1. Personal Kanban:
A worshop for an effective 2011
...or how to make your goals flow
into achievements :-)
LeanAgileMachine.com

2. Goals
● Define the problems faced when learning and
developing
● Cover the basic of Kanban
● Discuss the design choices for my Kanban
● The layout & values of my personal kanban boards
● Explain how cards are designed to add greater value
● Give people confidence to try for themselves

3. What is the problem...
● Never have enought time to get everything done
● Always more to learn
● Something urgent comes up
● New opportunities arise
● Friends dragging you to the pub
● Work to do, bills to pay, kids to feed...
● Window of opportunity for ”Getting stuf done”
is limited

4. Cant you just pull your
finger out!
● Too many things on todo list never get done
● Busy all week but dont remember what I did / learnt
● Working harder and longer not cutting it
● Battling monsters from the id:
● overactive interest and imagination
● Internet addiction
● Attention deficit dissorder (?)
● Need to cycle 200km a day

5. So workload is a problem
● What techniques could I used to help?
● Muddle along and hope for the best
● Change my career (tube driver)
● Change my life (retreat to monestry)
● 2 techniques used to manage activities
● Personal Kanban
● Pomedero – Time boxing

6. Why try Personal Kanban
● To lean more about Kanban
● Be able to introduce kanban technique to others
● To focus my training so I learn more
● Study one thing at a time
● Make sure I have learnt something – achieve goals
● It seemed like a good idea at the time
● Kanban is fun, cool, creative and viral

7. What is Kanban ?
● A way to manage dependant events
● Make your work visible
● Limit your work in progress
● Avoiding multi­tasking – its inefficient
● Pull system
● only work on a task once previous task is complete
● Help work to flow
● continuously and predictably deliver value

8. Simple design

9. Can be applied to
Software development

10. Software projects design

11. Starting your board
● Find a suitable space to make a board
● Use a whiteboard
● Large area with sticky notes
● Fridge with cards and fridge magnets
● Layout the board design
● Plan (backlog)
● Doing
● Done

12. Simple Board layout

13. Visualising your situation
● Add all your current work
● Things should get messy
● Add things you just recently completed
● Helps with sense of achievement / gives confidence
● Put all the things you know you want to start doing
in planning

14. Messy board example
● JR0cket board messy

15. Starting to organise your board

16. What are your goals
● GROW approach to establishing goals
● Goal – statement of what you want to achive
● Reality – where are you in relation to the goal
● Options – what are the ways to achieve the goal
● Way forward – try one of the options
● Example goal
Persuade everyone I know..
to use open source software...
as their prefered choice for work and play

17. Goal Lanes

18. Inline Goals

19. Card design
● Card can have more than a title
● Details of task
● Aims, activities, outcomes
● Due dates
● Related tasks / goals

20. Example card

21. Lane design
● Value Stream mapping
● What activies do you do to get things done
● Example:
● Personal study / development
● Any suggestions from the audience ??

22. Adapt and change
● Think about your WIP limits
● Think about your card design (write on both sides if
you need)
● Where you keep your board
● Should be visible but not distracting

23. Kanban design for study

24. How did I build my Kanban
● Started simple with: Plan – Do – Done
● Used scrap of paper for initial design
● Built a simple board and started using it
● Evolved into Plan – Do – Check – Act
● Evaluated deficits in board and enhanced
● Used online Kanban
● So I dont need to cary a large whiteboard around
● Blogged what I had done to get feedback

25. Starting from scratch

26. Created basic lanes

27. Plan – Doing – Done

28. Started adding task cards

29. First card on the board, cool

30. Is something ready to
study?
● Identify completed work between seperate board
lanes
● Spilt the study board lane into two
● First new lane is the waiting state
● Second lane is the study activity

31. Edit the board design

32. Split the study lane

33. Tasks are progressing
smoothly

34. Several minutes later
After adding a few tasks to the
board....

35. Oh dear, my monsters are
back

36. So What is missing ?
● I have a Kanban board
● I am breaking my tasks down into relatively small
chunks
● But I still have far too much to do...

37. Lets apply the WIP !!!
● To sudy effectively I need to focus
● To focus I need to work on 1 thing at
once
● To work on 1 thing at once I need:
Work In Progress
Limits

38. Refactor the tasks on
Kanban

39. Add WIP Limits to Kanban

40. WIP Limits now applied

41. How do I know if I've learnt?
● Need a Check step after study
● Encourages continuous improvement
● A lean principle
● Lets create a new lane on the board as a review
stage

42. Add a Check Lane with WIP

43. Move tasks into new lane

44. Have a board, what next?
● Defined task cards in more detail
● Limited by the tool I'm using though
● Pomodoro technique for time boxing tasks
● Value stream mapping?
● Considered overkill for simple set of events

45. Defining the task card
● Set goal of task
● Identify measure to check if goal reached
● eg. Can write a Kata in Scala
● eg. Can design a Kanban board using VSM
● eg. Write a summary of the book on blog, stating
why it is a valuable read
● Identify resources to assist training
● Identify scope of training
● refactor task into multiple cards if too big

46. Why Pomodoro
● Limited time helps concentration
● starting this presentation this morning focused me
● Easier to set and measure goals for a time boxed
activity
● Helps break down tasks into managable chuncks

47. Pomodero – Timeboxing
tasks
● Useful tool to focus mind on a goal
● Helps stick to WIP limits and Idea of flow
● Tasks have varying time limits during flow
dependant on size of task
● Review: 5 – 15 minutes
● Study: 30 minutes – half a day
● Evaluate: 15 minutes – 1 hour
● Blogging: continuous activity

48. Other learning techniques
● For programming languages
● Kata
● Dojo's
● TDD / BDD
● Speed reading
● Attending / Giving SkillsMatter talks & courses
● Blogging and Tweeting
● leanagilemachine.com
● @JR0cket

49. Summary
● I found Kanban increased my training effectiveness
● I learnt alot about Kanban
● I got feedback on my techniques by blogging
● I got lots of feedback from this talk (hopefully)
● Its time for the pub if you dont have any
questions ?

50. Resources
● LeanAgileMachine.com – lean agile blog
● JR0cket.com / JR0cket.co.uk – tech stuff
● SkillsMatter.com – podcasts, talks, courses
● PersonalKanban.com – the resource for personal
kanban
● LimitedWIPSociety.org – please get involved
● The Goal – Eliyahu M. Goldratt – great read
● Theory of Constraints – Eliyahu M. Goldratt

51. PUB
● Hat and Feathers
● Left out of SkillsMatter
● On the corner at main crossroads
● Walk to bar and buy several drinks – if you ask me a
good question I may buy you a drink or two