Karl Scotland – Using Agile to Deliver Value
Archive for August, 2009
Reflections on #Agile2009
Aug 31st
I’m just about recovered from Agile 2009, and about to disappear off the grid for a much needed break in the sun. Before I do so, I wanted to jot down my immediate reflections on the conference while they were still fresh.
The conversations in between sessions are always great at the Agile conferences, but this year, I think these conversations were the main highlights for me. I met lots of new people who I’d only previously known online, as well as re-acquainting myself with people who I usually only see once a year. My top 3 highlights were:
- Discussing team maturity and explicit and implicit Kanban WIP limits with Alistair Cockburn.
- Splitting hairs on the finer points of Lean (Kanban) and Theory of Constraints (Drum Buffer Rope) with Mike Cottmeyer (apparently it was a highlight for Mike as well)
- Debating all sorts of ideas around Kanban with Arlo Belshee and Bonnie Aumann – including drawing on beer mats and using beer glasses and other implements to aid visual representation.
As far as scheduled sessions went, Mary Poppendieck gave a good talk on Workflow and Scheduling in which she nicely transitioned from a time-boxed schedule to a kanban work-flow using a form of cumulative flow diagram. Jon Dahl also gave a thought provoking talk on Aristotle and the Art of Software Development, which for me tied in nicely with Alistair Cockburn’s keynote, and some other thoughts I’ve recently had. I’m planning on blogging more on both these topics more when I get back off holiday. See you then…
Agile 2009 and Scan-Agile
Aug 21st
I’m going to be at Agile 2009 next week in Chicago. I’m not presenting any sessions this year, but I’ll be hanging around the Kanban stand at the Freshers Fair, and probably spending some time in Open Jam to hopefully catch up with people in person while I have a chance.
I’m also really pleased to have been invited to speak at the Scan-Agile conference in Helsinki, where I’ll be talking about Five Steps to Kanban. Here’s the abstract.
A Kanban System for Software Development provides an alternative means of creating an Agile Development process using Lean Thinking. Creating a Kanban System is not as simple as adopting a previously defined process as a starting point. Instead, a team needs to come up a model of its own process which will form the basis for further continuous improvement. This talk will introduce 5 steps that a team can use to create their own Agile process using a Kanban System for Software Development.
Does A Kanban System Eschew Iteration
Aug 14th
There has been some recent discussion on the blogoshpere and twitterverse about the relationship between Kanban Systems for Software Development and the concept of iteration. The often raised concern that a Kanban System is “Waterfall 2.0” came up again, along with the suggestion that a Lean perspective might view iteration as rework, and as a result be waste.
One of the conclusions was that both a Kanban and Time-boxed approach are independent of iteration. I like Jeff Patton’s description of iteration. Iteration is used to find or improve a single solution. Incrementing is used to build up additional solutions.
It is perfectly possibly with a time-boxed approach to define a product backlog based on already decided solutions, and then prioritise User Stories to incrementally build up the functionality for those solutions. I don’t think this is that uncommon. Similarly, a Kanban System could be used to only incrementally build up the functionality for pre-determined solutions.
Done well, both a time-boxing and Kanban approach will prioritise work to generate knowledge and feedback which will help discover or refine solutions. What is really being prioritised in this case is a problem, or an ROI Component (as the Real Options tribe like to call it). This is where I think a Kanban System can help by explicitly managing the work at both levels. The ROI Components, which I prefer to call Minimal Marketable Features, can be prioritised and limited as Work In Progress. The MMFs can then be expanded to candidate User Stories which can also be prioritised, managed and limited in order to iterate the MMF. Eventually, the User Stories will be collapsed back together to actually deliver the MMF as an increment.
Thus a Kanban System can explicitly visualise that MMFs are being delivered incrementally, and are being iterated using User Stories. While this same approach can be used with time-boxes, it will often be implicit.
Kanban, Flow and Cadence – Russian Translation
Aug 12th
Aleksey Goncharenko, a Project Manager at Flexis Corporation, has translated my Kanban, Flow and Cadence post into Russian. If you can read Russian, you can find it here!
