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 …

The Flow Experiment

I put together a small simulation for the SPA Conference this year which seemed to go well, and which I re-ran at the London Limited WIP Society, and hope to run again. You can download the materials, and this is a short write-up of how it works so people can run it and experiment with it themselves. Overview The basic …

Does A Kanban System Eschew Estimation?

I was recently involved in a brief twitter conversation which started when Mike Sutton tweeted: estimation is not about the number that pops out. It is about exploring effort and discovering that you don’t know stuff. Paul Dyson responded: spot on! This is fundamentally what I don’t like about the kanban “if people find estimation hard, don’t make them do …

Aspects of Kanban in Methods and Tools

I wrote an article on “Aspects of Kanban” which has just been published in the Summer 2010 issue of Methods and Tools magazine. Download it, have read, and let me know what you think! Alternatively, there is now an html version available.

Kanban and Scrum – Intention and Implementation

In my last post I introduced the idea of a PVC System – one which exemplifies Pull, Value and Capability – and closed by posing the question as to whether Scrum could be considered to be a PVC System. In answering that question myself, I realised that there is another distinction which I will describe in this post. In doing …

From KFC Development to PVC Systems

I’ve been revisiting my earlier KFC Development work in light of my more recent focus on five primary practices. This is an brief overview of what’s changed, and what my mental model looks like now. Firstly, I’ve stopped referring to the practices as such, in favour of calling them aspects. Practices always felt slightly wrong, but at the time I …

CfP: LESS2010 – International Conference on Lean Enterprise Software and Systems

This is a belated announcement about LESS2010, whose Call for Papers for LESS2010 closes tomorrow – June 15th. LESS2010 is the International Conference on Lean Enterprise Software and Systems, in collaboration with the Lean Software and Systems Consortium (LeanSSC), to be held October 17-20, Helsinki, Finland. CfP details can be found at http://less2010.leanssc.org/call_for_papers/ with submission details at http://less2010.leanssc.org/submit/. Note that …