Do you sometimes feel that there is just too much going on?

Could you fall asleep anywhere, youre that tired?

Are you occasionally working so many hours that you forget what your family looks like?

Does your world sometimes feel chaotic and crazy?

We need a new idea ...

Forget trying to implement SCRUM, and admit you implemented SCRUM-BUT instead (like the majority of the world!)

Honestly evaluate if it is working 100% for your team.

if YES ignore this presentation

if NO continue!
Do you think something better can emerge or is now perhaps a good time to shake things up? Have you heard of KanBan? Its the latest buzz word

The word Kan means "visual" in Japanese and the word "ban" means "card". So Kanban refers to "visual cards". Kanban is Pull (Demand) Kanban - Responsive To Customers JIT - Just In Time / Continual Improvement

Core concepts of kanban

Make work visible Limit work in progress Help work to flow

Kanban teams try to minimize lead time. On the same board we might have one item that takes 1 month to complete and another item that takes 1 day.

In Kanban, estimation is not prescribed. So if you need to make commitments you need to decide how to provide predictability.

StandUps follow a board-oriented format, with the focus on bottlenecks and other visible problems

Dev Backlog Todo Dev CC Test RTS

3 Backlog
Backlog is a big bag where the product owner/analyst throw in anything anyone wants our project to have. Features, improvements, change requests (from clients and/or developers!)

Dev In Dev CC

9 Test

3 RTS
RTS comes from ready to ship. Whenever something reaches RTS column the work is considered to be done. Ready for QA with the client.

Todo
Todo is a short list of current top priority tasks which arent yet started. It usually changes every time there's a meeting with one of the clients. This is ordered top down from most important.

Dev, which comes from development, is a group of two columns: one is ambiguously named In Dev, which comes from in development and another one states CC from code complete. The former groups tasks which are under active development. They make their way to the latter after the developers have tested. This couple is grouped since code complete is just a technical stage to tell us specific functionality is ready.

Test is what it sounds it is. Testing. Checking whether we could deploy version if we wanted to. Finding bugs and fixing them. On and on. This needs to be performed by non developers.

Limits: We need to limit how many items can be in a column at a time. Backlog and RTS have no limits. The rest of the limits are determined by your team size. Dev should be 1.5x your team size. I would make Todo around half your team size, and Test 3. These can change at any time depending on your teams circumstances. Eg: Lets work with a team of 6 developers and 2 analysts who also test.

Brief description of feature/task/story ... Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

When in the Backlog this might be at feature level, and then when moved into Todo it should be broken down to tasks only if needed.

Name of Developer Rough estimate Actual estimate

You might want to add a tracking number if you monitor these tickets in an application eg: Trac / Jira.

 Use different colour post-its to indicate different projects or have swim lanes

Too low kanban limit => idle people => bad productivity Too high kanban limit => idle tasks => bad lead time

We have 1 project, with an analyst, so 1 analyst. There are 2 developers who can work on this project. The analyst perform the test functionality, so 1 tester. Based on the above situation Ive put a limit of 2 in Todo. There is a limit of 2 in dev, and a limit of 1 in test (as there is 1 tester).
The following is all adapted from Henrik Kniberg article on Kanban vs Scrum.

2 Backlog Todo Dev

Dev CC

2 Test

1 RTS

A
B

A, B are the 2 most important things right now!

2 Backlog Todo Dev

Dev CC

2 Test

1 RTS Ill do A

A
B

C D

Ill do B

Great! Next is C & D!

2 Backlog Todo Dev

Dev CC

2 Test

1 RTS

A
B A is done! C D

Ah, something to test!

2 Backlog Todo Dev

Dev CC

2 Test

1 RTS

A
B Testing A

C
D Working on C!

2 Backlog Todo Dev

Dev CC

2 Test

1 RTS

A
C A has a bug!

B D B is done!

2 Backlog Todo Dev

Dev CC

2 Test

1 RTS

A
C B A has a bug!

Ill do D! No wait ... The limit is 2!

2 Backlog Todo Dev

Dev CC

2 Test

1 RTS

K is very urgent. Ill schedule it next.

K D

How can I help?

2 Backlog Todo K D Dev

Dev CC B

2 Test

1 RTS

C is done!

Great, start with K!

The limit is 2, I need to assist with sorting out A.

2 Backlog Todo K D Dev

Dev CC B C How can I help?

2 Test

1 RTS

I want F & G as well, but the limit stops me ... Mmm.

We dont need more hands. But this keeps happening, write a test to prevent us missing this again!

2 Backlog Todo Dev K Ill do K!

Dev CC C

2 Test

1 RTS

A passed all tests, Ready to Ship!

B Ill test B!

The limit is 2, testing is a bottleneck. Ill see if I can assist with testing.

Mmm, is that it?

Nope, you will soon realise through retrospectives that you need to make changes for this to work optimally for YOU, YOUR project, and YOUR team makeup.

On the next slide is a 2-tier kanban board example.

Sites I used to put this together

http://www.crisp.se/henrik.kniberg/Kanban-vs-Scrum.pdf http://blog.brodzinski.com/2009/10/kanban-story.html http://www.flickr.com/ http://www.kanban101.com/
Photos from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/84265607@N00/1898331455/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/dallaportfolio/375969264/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/floridapfe/2140013039/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/tonivc/2283676770/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/pseudopff/51890707/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/tonivc/2283676770/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/alandd/3180887085/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/dinomite/3129244915/

Who am I ?

Im Sam Laing...

I am passionate about enabling development teams to reach their full potential. I strive to make the entire process from business vision to development less frustrating and more rewarding for all parties concerned. I strongly believe that everybody should enjoy and love what they do, and that people are what make projects and companies successful.

Follow me on twitter:

@samlaing

Read my blog:

www.inevitable.co.za