90% lead time improvements where a baseline is available

§ Personal Kanban is a “gateway drug” to introduce Kanban in the office

§ Personal Kanban in the office is known as Team Kanban and is a form of Proto-Kanban

§ Getting beyond Proto-Kanban is challenging!!!



§ Kanban represents about 3% of the Agile market by revenue.

§ Shallow/Proto-Kanban is widely adopted but represents no market value• Physical boards• Little or no training or consulting

§ Kanban is more readily adopted by non-IT people who have no “methodology baggage”


Modern Management FrameworkAll 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!

§ Existing Kanban software products largely seek to replicate the function of a physical board

§ They don’t actually help with real management problems

§ Most of the Modern Management Framework is easy to understand but laborious to implement• No one build a Gantt chart manually!

§ Without proper tooling adoption will be slow


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

§ 1947 Kanban in manufacturing –Taiichi Ohno• Term “kanban” not adopted until

1964§ 1964 Manufacturing

Requirements Planning – Joseph Orlicky• Book published in 1975

§ Kanban to MRP 17 years


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

§ 2004 Kanban in knowledge work (IT services) introduction at Microsoft, Dragos Dumitriu & David J. Anderson• Book published in 2010

§ 2015 Enterprise Services Planning• A new class of software tools which

implement the Modern Management Framework

• Book published ????§ Kanban to ESP 11 years?


ESP – Anticipating Demand, Allocating Capacity

Dem

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”

§ “Fit for Purpose” service delivery• Fitness criteria metrics & classes of service

tuned to market segments / source of customer demand

§ Anticipate Demand• Comprehend WIP limits, staffing levels and

required liquidity levels§ Shape Demand

• Allocate capacity based on risk strategy and market or business objectives

§ Intelligent Human Capital Development• Determine real ROI for skills & experience

investment


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!


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10 Years of Kanban - Amazon Web Services