Essential Kanban: What you need to know about Kanban… even if you’re not using Kanban!

©2017ANDYCARMICHAELALLRIGHTSRESERVEDDEVELOPERSOUTHCOASTAPRIL2017
Essential
Kanban
Developer South Coast, April 2017
@DevSouthCoast @andycarmich
what you even when you’re not using Kanban!need to know about Kanban…

ALTERNATIVE TITLE:
WHAT EVERY
SCRUM MASTER
NEEDS TO KNOW
ABOUT
KANBAN
@andycarmich@andyCarmich

THE FIRST RULE
OF KANBAN
CLUB…
@andycarmich@andyCarmich

How to start doing Kanban…
@andycarmich@andycarmich

KANBAN IS A
WAY OF
SEEING
IT IS NOT A
PROCESS FRAMEWORK
(NOR A THREAT TO THEM…
UNLESS IT UNCOVERS DEMONSTRABLE IMPROVEMENTS IN YOUR CONTEXT)

A method for
defining, managing,
and improving
services that deliver
knowledge work
A “start with what
you do now”
approach to change
A way of seeing… a way
of changing

The Foundational Principles of
Kanban?
Change Management:
• Start here
• Agree to evolve
• Lead – everywhere by everyone
Service Delivery:
• Customer first
• Manage the work not workers
• Evolve policies for outcomes
mich@andycarmich

EVOLUTION IS NOT
SMALLER CHANGE …
IT’S A DIFFERENT
MECHANISM OF CHANGE

Evolution is not a set of small revolutions…

It’s a different mechanism
• The evolutionary process involves
• differentiation (copying with deliberate differences
or mutations);
• selecting for fitness; and
• keeping and amplifying “more fit” change, while
dampening or reversing “less fit” change
• Technology and processes evolve
(at an ever increasing rate)
Beinhocker, Eric D. 2007. The origin of wealth: evolution,
complexity, and the radical remaking of economics.
London: Random House Business Books.

MANAGEMENT IS NOT
OBSOLETE

Lead – everywhere by everyone
• Every Scrum Master a manager; every
manager a Servant Leader
• Direction – Management – Leadership
(communication of intent as well as
objectives)
• From leader-follower relationships to
leader-leader relationships

MAKE
POLICY CHANGES
EXPLICIT

General Practices of Kanban
• Make the process…
… visual
… WiP limited
… flow
… explicit
… responsive (with feedback)
… evolve
ch@andycarmich

Policies (1): The old
boarding school rule
http://images4.fanpop.com/image/photos/22400000/The-evil-boarding-school-dark-the-hedgehog-22496901-640-456.jpg @andycarmich@andycarmich

Policies (2):
When “the law is an ass”

MEASURE AGILITY BY…
VALUE DELIVERY
LEAD TIME
FITNESS FOR PURPOSE
NOT PRACTICE
ADOPTION

Work in
Progress
System Lead Time
Delivery Rate
Understand flow systems

Limit WiP to achieve “pull” and predictable
Lead Time
Deferred commitment and
limited WiP are cornerstones of
effective demand management

Manage Flow (to maximise flow of value)
Expedite
Elevatethe
constraint
Standard
Fixed Date
Intangible

OPTIMISE FLOW
RATHER THAN
UTILISATION

Flow Systems follow Little’s Law
In 1961 Dr John Little (studying
Queuing Theory) proved that, in a
stationary system:
λ = L / W
• λ is the average arrival rate
• L is the average number of items in
the queue,
• W is the average time in queue
• Subject to similar assumptions we can apply
this to kanban systems:
Delivery Rate = WiP / Lead Time
• The overline indicates the average
(arithmetic mean)
For other parts of the process use:
• Throughput: the rate items depart the system under consideration.
• Time in Process (TiP): for the time an item takes from entering to
leaving the system (or part of the system) under consideration
(or Time in Development, Time in Acceptance, Time in Queue, etc.)
Lead Time and Delivery
Rate is what we (service
provider and customer)
care about
Lead Time and Delivery
Rate is what we (service
provider and customer)
care about
Work in Progress is
what we can control

Utilisation, Delivery Rate and Lead Time
• Capacity is finite (and lower than you
think!
• Increasing utilisation increases LT (not
much at first)
• Increasing utilisation increases DR (at
first)
• At a certain point flow is destroyed. DR
collapses. LT tends to infinity!
• Near the critical point, flow is fragile.
Perturbations have severe,
unpredictable and long-lasting effects.
• The critical point depends on variability

