Monday, September 24, 2012

Lean Kanban Netherlands - Register Now!

The program for Lean Kanban Netherlands was announced over the weekend. The conference is only 1 month away. It is time to register for the best Kanban content in Benelux this year. Don’t miss your chance to network with some of the best international speakers and the leaders in Lean and Kanban in Benelux. Register now! Read my thoughts on the program…

This year’s Lean Kanban Netherlands conference in Utrecht picks up where previous Lean Kanban Benelux events in Antwerp left off.

I’m thrilled to see Enterprise Kanban, Personal Kanban, Kanban for Social Change and Kanban for IT Operations all represented on the program. David Joyce from Australia, Jim Benson, Janice Linden-Reed and Dominica Degrandis from Seattle in the United States get the first day off to a roaring start. For those who’d rather have some local content there are sessions by Patrick Steyaert, Nick Oostvogels and Laurens Bonnema. Perhaps the highlight of the day may be the combination of the key note from Steve Medland on Toyota Kata immediately followed by Hakan Forss presenting his Kanban Kata.

Moving into the second day the quality continues with key notes from Don Reinertsen and Stephen Parry and some great sessions. My particular favorites are Kurt Hausler, Jabe Bloom and Pawel Brodzinski.

So if your interest is in personal productivity, wider application of Lean to social concerns, scaling Lean in the knowledge worker enterprise, or applying Lean ideas to IT services and operations, there is plenty of high quality sessions to hold your attention. The Netherlands Lean Kanban conference offers you a fantastic chance to meet the speakers, the leaders in the Kanban commmunity and the coaches and consultants who are leading the evolution of knowledge work in Benelux. Don’t miss out on this chance to build your network and get a head start on some of the brightest ideas for improving productivity and customer satisfaction in IT work.

Register now! October 25-26 is just around the corner. Don’t miss out!

Monday, August 20, 2012

Kanban’s Galapagos Island

This is the first of a series of posts on evolutionary capability and the notion of social and process evolution.

Adaptability

I found Tim Harford’s book, Adapt, hugely validating of what we’ve been doing with Kanban. Harford writes for the Financial Times and The Economist. Essentially a writer on economics, he’s been influenced by work by people like John Kay, the English economist who suggested that oblique rather than direct approaches to business make for better profits and long term success, in his book Obliquity.

Harford suggests that in order to deal with complexity and an uncertain future, we must take an experimental approach to our businesses and our processes. We must be willing to try things and fail. When something works, we should amplify it and when it doesn’t discard it quickly and try something else. One of his core ideas is that for new concepts or memes to thrive, they need isolation. He refers to this as the Galapagos Islands effect. The adaptations from evolution that Darwin observed in the Galapagos were possible because the islands were so remote.

Isolating Kanban

It occurred to me while reading Adapt that a number of somewhat accidental choices and decisions had served to isolate Kanban and its community and in effect create a Galapagos island where the meme could thrive and evolve. The first of these events was to create the Kanbandev Yahoo! group and to encourage a community of enthusiasts. This provided an online meeting place for the affinity group, or tribe, to develop its ideas. In 2008, it was suggested we get together face-to-face and the Lean & Kanban 2009 conference in Miami was conceived. For the first time, the emerging Kanban tribe came together to share its experiences and develop a narrative. Out of that meeting came the idea to form the Limited WIP Society as an online place to share experiences and to find like-minded people. That in turn spawned local groups meeting in cities such as London, Stockholm and Hamburg. There are now around 30 of these groups all over the world. The largest are in Australia - Sydney and Melbourne. Remarkable given that there has never been a Lean Kanban conference in Australasia and I’ve only taught a single class - the advanced 3-day masterclass - in the region.

These community meeting places both virtual and physical, both local, regional and global, have served to create a bubble inside which the Kanban meme can thrive and evolve separate from any undue influence from the Agile (or other) communities. As Harford might suggest to us, had Kanban simply been served as a track or theme within Agile community events, it is likely that cross-breeding with Agile methods would have watered it down and stunted its growth.

Kanban without Isolation

Without protection, from the Agile community. within its own Galapagos island, Kanban would have come under stronger attack. It wouldn’t have been allowed to emerge as it truly is - an approach to change, an evolutionary approach designed to work upon existing processes and morph them into something fitter for their environment and entirely tailored to suit the specific situation. Instead, Kanban would have become yet another Agile method - one with deferred commitment, de-coupled cadences, no iterations, no planning, no estimating - essentially a new approach to project management.

What would have happened next is that the tribal immune system would have set to work on it. Attacking the novelty and the practices that were not considered to be Agile. The fitness criteria for the survival of Kanban within the Agile community would have created a filter that discouraged and eliminated practices that were not considered part of the tribal rituals and accepted behavioral practices. The de-coupled cadences would have disappeared in favor of iterations. The deferred commitment concept that discourages planning and estimation would have gone too. Operations reviews would be gone. Retrospectives at a team level on the same cadence as the deliveries would replace it but the inter-workflow benefit of an ops review would be lost. The kaizen events that happen after a daily standup meeting would probably be lost too - because the Agile norm is conformance to a defined process, and to reflect on performance only at scheduled retrospectives. Further, some sections of the community reinforce conformance to the defined process via a tribal need to label those who don’t conform fully as either less worthy or completely untouchable. If you want social status you must conform to the way everyone else is doing it.

