Karl Scotland – Using Agility Strategically
Karl Scotland – Using Agility Strategically
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On the flight out to the Kanban Leadership retreat in Iceland last month, Katherine Kirk and I were chatting about Kanban failure modes that we’ve seen out in the field (e.g. quirky command and control interpretations by people who had not had experience in Agile first), and played with the idea of combining Kanban with Crystal (kind of in the …
I previously wrote about the Ball Flow Game I ran at the Scrum Gathering in Amsterdam. I’ve updated the game quite a bit since then and its stabilised into something I’m finding very useful when I work with Kanban teams to help them understand some of the concepts behind Kanban Thinking. I hope this write-up enables others to use and …
I’ve recently been using a newer language to describe the model I apply when introducing Kanban to teams, which has been generally working well. I now talk about: Studying – understanding the current system structure Envisioning – creating a common mental model of the system Limiting – bringing the system under control Sensing – having an awareness of the system’s …
This year the LeanSSC are running a series of conferences which have been created to give local audiences more convenient access to similar and related content without the need to travel extensively. While each event will have its own unique flavour and presenters, the similarity in timing allows for some overlap, and we are encouraging people to choose the event …
After Limits to Success and Shifting the Burden, we now come to Tragedy of the Commons. I live in the seaside town of Brighton in the UK. On the rare weekends when we have hot weather it is popular to go down to the beach. Everyone gets in their cars and drives into Brighton expecting a quiet, relaxing day on …
Following on from a look at the Limits to Success system archetype, lets now look at the Shifting the Burden archetype. I like my coffee in the morning. In fact I usually need a good cup of coffee before I start to feel human. Some days I like a coffee to start the afternoon as well, and occasionally I’ll have …
In a previous post I introduced the idea that Kanban can play a role in Systems Thinking and understanding System Archetypes. In this post I’ll describe system archetypes in some more detail, and describe the Limits to Success archetype. Balancing Feedback Balancing feedback will stabilise a system’s behaviour. For example a thermostat is a balancing feedback system where the temperature …
A couple of weeks ago I got involved in another conversation about the appropriateness of the software development community’s use of the name Kanban. This comes up every now and again, and I usually sympathise and try and talk more about the higher level system, as in the Toyota Production System. This time, however, I had a different thought. While …
I’ve just been updating my calendar and downloads pages, which have been sadly neglected recently, and thought it would be worth mentioning one particular event I’m involved with coming up. 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 …
Systems Thinking The original Agile methods were created by teams independently in response to the challenge of improving software development and their documentation as a named process was a subsequent codification in order to help spread the learning and improvement wider throughout the industry. Either consciously or intuitively, these processes were applications of Systems Thinking, taking a holistic approach to …