Kanban from the Inside: 23. Roll out

For this 23rd and final installment of excerpts from my book I have chosen a very short extract. I chose it not because it summarises the chapter (it doesn’t) or the book as a whole (it certainly doesn’t do that) but because it helps explain some of what I have been doing since publication. Agendashift (tagline: “values-based change for the evolving organisation“) provides tool support for the change management process described in this chapter. The existing work hasn’t stood still either; you can now access an online realisation of a much-improved version of chapter 23’s checklist by participating in our Depth of Kanbanland 2015 survey. And please do!

Kanban-from-the-inside


Roll out

I find it useful to think of Kanban implementation as a three-stage process:

  1. Planning the engagement: preparation in terms of participants, venues, tools, supporting material, and so on
  2. Shaping the agenda: approaching STATIK with the explicit aim of producing a compelling set of agreed upon priorities, goals, and actions
  3. Pulling change through the system: maintaining momentum into the future, ensuring that progress will continue to be both visible and meaningful

This structure can be applied regardless of whether your aim is to build a stand-alone kanban system, to introduce the Kanban Method for the first time, or to reinvigorate fresh cycles of change. You can even use it retrospectively, helping you to think constructively about an implementation that needs a stronger connection with its host organization.

I hope to show that there is no contradiction between introducing Kanban impactfully and remaining true to its humane ethos. Toward the end of this chapter we review the role that the values can play in motivating an implementation.

My book Kanban from the Inside was published in September 2014 by Blue Hole Press, publishers of David Anderson’s Kanban book, aka the “blue book”. Complete with an awesome foreword by Luke Hohmann, it is available in paperback and Kindle at amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, amazon.de and amazon.fr and (no doubt) other amazons also. A PDF e-book is available via the djaa.com store also.