Implementing Kanban to Improve your Workflow

Tutorial from LOPSA East
System, network, and security senior engineers manage intricate relationships ensuring that everything from simple tasks to complex projects gets completed in a timely manner. In this workshop, we will talk about using agile processes to identify, visualize, and improve work.

Outline:

Overview of the kanban process. What is kanban?
Identify common problems.
Define common terminology explicitly.
Work through common problems as a group using kanban.
Identify metrics for improvement.
Review, next steps, additional resources.
At the end of this tutorial, attendees will have a solid understanding of kanban and agile processes to take back to their environments.

Transcript

1. Implementing Kanban to Improve your Workflow jennifer.davis@getchef.com 1
2. Introductions 2
3. Introductions • Name • Current job role • Experience with Kanban • Expectations of this class 3
4. Course Objectives and Style 4
5. Course Objectives • Upon completion of this course you will be able to • Describe Kanban. • Apply principles to solve workflow problems. • Describe various tools. • Choose the right tools for your team. 5
6. Agenda 6
7. Topics • Qualifications • Workflow • Prepping for Success • Intro to Kanban • Metrics • Online Tools • Review 7
8. Breaks! • 10:30-11:00am Morning Break • 12:30pm End of tutorial and Lunch 8
9. Additional Questions? • Kanban? • Hadoop? • Monitoring? • Chef? ! Ping me Twitter: @sigje Email: jennifer.davis@getchef.com 9
10. Qualifications? 10
11. Practitioner “Excellence is an art won by training and habituation…We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” ! — Aristotle 11
12. Case 1 12
13. Team 1 • small • semi-siloed from development and qe • ~10 dev, ~3 qe, ~2 se, 1 product manager, 100s of customers 13
14. Goal • Effective use of time • No duplication of effort • Improve customer experience • Promotion to larger projects 14
15. Solution • Personal Kanban • Dashboards • Influence through visuals 15
16. Factors for Success • Trust • Visual dashboards 16
17. Case 2 17
18. Team 2 • Small • Siloed from development and qe • ? dev, ? qe, 10 se, 1 product manager, 3 project manager, open source, 100s of customers 18
19. Goal • Break down rigid single points of knowledge failure • Reduce development friction • Eliminate duplicate efforts 19
20. Solution • Team Kanban • Incremental improvements 20
21. Factors for Success • Management buy in • Training • Effort to minimize “pushing” • Weekly team syncs • Proximity of team 21
22. Workflow 22
23. Workflow Work that is .. • orchestrated • repeatable • organized • moving from one state to another. 23
24. WIP • Work in progress • work that has had resources applied to it ! • Resources are .. • people, money,.. 24
25. Properties of Tasks • name • start date • end date • current state • description • priority • owner 25
26. TIP: Sample Task Handling • What is it? • Can you do anything with it? • What is the next step? 26
27. Properties of Projects • same requirements as a task and are larger in scope. • may be comprised of more than one task. 27
28. Task vs Project Group Exercise • What is the difference between a task and a project? 28
29. Additional property • Size 29
30. Interrupts • Non planned work that comes in • customer request • incident • request for help from coworker • single point of knowledge (you) work • high priority task push from manager 30
31. Blocked work • Work that can progress no further: • dependent teams • blocked by external team • insufficiently qualified request • blocked by requester • dependent on SPOK • blocked by team • time dependent 31
32. Work Team Exercise Time: 5 minutes What does a typical work day look like for work that you do specifically that is non-interrupt based? Choose a speaker for the group to share summary. 32
33. Interrupts Team Exercise Time: 5 minutes Do you have interrupts and what are they? ! Choose a (different) speaker for the group to share summary. 33
34. Done? Group Exercise • When is work done? 34
35. Prepping for Success 35
36. Environment 36
37. Values 37
38. Desire 38
39. Motivation 39
40. Connectedness 40
41. Team Vs Individual 41
42. Objectives • Defined by the team. Not management. • Defined by the team. Not individuals. • Everyone has voice, opportunity to speak. 42
43. Tip: Implement as a Team Communication. Collaboration. • Discuss objectives. • Describe work. • Define lanes. • Define a task. • Define a project. 43
44. Tip: Elect a Champion 44
45. Intro to Kanban 45
46. Kanban • “visual card” 46
47. Kanban - Unit of work • request • issue • defect unit of work - specific to environment 47
48. What is it ? A System. • visual process management • what to do • when to do it • how much to do 48
49. What is it ? A Method. • incremental, evolutionary process improvement 49
50. 3 Principles • Current Process. • Incremental, Evolutionary Change. • Respect current process, roles, responsibilities and titles. 50
51. 5 Core Practices • Visualize. • Limit WIP. • Manage flow. • Make policies explicit. • Improve collaboratively. 51
52. Kanban Principles 52
53. 3 Principles • Current Process. • Incremental, Evolutionary Change. • Respect current process, roles, responsibilities and titles. 53
54. Current Process • Do you know what the current process is? • Is it documented? Is it explicit? Is it clear? • Has it been evaluated with team? 54
