Cars, Trains, and Kanban: How to Move Faster

Agile practitioners adopt Kanban with high expectations: decreased cycle time, increased throughput and a clearer look at where projects stand. But where do all these high hopes come from? And how do you make them come true? In this talk, we’ll explore the underlying principles behind Kanban—from systems thinking to lean manufacturing—and draw some fun parallels to everything from car traffic to passenger trains. Understanding these core concepts is the real key to moving faster with Kanban. This talk is for agile beginners, teams who are considering or have recently adopted Kanban, and teams who want to optimize their Kanban process. They’ll learn: What kanban really means—a brief history and how it applies to agile software development Why limiting work in progress (WIP) is essential to speeding up your development efforts + tips for setting WIP limits The right way to pull cards from one state to the next (and why it’s a lot like trains) How to spot bottlenecks in your process, fix them and maximize output.

Transcript

1. Cars, Trains and Kanban How to Move Faster Peter Kananen Partner, Gaslight teamgaslight.com @teamgaslight
2. What Kanban is not SCRUM Alternative? Lack of Iterations and Cadence Not Planning Process for Building Software
3. What does Kanban really mean?
4. What Kanban really means Modeling the process Limiting work in progress Analyzing Flow Pulling, not pushing
5. Our Issues Limiting work in progress Analyzing Flow Pulling not pushing • Poor economic decision making • Long cycle times • Large batch sizes • Over-utilization of capacity • Incurring and blind to the cost of queues • Optimizing for local efficiencies • High WIP • Reduced fast feedback • Limited insight into how to improve
6. Modeling the Process
7. When you don’t model your process… Limiting work in progress Analyzing Flow Pulling not pushing • Poor economic decision making • Long cycle times • Large batch sizes
8. Everything is a system http://www.systemsbiology.emory.edu/research/systems-biology-introduction.html http://www.advantagefactory.com/integration.html
9. What is the goal? What is the goal?
10. Throughput is the only goal What does ‘Done’ mean?
11. Hidden Work Why ‘To Do, Doing, Done’ are not enough
12. When you don’t model your process… Limiting work in progress Analyzing Flow Pulling not pushing • Poor economic decision making • Long cycle times • Large batch sizes
13. Limiting work in progress
14. When you don’t limit WIP… Limiting work in progress Analyzing Flow Pulling not pushing • Over-utilization of capacity • Blind to the cost of queues • Optimizing for local efficiencies
15. Experiment Utilize all capacity
16. High density = cascading problems
17. What is density?
18. Inventory (and it’s usually hidden)
19. “In product development, our greatest waste is not unproductive engineers, but work products sitting idle in process queues.” - Donald G Reinertsen Which do you want to move?
20. Stop maximizing local efficiencies
21. When you don’t limit WIP… Limiting work in progress Analyzing Flow Pulling not pushing • Over-utilization of capacity • Blind to the cost of queues • Optimizing for local efficiencies
22. Pulling, not Pushing
23. When you push instead of pull… Limiting work in progress Analyzing Flow Pulling not pushing • Over-utilization of capacity • Incur the cost of queues • High WIP • Reduce fast feedback
24. Trains Implement Kanban
25. The power of pull
26. Pulling helps enforce WIP limits Reinertsen, Donald G. The Principles of Product Development Flow
27. When you push instead of pull… Limiting work in progress Analyzing Flow Pulling not pushing • Over-utilization of capacity • Incur the cost of queues • High WIP • Reduce fast feedback
28. Analyzing Flow
29. When you don’t analyze flow… Limiting work in progress Analyzing Flow Pulling not pushing • Increased cycle time • Incurring and blind to the cost of queues • Large batch sizes • Limited ability to improve • Further harm economic decision making
30. Lead time & cycle time
31. Outpacing your bottlenecks Remember throughput is the goal
32. Use a Cumulative Flow Diagram http://zsoltfabok.com/images/posts/2011-02-05-xp-with-kanban-instead-of-scrum/cfd.png
33. Historic Cycle Times
34. When you don’t analyze flow… Limiting work in progress Analyzing Flow Pulling not pushing • Increased cycle time • Incurring and blind to the cost of queues • Large batch sizes • Limited ability to improve • Further harm economic decision making
35. What Kanban really means Modeling the process Limiting work in progress Analyzing Flow Pulling not pushing
36. Our Issues Limiting work in progress Analyzing Flow Pulling not pushing • Poor economic decision making • Long cycle times • Large batch sizes • Over-utilization of capacity • Incurring and blind to the cost of queues • Optimizing for local efficiencies • High WIP • Reduced fast feedback • Limited ability of improvement
37. Additional resources
38. email: peter@teamgaslight.com
39. Q&A? Peter Kananen Partner, Gaslight teamgaslight.com @teamgaslight