Deep Kanban - a biased and opinionated participant in the path towards synergy

This was my talk at the Lean Kanban Netherlands 2012

Transcript

1. Deep Kanban a biased and opinionated participant in the path towards synergy OpenCage.info
2. About me Kurt Häusler From New Zealand Lives and works in Germany Not currently a consultant
3. About me BSc CSM CSP MSc PSM I KCP
4. Outline Central themes Definitions The story Conclusion Ask questions at any time
5. Central Themes Kanban appears differently to trainers and practitioners
6. Central Themes A high-trust culture might not necessarily emerge, especially if anyone that cares about things like that feels obliged to express neutrality
7. Central Themes How to reconcile Kanban with its place in a larger context of change, or reconciliation in general
8. Definitions Deep Kanban - a biased and opinionated participant in the path towards synergy
9. The Marshall Model
10. The Marshall Model Gives us a vocabulary Useful for Kanban buy-in Useful as model in the application of the 6th core practice
11. Rightshifting “Improving the effectiveness of knowledge-work businesses.” Implies culture change via thinking differently There is a tendency to left-drift
12. Analytic vs Synergistic Bad old thing Good new thing Low trust culture High trust culture Theory X Theory Y Extrinsic motivation Intrinsic motivation Focus on cost Focus on value Management Fellowship Single loop learning Double loop learning
13. Rightshifting A modern healthy culture for product development and knowledge work doesn’t appear by magic You need internal change agents or culture hackers, biased towards freeing knowledge workers to delight customers Path towards synergy: rightshifting from analytic to synergistic
14. Definitions Deep Kanban - a biased and opinionated participant in the path towards synergy
15. Deep Kanban 1. Visualise 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)
16. Kiviat Charts
17. Definitions Deep Kanban - a biased and opinionated participant in the path towards synergy
18. Participants Managers Workers Internal Culture Hackers External Consultants Kanban Itself
19. Managers Likely to posses an analytic set of thinking tools Biased to left-drift May prefer driving change rather then being changed Hold purse-strings Have momentum behind decision making
20. Workers Unaccustomed to owning process May have internal bias to left-drift, neutrality or right-shift. Bias likely not realized externally
21. Internal Culture Hackers Biased to right-shift May be managers or workers Likely in the minority May be responsible for advocating or “coaching” Kanban
22. External Consultants Possibly an internal bias to right-shift Depend on management for funding
23. The Kanban System Exhibits characteristics that qualify it as a participant Imposes pull Via WIP limits, imposes things like kaizen, slack and/or swarming
24. Definitions Deep Kanban - a biased and opinionated participant in the path towards synergy
25. Analytic Synergistic Low-T rust High-T rust Biased and Opinionated
27. Culture Hacker T raditional Management
28. T raditional Management Kanban Itself Kanban Coach
29. T raditional Management Kanban Itself Kanban Coach
30. T raditional Management Kanban Itself Kanban Coach
31. T raditional Management Kanban Itself Kanban Coach
32. It Is Complicated Kanban (pull and WIP limits) will result in situations that compel change These changes could be analytic/low-trust or they could be synergistic/high-trust Analytic changes tend to conflict with pull and WIP limits, (and may threaten the sustainability of Kanban itself).
33. T raditional Management Kanban Itself Kanban Coach
34. T raditional Management Kanban Itself Kanban Coach
35. There is so much momentum behind the prevailing analytic mindset that neutrality seems like a losing strategy.
36. But David Said... WHAT KANBAN COACHES DO, AND DON’T DO: Stop Advocating! Stop Evangelizing! Observe Instead There Is No Judgment in Kanban Kanban consultants respect the current situation and do not pass judgment upon it.
37. He also said: Leadership is the magic ingredient
38. Start where you start Just add the Kanban magic sauce If you were advocating change before Kanban, then after Kanban you should stop it Watch Kanban do its magic The idea seems to be:
39. My issues with that are... It assumes we are introducing Kanban for its own sake, and not as a tool to support a wider initiative Managers accustomed to analytic thinking are not going read David’s blog, and do what they always did Progressive culture hackers with high-trust ideals are going read David’s blog and sit back and observe This is not speculation, I have seen it occur
40. The Story Introduction of Kanban at a medium sized German software company Also subject of my MSc dissertation Does NOT describe a company that actually reached “synergy” with deep Kanban
41. “well we only have Theory X people around here” “does that mean Agile is not suitable?”
42. The Product 10 year old client-server product ~1,000,000 LOC C++, SQL, C#
43. The Customers A handful of larger “project customers” A large number of smaller customers
44. The Nature of Demand New development projects Change requests Bugs
45. The Departments Project, Sales Development
46. Pre-History Cowboy-coding XP-but Automated T ests Scrum