55. 3 Principles • Current Process. • Incremental, Evolutionary Change. • Respect current process, roles, responsibilities and titles. 55
56. Incremental Evolutionary Change • How are you measuring current process? • Is value clearly understood? • Is work defined in value not cost? 56
57. 3 Principles • Current Process. • Incremental, Evolutionary Change. • Respect current process, roles, responsibilities and titles. 57
58. Respect Current State • Find the current value. • Not forceful. • What people want vs How to get there 58
59. Review Question • What are the 3 principles? 59
60. Kanban Practices 60
61. 5 Core Practices • Visualize. • Limit WIP. • Manage flow. • Make policies explicit. • Improve collaboratively. 61
62. Work Unit • Individual Card • PostIt • Color - Type • Flags • Blocked work • Small PostIts 62
63. Operations Cards Team Exercise Time: 10 minutes Use PostIts and flags to mock up a legend for work items. 63
64. Tip: Standardize 64
65. Visualize - Avatar 65
66. Visualize - Sample Boards 66
67. States of Work • specific to environment • up for discussion within team • can change overtime • reflects now not what you want it to be 67
68. Visualize - Sample Boards 68
69. Visualize - Grid with Legend 69
70. Visualize - Evolutionary 70
71. Visualize - Automation 71
72. Tip: Yes and .. 72
73. Operations Board Team Exercise Time: 10 minutes Use large PostIt to mock up a SysAdmin board. Don’t forget to add your legend. 73
74. 5 Core Practices • Visualize. • Limit WIP. • Manage flow. • Make policies explicit. • Improve collaboratively. 74
75. Limit WIP. 75
76. Limit WIP - Why? • Identify bottlenecks • Weakest link in chain 76
77. 5 Core Practices • Visualize. • Limit WIP. • Manage flow. • Make policies explicit. • Improve collaboratively. 77
78. Manage flow • Measure flow of work items through states. • How fast are we creating value, minimizing risk, and avoiding cost of delay in predictable manner? 78
79. 5 Core Practices • Visualize. • Limit WIP. • Manage flow. • Make policies explicit. • Improve collaboratively. 79
80. Make policies explicit. 80 Story In Progress: Acceptance criteria are identified. The story has been divided into tasks. The “started” date has been recorded.
81. Make policies explicit. 81
82. 5 Core Practices • Visualize. • Limit WIP. • Manage flow. • Make policies explicit. • Improve collaboratively. 82
83. Improve collaboratively. 83
84. Improve collaboratively. 84
85. Review Questions • Give me an example of the most basic kanban board. • Why do we need to make policies explicit? • Why do we make incremental changes? 85
86. Meetings with Kanban 86
87. Lean Coffee • Draw “To Do, Doing, Done” on white board. • Spend 5 minutes to write topics on sticky notes. • Vote on topics with stickers. Each person gets 2 votes. • Prioritization of topics based on votes. 87
88. Metrics 88
89. Metrics • Why? 89
90. Metrics • What? • cumulative flow • type distribution • efficiency • average cycle times 90
91. Cumulative Flow Diagram count of cards in particular state/lane for each day in a specific time interval. 91
92. Cumulative Flow Diagram 92
93. Distribution • Count of cards organized by state, task type, or owner. 93
94. Card Distribution 94
95. Card Distribution 95
96. Efficiency • relative status (in process, waiting, completed..) of WIP over time. • % of work • gauge efficiency trends • reduce ratio of work items waiting to be queued versus items actively processed 96
97. Efficiency Diagram 97
98. Average Cycle Time • cycle time - time take to move a task from start to finish including wait time. • average cycle time - specific to an interval of time 98
99. Little’s Law N = XR • N - number in system • X - Throughput • R - average time in system 99
100. Utilization Law U = XS • U - % of time processing tasks • X - Output Rate Tasks/Unit of time • S - Mean service time 100
101. Applying Metrics 101
102. Level 1 • Increase Throughput • Increase Resource Utilization 102
103. Level 2 • Decrease Variability • sizing • cycle time 103
104. Group Activity 104
105. Tools and Resources 105
106. • RescueTime • Trello • Leankit • Rally 106
107. RescueTime - Time tracking 107
108. RescueTime - Time tracking 108
109. LeanKit - Kanban 109
110. LeanKit - Kanban 110
111. Trello - Kanban 111
112. Rally - Scrum 112
113. Dominica DeGrandis • http://www.ddegrandis.com • DevOps Kanban game • Public and private training • Youtube videos 113
114. Review 114
115. Workflow Work that is .. • orchestrated • repeatable • organized • moving from one state to another. 115
116. 3 Principles • Current Process. • Incremental, Evolutionary Change. • Respect current process, roles, responsibilities and titles. 116
117. 5 Core Practices • Visualize. • Limit WIP. • Manage flow. • Make policies explicit. • Improve collaboratively. 117
118. Thank you • Contact: jennifer.davis@getchef.com • Twitter: @sigje 118
119. Credits • Washing the dishes - https://www.flickr.com/photos/mulazimoglu/3863835843/in/photostream/ • Kanban (im Team) - https://www.flickr.com/photos/otacke/ • Kanban avatars - https://www.flickr.com/photos/ninetomorrows/6925604157 • Productivity kanban - https://www.flickr.com/photos/orcmid/3879259373 • Kanban a week later - https://www.flickr.com/photos/alq666/3388196910 • explicit policies kanban board - https://www.flickr.com/photos/dexter_mixwith/6353937575 • team vs individual - http://www.flickr.com/photos/levork ! ! ! ! 119