I’ve been referring to my latest thinking on development process as KFC Development. Its a bit of a gimmicky name, which makes it memorable, but there is some meaning behind it. KFC stands for Kanban, Flow and Cadence – three lean concepts which I think are important and complementary.

Kanban – Kanban is the mechanism which controls the workflow and helps manage inventory and investment, and identify bottlenecks.

Flow – More specifically One Piece Flow. The one-piece is a Minimal Marketable Feature (MMF) which ensures there is focus on the delivery of actual value. This avoids the temptation to artificially break work down into smaller chunks in order to fit them it into an iteration or sprint. A side effect of this flow, is that typical agile time-boxed iterations can become unnecessary.

Cadence – Cadences give the team the rhythm usually provided by time-boxed iterations. There can be a variety of cadences, from daily stand-ups, to quarterly roadmap planning. An additional cadence is that defined by cycle-time, which determines throughput, and allows a level of forecasting of future work.

I’m hoping to explore these ideas more in the future.