47. 2009 I joined Suggested Kanban at a release retrospective Gave a presentation on Agile, Lean, Scrum and Kanban
48. 2010 My focus on improving Scrum, mainly by pushing for cross functional teams and backlog grooming Started my dissertation with little enthusiasm from the PMs Then the boss read an article about Kanban...
49. The Workshop Held in February 2011 With external consultants Learn about Kanban and decide if we want to do it
50. Goals of Most Participants Better quality Better maintainability
51. My Goals Better cultural and psychological environment Better motivation Better communication and collaboration between project and development department
52. The Consultants Suggested Shorter time to market Increased throughput
53. What We Settled On Increasing Throughput
54. Further Details Focus on mechanics of Kanban Scrum “Kaizen”
55. The Kickoff Meeting Held 2 weeks after the workshop on Feb 28th Plan to start with Kanban the following day!
56. Preparation Project department VSM Development department concerned with estimation and bug-fixing
57. The Kickoff Meeting Balancing new development and maintenance Swimlanes? Identified 11 process steps and suggested WIP limits significantly below current WIP
58. WIP Current WIP was 315 We decided on a limit of 108
59. One of the Initial Designs Column WIP Limit Understand and Assess 10 Analyze 10 Offer 50 Product backlog Prepare for Sprint Planing 8 Development including acceptance tests 8 Internal acceptance 8 Review, test, improve and integrate 4 Wait for Freeze Prepare for client release including documentation 20 Deployment 20 In production
60. First Few Weeks Split into 2 systems, New Development and Maintenance Each “feature” is a project of around 20-30 stories T otal WIP limit is equivalent to 5000 stories, or 100 per person
61. Other Calculations Excluding buffers like Offer and Product Backlog: 40 stories per person Working backwards from sensible 2 stories per person implies total WIP limit of 100 stories, or 4 features.
62. CFD New Development
63. Optimizations to Kanban itself Addressing the symptoms but not changing the underlying system Actual system improvements T ypes of Changes
64. CFD for Maintenance
65. Observations Project and Development departments working together ok, but less “agile”. Project culture dominates. The board is a hybrid of portfolio and team level. Most activities left and right of development are independent of feature “size”.
66. The First Retrospective Batch Size Still no measurable lead time for either New Development or Maintenance Global WIP
67. The First Retrospective Management reported that “development” must be a problem because cards move quicker through the other columns, and linger in development
68. My Suggestion
69. Maintenance Statistics WIP Lead Time Throughput Estimate/T arget 100 20 5 Actual 85 40 2
70. New Development Statistics WIP Lead Time Throughput Estimate/T arget 180 275 0.65 Actual 105 350 0.3
71. 3-Day Workshop with David Initial focus on culture I somehow got diverted towards the “metrics” David’s workshop got me back on culture
72. 2nd Retrospective Developers lament: “It just feels like a continuous stream of work. We miss projects” Managers lament: “We need more detailed planing documentation.” Suggest a planning phase where we plan projects upfront Managers also need: More control. Suggest more formal sign-off between “phases”
73. I Suggested More Agility I called it “reintegrating Scrum” Cross-functional teams, delivering small enough stories that they can be delivered in 30 days or less.
74. The ScrumMaster Suggested Cross functional teams specializing on sub-domains
75. What We Committed T o A more formal approach to projects and planning A more formal “quality gate” approach T eams specializing on sub-domains (but maybe not cross-functional)
76. What Management Decided to Implement A more formal approach to projects and planning A more formal “quality gate” approach T eams specializing on function
77. Other Observations Push rather than pull Conflict and stress over WIP limits and deadlines No tolerance or acceptance of slack or swarming Increasing time pressure from management
78. The Realization Management continue to work and think they way they always did. Since before, and during Scrum, and now with Kanban Culture dominated by fear and mistrust
79. Example A glimmer of hope extinguished
80. Conclusion Reconciling neutrality T oo much focus on the easy bits Kanban as a tool for disruptive culture hacking
81. Reconciling Neutrality External Consultants vs Internal Culture Hackers Strategy vs T actics Mechanics / easy-bits vs larger mission
82. Shift Focus T owards the Hard Bits Current focus on principles and practices good for training and initial system design Description on the tin, less relevant for on- going change efforts at the coal face Even trainers should probably spend 5% on Kanban itself and 95% on “propaganda”
83. One of Our Current Best Hopes for the Future of the Workplace We have a chance here to really change the world There is a lot of momentum behind 19th century management, and neutrality wont beat it Kanban should play the central role in everything that the rightshifters and Stoosians are trying to do
84. More Info http://kurthaeusler.wordpress.com @Kurt_Haeusler http://flowchainsensei.wordpress.com/ rightshifting/ http://www.stoosnetwork.org