Karl Scotland – Using Agile to Deliver Value
Archive for May, 2009
Isn't Kanban Just a Task-board?
May 26th
While the word Kanban comes from the Japanese for “visual card”, the term Kanban as used by the Kanban Software Development community, represents much more than a standard task-board, or team-board. Additionally, the Kanban Software Development community have not tried to replicate the mechanism of the Toyota Production System kanban tool exactly, but have taken the underlying principles in order to achieve similar effects in software development. So what is a Kanban System for Software Development?
A Kanban System visualises some unit of value. This unit of value could be a User Story, Minimal Marketable Feature, Plain Old Requirement or something else. This is different from a task-board, which generally focuses on visualising the current tasks.
A Kanban System manages the flow of these units of value, through the use of Work In Process limits. This is different from a task-board, which generally has no WIP limits, but aims to have all tasks complete by the end of a time-box.
A Kanban System deals with these units of value through the whole system, from when they enter a teams control, until when they leave it. This is different from a task-board, which generally only deals with the work in the build/test stage, but shows no information about what work is being prepared, or what work is ready for release.
By putting these 3 properties of a Kanban System together, we can describe a Kanban System for Software Development as one which allows value to flow through the whole system using WIP limits to create a sustainable pipeline of work. Further, the WIP Limits provide a mechanism for the Kanban System to demonstrate when there is capacity for new work to be added, thereby creating a Pull System. Finally, the WIP Limits can be adjusted and their effect measured as the Kanban System is continuously improved.
A task-board simply shows what development tasks have been predicted to be done in the current time-box, with their status.
Anxiety or Boredom Driven Process Improvement?
May 13th
At the SPA conference recently, Joseph Pelrine talked about “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience” by Mihalyi Czikszentmihalyi. The ideas behind this struck a chord with me as a way of describing something I originally said when discussing whether kanban is only suitable for mature teams. That is that rather than focusing on being Agile which may (and should) lead to being successful, Kanban focuses on becoming successful, which may lead to being Agile.
Mihalyi Czikszentmihalyi describes the state of Flow as having a balance between ability, and the skills required for a piece of work. If some work requires more skill than a person has ability, then they are in a state of Anxiety. If a person has more ability than the skills required for a some work then they are in a state of Boredom. Applying this to Process Improvement, we want to move teams up the Flow Zone so that skills required and ability increase equally.
Increasing Skills and Ability equally at the same time is unlikely, so in practice there are two routes to move up the Flow Zone. The first is what I am dubbing “Anxiety Driven Process Improvement”. Move a team into a state of Anxiety such that they need to improve their skills to cope. I assert that this is the approach that makes time-box based method so effective. Time-boxing forces teams into a place where they need to improve their skills in order to deliver working software every few weeks. Many teams push back, and a common approach to this is to make the time-box shorter to emphasis the point! The other route is to do “Boredom Driven Process Improvement”. Highlight to the teams where they need to improve their ability, and allow and support them in doing so such that they are able to taken on work requiring more skill. I further assert that this is the approach that kanban systems take. Visualising queues and work in progress in order expose the bottleneck where the ability needs improving.
This might sound like I am suggesting the time-boxing and kanban are mutually exclusive approaches. That isn’t the case – I have already said that! Instead, I just find it an interesting angle to look at a different dynamic between two approaches.
Kanban and Time-boxes
May 9th
I had a brief exchange of tweets with Ron Jeffries, Keith Braithwaite and James Shore after the Miami Lean and Kanban Conference ended regarded Kanban and its compatibility with XP and time-boxes. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to follow up immediately, due to an urgent (and eventful) trip to South Beach 
Rather than try and follow up late on twitter, I’ve decided to post my thoughts here to try and clarify my ideas.
The discussion started following a tweet about Kanban being easier to introduce than Scrum. This seemed to be a common theme at the conference, with several experience reports confirming what I have already written about whether Kanban is only suitable for mature teams. This led to the question of how much change (or not) a Kanban approach requires, which is where I jumped in.
