Karl Scotland – Using Agility Strategically
Karl Scotland – Using Agility Strategically
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I have just published a page for the Lego Flow Game – a new game that I have co-created with Dr. Sallyann Freudenberg. Its based on an ‘experiment’ I originally ran in 2010 at the SPA conference. Then I used an exercise of matching, solving and checking equations to explore and experience workflow with different types of processes and policies. …
Back in 2002, I wrote an Experience Report for the XP/Agile Universe conference in Chicago – one of the precursors to the current Agile Alliance “Agile 200X” series. The title was “Agile Planning with a Multi-customer, Multi-project, Multi-discipline Team” and the abstract was as follows: Most XP literature refers to teams which work on a single project, over a number …
This post is a result of pondering on a couple of well know quotes in the Lean and Kanban communities, and the relationship, and potential paradox, between the two of them. The first is from W. Edwards Deming: By what method? The second is from Taichi Ohno: Do not codify method. What’s going on here? Is ‘method’ something these two …
This is an article I originally wrote for the Management 3.0 site in 2010. As it is no longer available there, I am republishing it here in its original form other than a few minor edits. At the Lean and Kanban Exchange in London in 2009, I was chatting with David Anderson and David Laribee about the possibilities for Kanban …
I’ve thought for some time now that WIP limits are a special form of explicit policy – one that is called out specifically because it is a core concept behind kanban systems. That has made be uncomfortable with the third Kanban Thinking heuristic; “Limit (with Policies)”. Limits and policies are a means to an end. What is that end (other …
I’m really honoured to have been asked to give the closing keynote at this year’s Agile Central Europe conference in Kraków, Poland, 15-16 April 2013. ACE has a strong Kanban theme this year and I am going to ask whether Kanban isn’t just commons sense? Kanban: Isn’t it Just Common Sense? Many problems we are trying to solve in software and product development are …
On Monday I had the privilege of spending the day with some really smart people. Organised by Gojko Adjic, other attendees included Chris Matts, Henrik Kniberg, Mary and Tom Poppendieck, Gabby Benefield, Jeff Patton, Aaron Sanders and Olaf Lewitz. The theme of the day was exploring how we can help organisations not just build the “thing right”, but build the “right thing”. …
A recent thread discussing the values behind kanban on the kanbandev mailing list inspired a couple of great blog posts by Mike Burrows on “Introducing Kanban Through Its Values” and “Kanban: Values Understanding And Purpose“, which have in turn inspired me make some updates to the Kanban Thinking model. The key points for me in Mike’s second post are these. First, …
I seem to have had a number of conversations recently which have all had some common themes. The general pattern has been that someone wants to talk about Kanban and let me know how its not working for them in some way. When I enquire further, and dig into the background some more, I’ve found that there are generally 3 things missing …
I mentioned that I had a great conversation with Gojko Adzic at Lean Agile Scotland. During that discussion, Gojko also described a technique he call Impact Mapping. Since then has published a short book on Impact Mapping which I highly recommend. An Impact Map can be thought of as a structured mind map, with the following levels being used to articulate the …