Lean & Kanban Southern Europe 2012 is the 1st conference of its kind in the region, being held in Madrid, May 9-10. Speakers include many who also be at LSSC12, along with local practitioners talking about their experiences and learnings such as Brickell Key nominees Erika Weiss & Oscar Garrido. There will also be a track full of Spanish language content on Day 2. I don’t speak Spanish, but I highly recommend it!

David Anderson has written a couple of good blog posts if you want more info – there’s still time to register!

• Thoughts on LSSC12
• Lean Camp New England May 13

I have a session on Wednesday May 16, 4:20pm – 5:00pm @ Harborview 2 with my Rallt colleague Larry Maccherone where we’ll be introducing some of the great work Larry has been doing with metrics and data visualisations.

I hope I’ll see you there – let the Boston Lean Party begin! This is what I expect I’ll be doing the rest of the time.

I was reminiscing about this with Rachel Davies, who facilitated the Open Space at both Gatherings, and she shared the photographs she had taken of the output, which she still had. Here they are for posterity. I expected to find much of my thinking had changed since then, but apart from having less focus on waste and inventory now (preferring to know emphasise value and flow) it still seems relevant.

Here are the photos – thanks to Benjamin Mitchell for being the scribe. I’m hoping to add some of the audience which I know are out there somewhere.

[Show as slideshow]

For the retrospective, run by Eric Willeke, we asked participants for things that they had learned which were relevant to software development. Here’s the list:

• Focus on quality
• Communication is essential
• Let go
• People and process
• Experience is useful
• Being prepared
• Its important to know why
• Improve through collaboration
• Practice makes perfect
• People are responsible
• Ask & listen – don’t assume
• Redistribute work
• Power of whole team
• Lots of communication
• Simple visual metrics
• Integration is hard
• Don’t be attached to your process
• Knowing good enough
• Allowing for variance
• Be engaged
• Do it – inspect and adapt
• Variety is motivating
• Understanding impact of change
• Change is disruptive
• Shut up!
• Dress appropriately
• Common purpose
• Relentless improvement
• Communication without words
• Reacting to reality
• Be lean – JIT happens
• Building relationships
• Rhythm is fun
• Visualising progress
• Visualising WIP
• Adaptability in context
• People – not resources
• Cross functional to eliminate bottlenecks
• Single point of failure
• Self organising team
• Focus on the work
• Good communication
• People self-organising

Update: Eric has written his own post of the experience

Flow Games

• When: Wednesday 10th August, 11:00-12:00
• Stage: Hands-on Learning
• Venue: LA Olympus
• Session Type: Workshop
• Audience: Introductory
• URL: http://program2011.agilealliance.org/event/a29c520db5d7bf4649bb9538adc6d1cf

Designing a Kanban System for the Enterprise

• When: Thursday 11th August , 13.30-15.00
• Stage: Enterprise Agile
• Venue: GA: Imperial Ballroom C
• Session Type: Tutorial
• Audience: Introductory
• URL: http://program2011.agilealliance.org/event/fad223cfed25bd3ad1a69cc0bbfad301

Note that while the program page for “Flow Games” suggests that we will play a selection of games, the final time constraint of 1 hour means that Eric and I will probably only be able to play one game, which will be the Ball Flow Game. Fortunately, there is another similar session (Lean Fundamentals with Michael Sahota) which will run the other games we had in mind, so we encourage you to go along to that if you want more!

Here are the details of the conferences. If you are in Europe, or fancy a trip, please consider submitting or registering. I hope to see you there.

Lean & Kanban 2011 Benelux

• October 03 – October 04, Antwerp, Belgium
• http://lkbe11.leanssc.org

Call for Papers

• Closed

Speakers

• Including Don Reinersten, David Anderson, Alan Shalloway, John Seddon, Dave Snowden, Michael Kennedy

Registration

Prices exclusive of VAT

• 2 Day Conference Pass: 700 Eur until Aug 15 (then 800 Eur)
• 2 Day Conference Pass + Dinner: 750 Eur until Aug 15 (then 850 Eur)
• 2 Day Conference Pass + Dinner + Hotel (3 nights): 1150 Eur (then 1250 Eur)

Lean & Kanban 2011 Central Europe

• October 17 – October 18, Munich, Germany
• http://lkce11.leanssc.org

Call for Papers

• Currently open. Closes June 28th.

Speakers

• Including David Anderson, Kent Beck, Jim Benson, David Joyce and John Seddon

Registration

Prices exclusive of VAT

Individuals:

• One day, Regular 520 EUR until Aug 17 (then 580 EUR)
• Both days, Regular 985 EUR until Aug 17 (then 1095 EUR)

Two or more colleagues from the same company:

• One day, Regular 465 EUR until Aug 17 (then 520 EUR)
• Both days, Regular 885 EUR until Aug 17 (then 985 EUR)

LESS2011

• October 30 – November 02, Stockholm, Sweden
• http://less2011.leanssc.org/

Call for Papers

• Currently open. Closes July 18th.