A kanban approach introduces tools to visualise and measure queues and work in progress. While this is a change in process measurement, it doesn’t change the process itself. However, having highlighted the existence of queues and work in progress, it becomes easier for the process to be changed to specifically fix the issues highlighted. Thus a Kanban system sets a team up to begin continuous improvement. Time-boxing, used by XP and Scrum, is one way to manage queues and WIP, which is why they can be such effective processes, and why shorter time-boxes are becoming more popular. There are other ways of managing queues and work in progress, however, and thus Kanban is agnostic to time-boxing. This does not mean that XP is Kanban system however, because XP implicitly, rather than explicitly, manage the queues and work in progress.
Further benefits of time-boxing are the focus that they give, particularly given the finite or limited resources (i.e. people) within a team. Time-boxes give this focus not only by limiting the work-in progress, but also by setting the end of time-box as an SLA for when the work will be completed. Again, Kanban doesn’t lose these benefits, but provides for alternate means to limit work in progress and set SLAs.
To summarise, I believe that a Kanban approach is compatible with XP and Scrum in that it has a focus on managing queues and limiting work in progress, but also introduces alternate ways to achieve these goals which can be used alongside the XP and Scrum tools such as User Stories, TDD and Retrospectives.
Announcing the Formation of the Lean Software & Systems Consortium
May 7th
I’m incredibly honoured and excited to have been able to be a founding member of the Lean Software & Systems Consortium which was announced today at the Lean & Kanban Conference in Miami. I hope that this is a significant venture which will have a major impact on the software development industry. Further information can be found in the press release, which I have copied below.
Announcing the Formation of the Lean Software & Systems Consortium
Consortium to Promote Lean Software & Systems Thinking For Software Intensive Enterprises
SEATTLE, WA., May 6, 2009 / PRNewswire. The Lean Software & Systems Consortium (LeanSSC) was formed today to assist enterprises that depend on software – from start-ups to those that build complex, software intensive products, systems & services – with the application of Lean Thinking throughout the enterprise.
LeanSSC is a global, non-profit organization whose mission is to promote professionalism and create awareness of lean science and associated competencies by creating and promoting a body of knowledge and an associated certification program. This body of knowledge will be organized around three elements of Lean Thinking – lean science, lean management and lean education.
LeanSSC will assist organizations in applying Lean Thinking to reliably deliver business value, adapt to changing market conditions, manage risk, improve predictability, increase flexibility and reduce variability – with the clear goal of substantively increasing the ROI of their software investment.
Founding member David Anderson noted, “It has been recognized for over 30 years that the role of management is the most significant leverage point on the economic performance of organizations that depend on software. During this period, management practices have not kept pace with innovations in software and systems development processes. The LeanSSC will bring Lean Thinking to bear on the organizational problem of creating software economically by providing a framework for better decision making and policy setting at all levels of the enterprise. We believe Lean Thinking adds value not only to individual contribution such as development, testing and analysis, but also to all levels of management.”
Other founding members also commented on the formation of the consortium:
“Lean Thinking brings an organizational solution to an organizational problem. I look forward to the LeanSSC making a substantial contribution to the industry.” – Dean Leffingwell
“The LeanSSC will help create a foundation of knowledge and foster a Lean Thinking paradigm shift that will greatly increase professionalism and improve outcomes in the software development industry.” – Alan Shalloway
“Enterprises building systems of significant scope have become increasingly lean, but not yet been able to engage its software development in this transformation. The LeanSSC provides the first practical mechanism to integrate software development into the lean enterprise.”
– James SuttonAbout Lean Software & Systems Consortium
Based in Washington, USA, LeanSSC is non-profit consortium comprised of corporate members, academic institutions, and industry leaders who share the belief that understanding and application of the science of lean will be of great benefit to software intensive industries. LeanSSC’s mission is to promote professionalism and create awareness of lean science and associated competencies by creating and promoting a body of knowledge and an associated certification program.
The consortium is committed to community, communication and education and will be hosting Lean Software & Systems Conferences in Atlanta, GA and Europe in 2010.
Founding members of the consortium include David Anderson–David J. Anderson Associates, Alan Shalloway and Alan Chedalawada–Net Objectives, Dean Leffingwell–Leffingwell, LLC., Don Reinertsen–Reinertsen & Associates, Karl Scotland–EMC Consulting, Rob Hathaway–IndigoBlue, James Sutton–Lockheed Martin, Mike Cottmeyer–VersionOne, Peter Middleton–Queens University @ Belfast.
Information on the consortium will soon be available at www.LeanSSC.org. For further information, contact David Anderson at dja@agilemanagement.net.
