see skaug.no/ingvald for blog post.
extracting personal kanban from todo list
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Tag Archives: kanban
Kanban – Core Concepts and Practices
(Also posted to my main blog.)
Kanban Core Concepts
- Visualize work; items, process/ flow, policies
- Limit work-in-progress (WIP), but don’t be too ambitious at first
Basic Kanban is a lightweight framework for change management.
Starting with the core concepts on top of your present process should meet little resistance, at least when coupled with focus on improving quality.
Btw, I talked at a lokal meetup earlier this year (slides here), mostly on the core concepts – why they work and how to start.
A few Kanban Practices
- Flow; encourage, cultivate, transform towards
- Classes of Service (CoS); visualize and track different types of work, with different demands on them
- Gradually limit WIP to improve flow and to uncover your next improvement opportunity
- Cadence; regular rythm of things like backlog replenishment and deployment, separate from development
- Metrics; to manage flow over time
- Pull; instead of mostly work with deadlines
- Slack, swarming – doing it consciously
There’s more, but this illustrates the relation between the core concepts and a set of recommended practices.
You’re likely to start with a simple version of some practices, f.ex. the work types (CoS) critical items, work with deadlines, bugs. More practices can be utilized as your organization matures, and more sofisticated use of practices, like setting different target lead times for different CoS, f.ex. 50% of bugs should be fixed within a week.
kanban and the perfect job
-by Dennis Stevens
“Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.”
This is the 5th principle behind the Agile Manifesto.
….
The Motivating Potential of Kanban
When implemented well, Kanban creates a work setting where the job design delivers on the five core dimensions of the job characteristics model.
- Skill Variety: In Kanban, the team members are involved in the daily planning of their work, engage in discussions around how to get the work done, perform their specific work, and may swarm on other related work.
- Task Identity: In Kanban, the entire focus is on the flow of work. The team members see the work flow from start to end.
- Task Significance: One of the focuses of Kanban is to improve the lives of the team members themselves. The focus on flow of value also helps the team understand how they are improving the the work of the customer and/or the people their organization.
- Autonomy: Kanban allows teams to schedule their work through the pull mechanism. The self-organizing nature of the work also helps them decide how to care it out.
- Feedback: Managing Cycle Times, explicitly tracking defects, and the rapid feedback cycles associated with the limited WIP create feedback on effectiveness at multiple levels.
Kanban inherently results in job design that improves intrinsic motivation and the resulting high levels of performance.