Kanban in a networked process -- Visualise the network!

It seems that the idea of a work-network instead of work-flow is catching on and I'd like to throw a bit more fuel in that fire!

Knowledge work is not linear! This we have learned from the experiences with failed Waterfall projects. There are things we do over and over again, and there are things we do only once in a project. None of those can easily be predicted. Scrum and Kanban are examples of our quest to distill what we do to the bare essential. Only then can we understand and manage our work.

Scrum does this by strictly limiting the work in progress through the concept of time boxes. The idea is: do something that fits a (reasonably) short timebox, and nothing else. Get that done and released before you go on to the next thing.

Kanban does this by strictly obeying Work In Progress (WIP) limits and establishing a Pull system (instead of push as much content as you can into an iteration). Both have pros and cons which I will not discuss here. http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

But most interestingly, both tackle the flow of our work in a linear fashion. Both Scrum and Kanban assume that some work can "flow" orderly to completion. However that is not the case! In knowledge work we have many loops and re-loops in the process that are hard to visualize and follow. Without visualizing those loops we cannot effectively manage our work!

Jurgen Appelo and Allan Shalloway had (what looks like was) an interesting discussion on the non-linearity of work and consequently on the non-linearity of Kanban boards. Check out Jurgen's and Allan's posts on the subject.

Since I've been experimenting with Personal Kanban for 3 months now I'd like to share some of my own experiences.

The picture below depicts my process boards as they evolved (click for larger images). The initial one was simple and linear, and it did not disclose enough information for me.


The second one was much better in highlighting some of the bottlenecks in my process (waiting for my action, waiting for others action, waiting for meeting), but was still too linear to reflect the work in a way that was useful to visualize.


The final Kanban board is actually what I use now and is a slight modification of the second one. As you can see it depicts the networked nature of my work and therefore also helps me set my WIP limits appropriately (for example why not have many things waiting for meetings?).


A conclusion of mine from the above boards is that it is not possible to set WIP limits without understanding the work (for example what "wait" states do you have in your process). On the other hand, trying to follow the WIP limits you have set will help you visualize those "wait" states as a consequence of the search for sustainable WIP limits

How about you? What are your experiences in using Kanban boards or other visualization techniques to uncover the networked nature of our work? Leave a comment below with a link to your post!

Photo credit: sjcockell @ flickr

Dude! Where's my manager? or Why you should attend LESS2011

Many teams start their agile transition from the "developer-side". This is quite normal, developers (coders and testers) feel the pain more than others because they need to actually get the product/system finished. But by focusing on developers, aren't we missing something? Aren't we forgetting that many of the consequences we so detest come from un-informed decisions by people higher in the chain?

In my experience many agile transitions fail by not involving managers in the process. Sure, it is possible to change how your team works with minimal involvement from your manager, but at some point the team is constrained more by management decisions than actual technical practices or even understanding of the product.

I remember a story of a team that was on their path to agile adoption, but could not progress further because management had decided that certain tools should be used. The usual explanations were given: "IT can only support one tool", "we need to harmonize our tool landscape", etc. Whatever the reason for the decision what we can say is that in this case management had a real - and negative - impact on the team's capability to deliver working software.

Sure we can go rogue and use our own tool chain "hidden" from IT and our manager (and many teams have done that), but that is not a long term strategy. Sooner or later we will bump again against a set of decisions that will hinder us from progressing.

I believe we need a new model for Agile adoption. One that includes the managers, leaders, VP- C-level people in our organizations.

It is this belief that has led me to participate in a project to organize a set of conferences focused on the role of leaders and managers. Last year we organized the first of that set of conferences in Helsinki and named it LESS2010. This year we are continuing that project with LESS2011 in Stockholm.

There are many reasons for you or your manager to attend the LESS2011 conference in Stockholm. From the individual speakers (check-out our keynote line up) to the people you will meet. But If I had to name one reason it is this: Agile and Lean adoptions require our managers to understand the new mindset, and without that we are bound to fail. So, get yourself and your manager to LESS2011 and talk to other managers! Share your experiences and questions and come learn from people that have been facing long lasting agile transitions (the kind that requires management involvement)!

Short multimedia review of LESS 2010 conference

The LESS 2010 conference just ended on a positive note of shared knowledge, bridge building between different communities and celebration of great work in the area of Software Development.

LESS was started with a great ambition of combining, from the starting point three different communities globally. Those communities were the Agile community, which is focused on the improvement of the software industry. The Lean community with both people from manufacturing as well as from software industry. And the Beyond Budgeting community, which comes from large financial and industrial companies and represents a turn in the way those companies tackle the problem of managing large organizations.

I hope that you have the chance to dive into each of these communities' body of knowledge as there are great contributions from each of those complementing what we have been doing in the Agile community for nearly a decade.

There was one piece of data that particularly impressed me. That data does emphasize something that many of us have felt, but putting a number on it does make it even more impressive. The first keynote presented a figure from an evaluation of work done in a company. The amount of tasks that were blocked (could not progress) was 62%. This is amazing, most of the work in that company was blocked, and so people would start new tasks and, guess what: get blocked on those. The queuing theory's prediction of "the more tasks you start the less you finish" was quite clear here.

There was one talk and one paper that were highlighted by the organizers as the best in the conference. These selections are always subjective, of course. But it's worth highlighting them as they were very good sources of information about Agile adoption (the paper) and new ways of looking at the organization and inform the way we adopt Agile and Lean software development (the talk).

Maarit Laanti received the award for the best paper of the conference. Here's Maarit receiving the award.

Paper: Agile Transformation Study at Nokia - One Year After

Here's Maarit receiving the award:
UPDATE: This video has been removed


Jurgen Appelo received the award for best talk in the conference. His talk: "Complexity vs. Lean, the Big Showdown". You can find Jurgen's slides here.

Here's Jurgen receiving his award:

Jurgen Appelo receiving award for best presentation at LESS2010 from Vasco Duarte on Vimeo.

Finally the conference ended with the gala dinner, which I thought was a wonderful way to end the event where we meet so many new people. We celebrate the fact that we spent time together trying to understand the issues that we face every day, but with the help of different points of view and mental frameworks.

Very good 3 days. I'm already looking forward for next year's conference!

PS: Watch this space as I'll publish an amazing surprise that the LESS2010 organizers prepared for the participants! :)