Alan Walker [CC BY-SA 2.0
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b
y-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fil
e%3AThe_M1_on_a_winter's_afternoon
_-_geograph.org.uk_-_112140.jpg @andycarmich@an

Resource Efficiency or Flow Efficiency
First focus on flow…
then efficiency
“What is Lean” – Niklas
Modig and Par Ahlstrom
ch@andycarmich

valuetrumps …
flowtrumps …
waste eliminationtrumps …
economies of scale .
The “Lean Decision Filter” - after Mehta, Anderson, Raffo, 2008. @andycarmich@andycarmich

NO TEAM IS AN ISLAND

Efficient subsystems (teams/services) do not
necessarily mean efficient systems
• Chains of services
(widening your scope of view)
• Hierarchies of services
(higher level systems making commitments
than team-level services must deliver)
• Networks of services
(blockers in one system are demand in
another)
Systems
Thinking
Service
Service
• optimise the whole not the parts
• plan as a whole, balance demand
• make queues visible
• flexible resources

A chain of services (e.g. the life of a “story”)
In Progress
wmww
wmww
wmww
Done
wmww
wmww
Sprint BL
wmww
Ready
wmww
Preparing
wmww
wmww
wmww
Selected
wmww
wmww
Pool of ideas
wmww
wmww
wmww
UAT
wmww
Released
wmww
wmww
wmww
Deployed
wmww
Customer
wmww
wmww
Consider this
process…What happens
before it?
What happens
after?
Don’t just optimise this!
Selection:
Now? Never?
Later?

A hierarchy of services (e.g. multi-team epics)
• Use feedback loops
• Plan work across teams
• Examine the constraints
• Don’t overload!
Team A
Team B
Team C
X

Feature
Selected
2 - 5
Pool of
Ideas
User Story
Identified
30
User Story
Preparation
In
Progress
Ready
User Story
Development
In
Progress
Ready
(Done)
Feature
Acceptance
8
In
Progress
Ready
Deploy-
ment
5
Delivered
Feature
Preparation
3 - 10
In
Progress
Ready
Discarded
Epic
511
Epic
606
Epic
287
Epic
329
Epic
439
Epic
562
Epic
478
Epic
431
Story
602-01
Epic
335
Epic
302
Epic
602
Epic
512
Story
602-04
Story
602-02
Story
602-06
Story
602-03
Story
602-05
Story
302-03
Story
302-01
Story
302-07
Story
302-02
Story
302-08
Story
302-06
Story
335-09
Story
335-10
Story
335-04
Story
335-08
Story
335-03
Story
335-01
Story
512-04
Story
512-07
Story
512-02
Story
512-05
Story
512-03
Story
512-06
Story
335-06
Story
335-05
Story
335-02
Story
512-01
Story
335-07
Story
302-09
Story
303-05
Story
302-04
Epic
221
Epic
662
Epic
651
Epic
589
Epic
444
Epic
609
Epic
577
Epic
362
Epic
468
Epic
401
Epic
582
Epic
521
Epic
339
Epic
276
Epic
694
Epic
213
Epic
274
Epic
287
Epic
388
Epic
419
Epic
386
Epic
294
15 15
Policy
Business case showing
value, cost of delay,
size estimate and
design outline.
Policy
Selection at
Replenishment
meeting chaired by
Product Director.
Policy
As per
“Definition of
Done” (see…)
Policy
Small, well-
understood,
testable, agreed
with PD & Team
Policy
Risk assessed per
Continuous Deploy-
ment policy (see…
wikipedia.org/wiki/
Kanban_(development)

A network of services (e.g. dependent services)
• Fulfilling system commitments
depends on timely delivery
from other services
• Same principles apply within a
network of interdependent
services as for one
• “Scale by applying Kanban in a
context of greater scale”
• Use feedback loops
• Make the queues visible to give
the “customer” options

No team is an island
Optimise the system not the parts
•Islands of efficiency
•Think in systems
•Build a “bigger tribe”
•Where is the value?
Immelman, Ray. 2003. Great boss dead boss: How to exact the very
best performance from your company and not get crucified in the
process. Gurnee, IL: Stewart Philip International.
ch@andycarmich

DEADLINES CREATE
TURBULENCE –
MANAGE TO REAL CHANGES
IN COST OF DELAY, NOT
ITERATION BOUNDARIES.

