Kanban in 30 Days: Modern and efficient organization that delivers results
By Tomas Björkholm and Jannika Björkholm
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About this ebook
Kanban is a simple and elegant Agile framework that helps to control and improve development processes. Originating in traditional 20th century manufacturing in Japan, Kanban has a renewed relevance today, being a crucial methodology in the world of software development. This book explores the key features of Kanban, and demonstrates how to put it into practice through exercises that will help you make the most of this unique approach to managing collaboration and production.
Designed as a 30 day action plan, this book will help you understand and implement Kanban – and start seeing results – in a month. Analyze your current situation and define your goals and wider strategic aims, and begin developing a plan to help you and your team confidently work towards achieving them. Involve your team to drive cultural change, learn how to prioritize and organize tasks and projects to efficiently use your time and resources.
Create your own value stream map to better understand your processes and identify improvement areas, and adapt and use the features tips and examples to overcome challenges you may face when implementing Kanban.
Pick up this book and experience the full results of this vital Agile methodology – fast.
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Reviews for Kanban in 30 Days
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Book preview
Kanban in 30 Days - Tomas Björkholm
Table of Contents
Kanban in 30 Days
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewer
Preface
What this book covers
Who this book is for
Conventions
Reader feedback
Customer support
Errata
Piracy
Questions
1. Days 1-2 – Understanding Kanban, Lean, and Agile
The four foundational principles of Kanban
The six core practices of Kanban
Practice 1 – visualizing your work
Practice 2 – limiting work in progress
Practice 3 – managing flow
Practice 4 – making process policies explicit
Practice 5 – implementing feedback loops
Practice 6 – improving collaboratively, evolving experimentally (using models and the scientific method)
Lean
The 14 principles of Lean
Agile
Manifesto for Agile Software Development
Principles behind the Agile Manifesto
Self-organization
How to choose between Scrum and Kanban
Summary
2. Days 3-5 – Getting to Know Your System
Classes of services – different ways of handling feature requests
Mapping the process
Exercise I – draw the process steps
Exercise II – find the time spent on each process step
What makes your customer happy?
Summary
3. Days 8-9 – Visualizing Your Process and Creating Your Initial Kanban Board
Information dimensions
Visualization dimensions
Characteristics of visualization dimensions
Matching information and visualization dimensions
Prioritizing information dimensions
Visualizing different statuses
Kanban board with stories and tasks
Examples of Kanban boards
Kanban board example – internal operation
Kanban board example – development team
Different processes for different issue types
A board without rows and columns
A board for aggregated status
Electronic versus physical boards
A good tool increases interaction
A good tool is flexible
Summary
4. Days 10-11 – Setting the Limits
Adding limits
Showing the result in a graph
Simulating the result
What limit should you start with?
Minimum limits
Theory of constraints
Step 1 – identify the bottleneck
Step 2 – align all other steps according to the bottleneck
Step 3 – increase the capacity through the bottleneck
Step 4 – start over from step 1
Summary
5. Day 12 – Choosing the Roles and Meetings You Need
Introducing new roles
Kanban Master
Master of the process
Servant leader
Shielding the team
Product owner
Chief product owner and/or project manager
Cross-functional or specialized team
Meetings in Kanban
Planning a meeting
Story start meeting
Daily sync
Enterprise sync
Demo meeting
Review meeting
Retrospective meeting
The plus-minus-delta retrospective
Futurespective
The perfection game
Summarizing retrospectives
Warming up before a retrospective
Summary
6. Day 15 – First Day Running Kanban
9:00 to 11:00 – first planning meeting
11:00 to 13:00 – creating your Kanban board
13:00 to 14:00 – deciding your meetings
14:00 to 17:00 – start working
A few days later – the first retrospective
Summary
7. Days 16-29 – Improving Your Process
Edward Deming and PDCA
Measurements to differentiate between improvements from impairments
Value, failure, and false demand
Measuring time to market
Using the right measurements, the right way
Continuing your value stream mapping
Exercise III – handling special tracks
Looking for loops and alternate ways
Finding the time spent on loops and alternate ways
Calculating process efficiency
Finding improvements in the process
Removing unnecessary queues
Prioritizing with algorithms
Prioritizing with severity
Summary
8. Day 30 – Release Planning
Basing your plan on facts
Taking control over the amount of work
Quick estimating
Estimating with the planning poker
Knowing your capacity and calculating the delivery date
Follow-up progress with a burn-down chart
Communicating the plan
Burn-up graph
Cumulative flow diagram
Taking control over velocity
Summary
Kanban in 30 Days
Kanban in 30 Days
Copyright © 2015 Impackt Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.
Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the authors, nor Impackt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.
Impackt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Impackt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.
First published: June 2015
Production reference: 1290615
Published by Impackt Publishing Ltd.
Livery Place
35 Livery Street
Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.
ISBN 978-1-78300-090-6
www.Impacktpub.com
Credits
Authors
Tomas Björkholm
Jannika Björkholm
Reviewer
Anna Sandell
Project Coordinator
Priyanka Goel
Content Development Editor
Sweny M. Sukumaran
Copy Editors
Utkarsha S. Kadam
Vikrant Phadke
Proofreaders
Simran Bhogal
Stephen Copestake
Paul Hindle
Cover Work
Melwyn D'sa
Production Coordinator
Melwyn D'sa
Acquisition Editor
Richard Gall
About the Authors
Tomas Björkholm works as a consultant at Crisp in Sweden. Since 2008, he has been helping companies implement and succeed with Kanban and Scrum. He is also a frequently hired speaker and has held more than 150 classes about Agile and Lean for software development. This is Tomas' second book but the first in English.
Jannika Björkholm is the team manager of a developer team, and has been working with Agile methods since 2009.
We wish to thank Anna Sandell, Johan Burén, Peter Kerschbaumer, and Mattias Skarin.
About the Reviewer
Anna Sandell lives in Sweden and has spent approximately 15 years working on leading software development projects. She is always on the lookout for better ways of visualizing the progress of development teams in order to improve their work. Agile methods such as Scrum and Kanban give her lots of inspiration in this area. Her other professional interests include organizational development and writing and proofreading texts of various kinds.
In her spare time, Anna enjoys playing curling and sewing patchwork quilts.
I would like to thank my family and my nearest colleagues who helped me in implementing enough of my ideas to keep me in a creative mood.
Preface
It's just an ordinary day at work for Lisa, the project leader. Already, at the parking place outside the office she meets Ted, the marketing manager. In his normal irritating way, he asks for the project status. Lisa answers with the normal Fine
and doesn't give any more details. After three years of working with Ted, she knows that this is just his way to start a normal conversation, the request for changed requirements. That's exactly what happens today as well, as usual.
We met some customers yesterday and they were very clear that some changes were absolutely needed
, he started.
Lisa knows there was no point in arguing.
OK
, she said, what kind of changes are we talking about?
Nothing big, just some adjustments. I will pass you later today. See you later, got to run.
Before he left her he fired away the phrase she hated:
You know, we need to be Agile.
She hated that word, agile
. She didn't know what it meant. It was just used by everybody to excuse their bad behaviour.
Lisa felt that the energy from a good night's sleep was running out of her. A good night's sleep was maybe not the right description. She was no longer able to leave her work behind at the office. Instead it followed her home, spinning around in her head and didn't give her enough peace for a good night's sleep.
She knows this was just the beginning and she was right. Even before she reached her desk, the department manager Alice grabbed her.
Don't forget to send me the report about the delays in the project. I need it by 2:00 p.m.
Lisa felt how her stress level was increasing. When they are delayed she has to spend her time on writing reports to managers about the delay, instead of spending her time with the developers and helping them speed up.
She went to the kitchen to get a cup of coffee. She had to calm down before entering the project area. She didn't want the developers to see how stressed she felt. She totally failed. And there was no help from the developers. The more stressed she felt the more silent and vague they were. No one was able to say when they thought they would be done. They were only complaining about unclear specifications, short deadlines, and scope creep. And she didn't even dare to mention that Ted would, during the day, introduce new changes.
The frustration increased inside of her. She felt torn between managers, business people, and developers.
Is it time for Lisa to give up and quit? No it isn't! It's just time for a process that can handle changes and at the same time is transparent especially when it comes to status and consequences of a late change.
Kanban is a method that can help Lisa create a process that will improve her working day. If you recognize Lisa's situation, this book, Kanban in 30 Days will guide you to a better situation. It will take you through the basics of Kanban, Agile, and Lean. It