So what would we be left with had we not accidentally isolated Kanban? It seems the use of card walls was already an accepted Agile practice in 2007. Kanban gave this practice greater depth and it gave it a catchy name. Kanban made the use of card walls “sticky” (as Chip and Dan Heath might suggest in Made to Stick). So perhaps it is not a surprise that as far as the Agile Alliance is concerned, Kanban Board is an Agile practice. Within the Agile community Kanban gets reduced to a visualization technique.

Benefits of Isolation

Through the happy coincidence of isolating Kanban from existing software development industry communities, we were able to develop our own. As anyone who has attended the series of conferences we’ve run over the past 3 years can attest, this community is diverse, open-minded, experimental, and is constantly looking to synthesize ideas from outside. Dissenters are actively encouraged. We’ve had John Seddon tell us “Lean drives me potty” and Benjamin Mitchell suggest Kanban might be a fad and to actively criticize the ability of Kanban to work as it is advertized as a mechanism to catalyze evolutionary change. We’ve had Hakan Forss challenge some of the core ideas in depth of implementation. Dissent has helped us to evolve and dissenters have, in some cases, been rewarded with greater profile in the community, and prominent influence, such as chairing a track, or speaking opportunities at conferences.

My personal experience from other communities has been that ideas that challenge the established tribal norms and dissenting opinions are shunned and unwelcome. If you want a speaking spot at the event you’d better be telling people what they want to hear!

Conclusions

Social isolation is a way to encourage a meme to thrive and evolve. You can create social isolation by encouraging the development of a community - an affinity group, or tribe - that shares an enthusiasm for the idea. The community must have meeting places both virtual and physical. When the community meets it must be able to share its stories in a safe environment. The leaders of the community must encourage and nurture diversity, dissent, and allow variants and mutations to emerge. In doing so, the idea will become stronger. It will evolve and thrive.

By doing all these things with Kanban, we’ve created a worldwide movement that is providing real benefits to people, teams, organizations and large-scale businesses. Had we not done so, even though it was accidental, it is likely Kanban would be a mere footnote in the legacy of the Agile community - a visualization technique for Agile methods. So many possibilities would have been missed and so much value left unrealized.

Monday, August 13, 2012

Lean Kanban University Train-the-Trainer Course

Lean Kanban University is offering a 5-day residential course to qualify as an Accredited Kanban Trainer. This class provides the opportunity to become a recognized trainer within Lean Kanban University with the ability to offer accredited Kanban training classes. Full Details and Registration, Download the Brochure [PDF]

Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Our Regional Startegy for Kanban in Europe

Last year, Lean Kanban University started to develop a regional strategy for raising awareness of Kanban within Europe. It had become evident that Europeans prefer to attend events within their own language region and that demand for basic information, case studies and access to experts on Kanban was growing across the whole continent. As travel budgets tightened and tolerance for travel outside the language or cultural region was low, the best way to serve the growing demand was to create a series of regional events.

2012 Lean Kanban European Conferences

In 2011, there was Lean Kanban Benelux (in Antwerp) and Central Europe (in Munich). This year there will be a total of four Lean Kanban conferences in Europe. The first was Southern Europe held in Madrid in May. In October there will be a series of three events: France in Paris; Central Europe in Vienna; and Netherlands in Utrecht.

Each event is unique. Each has its own call for papers, and the Paris event has a French language track. However, there are a significant number of shared speakers from overseas including key note speakers like Donald Reinertsen, David Joyce and me (David J. Anderson). The concept is provide high quality content from globally recognized speakers as well as superior regional content. Hence, the best strategy will generally be to attend the event being held in your own region.

For those from Scandinavia or the UK, you are spoiled for choice. Any one of these events offers great value. My personal preference is for Netherlands but choose the dates and times that work best for you. For those who cannot travel out of the Nordic region, we hope in the near future to announce a conference in Stockholm to take place in February 2013. I’m still looking for someone interested in organizing a UK-based conference in 2013. Contact me if you might be interested.

It’s not too late to participate as a speaker. The call for papers at Lean Kanban Netherlands is still open. The program committee is chaired by Olav Maassen, together with Lilian Nijboer, Maarten Hoppen, Patrick Steyaert and me. We’re looking for case studies of Kanban implementations as well as presentations that show use of other Lean ideas such as A3 Thinking, and synthesis of models from other fields such as risk management. Don’t miss out! Get your submission in before mid-August!

Sponsor Opportunities

Sponsors, did you know it is possible to sponsor all three events as a package deal? Alternatively, you can choose to sponsor just one or two of the events. Contact event organizers for details.

Registration is open…

Register now for Lean Kanban Central Europe, 22-23 Oct

Register for updates…

Keep me informed about Lean Kanban France, 18-19 Oct
Keep me informed about Lean Kanban Netherlands, 25-26 Oct

Sunday, July 29, 2012

Tolerance #3 - Are we doing Kanban or not?