Tracks

• Lean & Agile Product Development, Complexity & Systems Thinking, Beyond Budgeting, Transforming Organisations

Keynotes

• Peter Middleton, Jim Sutton, Steve Denning, Bjarte Bogsnes

Tutorials

• Alan Shalloway, Jean Tabaka, Benjamin Mitchell

Registration

Prices exclusive of VAT

• Early registration EUR 595 until July 31
• Regular registration EUR 695 until October 29
• On-site registration EUR 795

Many organisational challenges are a result of systemic issues, where cause and effect are not directly connected, but are separated by time and involve feedback loops and delays. Given that Kanban is a method for designing a software and systems development system, and systems thinking includes the idea of system archetypes which describe common patterns of behaviour, we can use system archetypes to guide our visualisations and help us identify opportunities for improvement. This session will introduce how to understand system archetypes, describe a number of common and relevant archetypes, and discuss patterns which can visualise and thus help break those archetypes.

Agile Israel

As the adoption of Agile concepts becomes more and more mainstream, it’s time to climb to the next level!

Agile Israel 2011 is your chance to hear about next level ideas and practices such as Agile Testing, Kanban, Lean Product Management, Agile Project Management, Scaling Agile into the Enterprise level, Metrics and Dashboards, and more, and to meet practitioners from the Israeli Agile community and learn from experience reports and experts.

Agile Israel 2011 is the 4th annual Agile event in Israel, starting at 2008, and as always will include the presence of prominent speakers alongside experts from Israel and case studies from Israeli companies (view photos and lectures from Agile Israel 2010).

This year Henrik Kniberg will be the keynote speaker. Among the other international lecturers and guests will be Jurgen Appelo, Hillel Glazer, and the ScrumAlliance MD Donna Farmer.

The event will take place on April 11th 2011 and Avenue congress centre near Tel Aviv.

Register today http://agileisrael2011-ral.eventbrite.com. An early bird of 20% is currently available until March 15, and I have 5 speaker discount codes giving 5%. Ask me for details.

LSSC11

This year’s Lean Software and Systems Consortium conference (Long Beach, California, May 3-6) is bigger with many more tracks and world-class speakers. In addition, the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) is part of the conference cooperation with the Lean Software and Systems Consortium.

This year’s theme is the synthesis of other models, going beyond lean: LSSC11 will show how vertical markets are embracing lean, how it is applied in large-scale initiatives, and how it is succeeding around the world. 

Anyone considering lean methods like Kanban will want to be at LSSC11 to build on their knowledge and connect with like-minded business people.  Companies represented include Lonely Planet, Goodyear Tires, JP Morgan Chase, Hewlett Packard, Deloitte, GoDaddy, Microsoft and many other organizations worldwide that are actively using lean software and systems thinking to succeed.

Do not miss the excitement, the learning, the networking, and the once-in-a-lifetime moments at LSSC11. Enjoy extended early bird pricing until midnight on March 13, 2011. Ask me about speaker discount codes as well for further discount. Register today at http://lssc11.leanssc.org.

I’m was really pleased to be asked to host a Lean & Kanban track on Thursday March 10 at QCon London, and have used the opportunity to (selfishly) create a track of talks I really want to see around ideas related Systems Thinking and Learning. I am increasingly finding these ideas core to the way that I talk about Kanban Systems.

The track abstract is:

Lean and Kanban: Learning Through Systems Thinking
It is often said that the heart of Lean is about thinking for yourself in your context. Kanban provides a model for thinking about process within a context and Systems Thinking provides a focus on purpose and outcomes within a context. Together, they enable knowledge acquisition and learning about value creation. The talks in this track will explore these various topics and show how to use the ideas and approaches to create evolutionary, continuous and sustainable improvement.

As well as giving a talk on Kanban System Design, I’m really grateful to be able to have the following line-up:

• Katherine Kirk – When the pressure is really on: A “rough and ready” application of Lean and Kanban at the BBC

How a small IPTV team at BBC iPlayer used Lean principles and elements of Kanban for their rapid and successful response to a fast paced, very demanding live release schedule for the v2 device customisation programme.

• Benjamin Mitchell – Can the Kanban Method avoid becoming another Management Fad

The Kanban Method has been shown to provide efficiency gains in many organisations. However, this talk will argue that those improvements have generally come through doing things righter, rather than doing the right thing. Doing more of the right thing requires challenging and testing underlying assumptions about the design and management of work, which will often lead to situations of embarrassment or threat. For the Kanban Method’s approach to evolutionary increment change to become more than a fad, it needs to either provide guidance or advice about how to overcome issues that generate embarrassment or threat, or provide a more balanced view of it’s potential impact. The talk will cover approaches that could increase the chances that the Kanban Method could deal with questioning assumptions around issues that could create defensiveness.

• Jurgen Appelo – Complexity vs. Lean: The Big Showdown

Agile software development is (in part) based on the idea that software teams are complex adaptive systems. And Lean software development is (in part) based on systems thinking. Many Agile and Lean experts have borrowed terms from complexity theory (like “self organization” and “emergence”). But what is the difference between complexity theory and systems thinking? And how does complexity thinking compare to Lean software development? Are they different, or aligned? Can we use one to better understand the other?