Sprint boundaries and Kanban cadences are
not deadlines

Cadence versus Deadline
• Is the sprint boundary a review point in a continuous process,
or a stop-start?
• Is behaviour of the team different approaching the deadline?
• Are most things Done near the end?
• Is there pressure to complete the forecast?
(does the forecast become a target?)
Different behaviour when analysing stochastic systems is referred to as
regime change. Regime change reduces the forecastability of the system.
Real deadlines are where the cost of delay changes radically. Regime
change may be a necessary evil as such dates approach.

Time (t) influences Value (V)
𝐷𝑒𝑙𝑎𝑦 𝐶𝑜𝑠𝑡 = −
𝜕𝑉
𝜕𝑡
Δ𝑡
“Cost of Delay” (CoD)
A Cost –
e.g. measured in
dollars
A rate of change
in value
e.g. measured in
dollars per week
or “Urgency”?
A sudden drop in the value versus release date curve indicates a real deadline

How urgent is it to start this item?
• the ordering of work items (WSJF: Urgency / LT)
• Choosing the class of service that is appropriate
for the work item
• Policies for more value, less risk
• Ensuring some intangible items are
always in play (interruptible if unexpected /
irrefutable demand)
• Pay attention to the “last responsible
moment” for starting a work item
(say, 85% probability point)
Source: @lki_dja
ich@andycarmich

FINANCIAL POLICIES
DETERMINE
MANAGEMENT BEHAVIOUR

Financial policies that inhibit business agility
• Capitalisation of Work in Progress
• No recognition of Cost of Delay
• Equating Cost to Value (e.g. “Earned Value”)
• Cost saving versus value delivery
• Annual budgeting
• …
When accountants understand the problem of policies which drive
unhelpful behaviour, they can reformulate policies. We cannot do
this for them – we cannot achieve behaviour change without
them.

SUMMARY

The Kanban Method is not…
• a process or a process framework
• nor an informal mechanism for visually organising work, without inconvenient rules
• nor even a scaling framework, though it is applicable at a wide variety of scales
applicable even when you’re “not using Kanban”
• a way of looking at your work, whatever process you use, and improving customer and business outcomes
• a way to see your work through a different lens – the Lean flow paradigm
• a way to focus on the work (rather than the worker), and the customer’s purpose (rather than the service provider’s)
• a way to continually examine the flow of value and incrementally improve it
the first rule of Kanban Club  principles and practices  policies – the old boarding school rule; when “the law is an
ass”  evolution is not smaller change, but different change  agility is measured by lead time and value delivery,
rather than practices adoption  no team is an island  flow efficiency versus resource efficiency  deadlines create
turbulence – manage to real changes in cost of delay, not iteration boundaries  Financial policies determine
management behaviour
Kanban is…
Themes and memes

Physical book available
from Amazon and other
booksellers. PDF can be
downloaded from
leankanban.com/guide
Template can be
downloaded from
goo.gl/Ho5nz8!

References
Anderson, David J. 2010. Kanban: Successful
Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Business.
United States: Blue Hole Press.
Anderson, David J., and Andy Carmichael. 2016.
Essential Kanban Condensed. United States: Lean
Kanban University. http://leankanban.com/guide
Beinhocker, Eric D. 2007. The origin of wealth:
evolution, complexity, and the radical remaking of
economics. London: Random House Business
Books.
Brad Pitt photo. Fight club, 20th Century Fox. 1999
Greenleaf, R. 1982. Servant leadership: A journey
into the nature of legitimate power and greatness.
25th ed. New York: Paulist Press International,U.S.
Immelman, Ray. 2003. Great boss dead boss: How
to exact the very best performance from your
company and not get crucified in the process.
Gurnee, IL: Stewart Philip International.
Little, J. 1961. A Proof for the Queuing Formula: L =
λ W. Operations Research, 9(3), pp.383-387.
Mehta, M., Anderson, D. and Raffo, D. 2008.
Providing value to customers in software
development through lean principles. Software
Process: Improvement and Practice, 13(1), pp.101-
109.
Marquet, D. 2015. Turn the ship around!: A true
story of building leaders by breaking the rules.
United Kingdom: Portfolio Penguin.
Modig, Niklas and Pär Åhlström. This Is Lean:
Resolving the Efficiency Paradox. 1st ed. Stockholm:
Rheologica Publishing.
Reinertsen, Donald G. 2009. The principles of
product development flow: second generation lean
product development. Redondo Beach, CA:
Celeritas Publishing.

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