Returning to my series of posts on tolerance and variation after a 3 month break, I’d like to examine a question I’m often asked, “Are we doing Kanban or not?”

Such a question can have several possible roots. It might be a tribal question seeking reassurance of worthiness to be a member of the Kanban community. It may be asked in a management context seeking reassurance on expectations for improvements that might be observed. It might be a pre-cursor to seeking training or consulting. It may simply be asked to confirm understanding of the method or clarification of its definition. Regardless of the motive, the benchmark is generally the definition of core practices I provided in chapter 2 of Kanban: Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Business.

Core Practices in the Kanban Method

The core practices (recently expanded to explicitly articulate a 6th) are:

1. Visualize
2. Limit WIP
3. Manage Flow
4. Make Policies Explicit
5. Implement Feedback Loops
6. Improve Collaboratively, Evolve Experimentally (using models and the scientific method)

Together these 6 practices have been observed in organizations that have successfully adopted a Kaizen Culture catalyzed through the use of virtual kanban systems. It is this combination that gives us the Kanban Method, named for its catalyst mechanism, the adoption of virtual kanban systems.

Do we need to do all six?

So the question has been, “Do we have to be doing all 6 in order to be doing Kanban?” Or in some cases, “We are only visualizing, are we still doing Kanban?” or, “We are only limiting WIP, are we still doing Kanban?”

My response has always been that it is a matter of intent, not merely practices observed, and that the answer is never a binary, black and white, yes or no. An assessment of “Are we doing Kanban?” is a matter of depth. With this I have set the expectation that shallow implementations are likely to produce limited results, while deeper implementations are likely to produce more dramatic results similar to those that I and others have reported at a series of conferences since 2007.

Loose Definition

Over time since 2009, I have played with the wording of these practices and the general theme has been one of removing specifics and moving towards a more general looser definition. Hence, “visualize workflow” has become simply “visualize” as the general problem is making invisible work visible. It is about more than just workflow. “Measure and Manage Flow” simply became “Manage Flow” as measurement could be deemed to be an optional, higher maturity behavior.

What has remained a constant since 2009, is “Limit WIP”. Despite the Kanban Method being named for the use of virtual kanban systems, the advice has always been merely to limit WIP, not to implement a virtual kanban system. This was inspired by Corey Ladas’ discovery in 2007 that any pull system is likely to act as the catalyst to improvement: kanban, drum-buffer-rope, CONWIP and CapWIP systems are all viable alternatives.

The advice to Limit WIP has been shown to be inspired. Merely limiting WIP rather than implementing a kanban system has provided permission for simpler solutions such as Personal Kanban. The general advice to Limit WIP also enable solutions that merely control multi-tasking such as a per person WIP limit, or limits only to the “in-progress” work in a workflow. In such system designs, the “done” columns in the workflow have infinite limits. They are effectively chains of decoupled “personal kanban in the office” systems. Richard Turner has coined the term “Proto-Kanban” to describe these solutions that do not implement an end-to-end pull system.

So are they doing Kanban or not?

I think the loose definition of Kanban practices has proven to be a strength rather than a weakness. It has enabled shallow solutions that work well in lower maturity organizations. Merely “limiting WIP” provides a lower barrier to entry. We’ve seen numerous case studies emerge where the initial step was a proto-kanban and that initial stage lasted for 9 to 12 months before the organization was ready to take a step up and implement a full virtual kanban system and develop a deeper Kanban implementation. If the barrier to entry was defined as “implement a virtual kanban system” then many organizations would give up before they even got started. This would have denied these businesses significant improvements and the workforce genuine relief from challenging circumstances.

So, my conclusion is that doing Kanban is a matter of intent. If the intent is ultimately to evolve an existing process implementation by adding a full end-to-end virtual kanban system and then evolve further from there but for now all you are doing is some visualization and a per person limit to control multi-tasking and personal overburdening, then yes, you are doing Kanban. If on the other hand, you’ve created a card wall to visualize your work and facilitate collaboration but no intent to pursue the grander benefits of Kanban as a method that controls unevenness in flow, eliminates overburdening, provides a platform to better manage business risk in knowledge work, and catalyzes emergence of a continuous improvement culture, then you are not doing Kanban.

Measuring Depth of Kanban

As Mike Burrows explained in Back from #KLRAT Hakan Forss questioned whether or not the core practices were in the right order from a shallow to deep perspective. The following discussion showed us via various anecdotes that the shallow to deep sequencing of practices could not be predicted. This led to a new model appearing - see the linked presentation “How Deep is Your Kanban?” This represents some of the bleeding edge innovation in the Kanban community. There is some hope that this work will mature into a model for Kanban adoption and maturity. For now it suffices to provide a visualization for the depth of a Kanban implementation.

Related Posts:

• Tolerance #1 - Pursuit of Precision
• Tolerance #2 - Loosen Your Grip
• Back from #KLRAT

Related Download:

• How Deep is Your Kanban (PDF)