• Jeff Patton – Using design thinking to stop building worthless software

Delivering software fast isn’t the same as delivering value fast. The value we’ll get from that software is generally assumed. The real risks are almost always unknown. It’s because every piece of software we design and build is unique. It’s not designed then mass-produced like a car or piece furniture. Lean thinking and tactics that focus on speeding re-production of the same thing over and over doesn’t easily apply to the design and invention of new software. It takes design thinking. In this talk, Jeff describes the simple concepts that characterize design thinking: clear problem definition, ideation, iteration, and execution plans that emphasize continuous learning. You’ll learn how integrating these concepts into a design and delivery process shortens the cycle time from opportunity identification to acquiring real benefit from the use of the software. Jeff will give specific examples of the practices used by today’s successful software design and development companies that effectively integrate design thinking into their development approach. You’ll leave with a toolbox of simple proven practices you can add to your current process to improve the rate you deliver benefit from software.

I’m really looking forward to this. If you’d like to come along, the sooner you register the cheaper it is, and if you use the promotion code SCOT100 you can save a further £100 and a donation of £100 will be made to Crisis.

Here’s a couple of links (Kane Mar) (Declan Whelan) if you’re not familiar with the game. In a nutshell it involves a group working as a team to pass balls between themselves, constrained by some rules. The idea is to pass as many balls in a 2 minute time box. The team has to self organise and inspect and adapt in order to improve its velocity (throughput of balls).

For my variation I wanted to remove the time-box to emphasise flow more, and demonstrate a different way of understanding the capability of a system. In the game, the team are designing a system to meet the purpose of flowing balls quickly between themselves.

The changes I made were to ask the team to pass 20 balls as quickly as possible. I put a unique number (1 – 20) on each ball in case it was useful and also asked the team to time how long it took for each ball to pass through the system.  I took the data that was captured and entered it into a spreadsheet to create a control chart. We ran two rounds of the game twice, with the respective charts below.

Round 1

In Round 1, the team didn’t capture all the data, and some problems were had towards the end, but that the average time for each ball was 13 seconds. The system could also be said to be ‘in control’ as all the data points were with the control limits  which were calculated as AVERAGE +/- (3 * STDEV). The last measured ball was completed at 3 minutes and 35 seconds.

Round 2

In round 2, the team improved their data capture process and overall flow. The average time per ball dropped to 12 seconds and the variability also reduced. The Upper Control Limit dropped from 01:10 to 00:18. The last measured ball was completed at 2 minutes and 22 seconds.

What this demonstrates is that even with variability (which we don’t want to eliminate completely in software product development), by understanding the capability of the system over time, we are able to reliably communicate what might and might not be possible. For example, using the round 2 data, there is a 50% chance we’ll complete a ball in 12 seconds and a 99% chance we’ll complete a ball in 18 seconds.

We could also calculate and chart the throughput of balls completed over a cadence of 30 seconds to similarly understand the capability from that perspective also. For Round 2 those throughputs would have been 3, 4, 4, 5, 4.

There are a few areas I’d change next time I try this.

1. The measurement took a long time and was clearly the significant bottleneck. I made measurement part of the system to add some additional complexity, but in hindsight it was probably too much. Most of the improvements were in measuring the system rather than the performance of the system.
2. I allowed more time than I probably should have for improvement discussions. With the time-boxed version its easier to start the clock for a round and that usually that kicks the team into action. Similarly, when the measurement fell apart we stopped and restarted a couple of times. I wouldn’t do that next time, although by removing measurement from the system, it might be less of a problem.
3. It took time to enter the data into the spreadsheet. I need to find a better way! The spreadsheet can be found here. It’s very simplistic. Please let me know if you use it and improve it!

The idea is to run a root cause analysis of various agile practices to drill down into why they work and what the benefits to be realised are. So rather than using a 5 whys approach to solve problems, it is used to understand solutions. For example, why do unit test? To minimise defects? Why do we want to minimise defects? To create less rework? Why do we want less rework? etc. The session tied in nicely with another Open Jam run by David Hussman on Dude’s Law, which also emphasised focusing on why rather than how.

Here are the outputs from the 3 practices we picked; Unit Testing, Iterations (Time Boxes) and Limiting WIP. Click to view the album with bigger pictures.

View Full Album

As a general exercise, I found it really useful and interesting. Definitely something to try submitting to future conferences again. The discussion and debate we had, and the surprising tangents we went on, was rewarding and enlightening. I was particularly fascinated by the comparison between Time Boxing and Limiting WIP and the way that creativity came out in both of them through different paths. I hope that by understanding why practice work in more detail, we can avoid following them dogmatically, and be in a better position to solve problems based on context. When a particular practice is not suitable we can draw on other practices which can provide the same benefits.

This is definitely something I want to explore further – hopefully with workshops at future conferences. If you try it out as well, blog your outputs and let me know!