Kanban System Design Article

I’ve just had an article published on Agile Journal about Kanban System Design in which I look at Kanban from a Systems Thinking perspective, and how various aspects of Kanban can provide leverage points to improve our product development outcomes.

Lean Software & Systems Conference CfP & Registration Open

The Lean Software and Systems Consortium US-based community conference will be May 3-6 next year, in Long Beach California. The Call for Papers and Registration are now open. The CfP Deadline is Dec 19th and will not be extended. May 3rd is LeanSSC Technical Advisory Board meeting and pre-conference tutorials. If you intend to attend those you should plan on …

The Ball Flow Game

I was invited to the Scrum Gathering in Amsterdam this week to give a Deep Dive on Kanban. My Kanban Exploration slides can be downloaded from slideshare. Inspired by an email discussion with Jean Tabaka and Eric Willeke, to introduce the session, and to try and reinforce the concepts of Flow, Value and Capability, I tried a variation of the …

A Model for Creating a Kanban System

This post is a high level overview of the model I use when I think about Kanban Systems. As the saying goes, “all models are wrong, some are useful”. This is what I currently find useful based on working with teams and organisations in recent years. At the heart of the model is Systems Thinking. Without looking at what we …

A Root Cause Analysis of Agile Practices

At Agile2010 I was chatting with George Dinwiddie about general process related stuff (probably with some reference to Kanban!) and I mentioned an idea I had submitted to a couple of conferences which had never got accepted. George suggested we try it as a Open Jam session, so we did! The idea is to run a root cause analysis of …

Exploring the Kanban Multiverse at Agile2010

I ran a workshop on “Exploring the Kanban Universe” at Agile2010 with Xavier Quesada Allue. The premise was to setup an example case study and lead participants through visualising different aspects of a project – the different multiverses – over a number of iterations.  Below are pictures of the final boards from the different teams. We encouraged people to think …

LESS2010 – Don’t Miss Out

I’ve spent the last few days busy on final preparations for the LESS2010 – the International Conference on Lean Software and Systems, which is being held in partnership with the LeanSSC. Tickets for LESS2010 are selling well, but we’d really like it to be a sell out. If you’re not already coming, please take a look, sign up and bring …

Agile2010 Bag Packing with Kanban

At Agile2010, as at Agile2009, I went along to help the volunteer bag packing, and use it as an exercise in experimenting with Lean and Kanban ideas. Once again it was a huge success. We completed packing all the bags in (anecdotally) record time, and had great fun in the process. The video above was put together by Luiz Parzianello …

A Pattern for Using Scrum and Kanban

I’ve noticed a pattern that I’ve found myself using recently when I’ve worked with new teams that makes use of both Scrum and Kanban ideas. I’ve already said that I believe the two are complimentary, and this should help show how. I’ll often begin with a “Canonical Scrum” implementation. This gives a relatively simple introduction due to the ubiquitous language, …

Rally and other Announcements

I have a few announcements so I thought I’d group them together into a single post. Firstly, I’m really excited that I’m going to be joining the Rally team in the UK. I’ve had a good couple of years with Conchango / EMC Consulting, but its time to move on, and I believe Rally are doing some great things in …