I’ve had quite a lot of interest in my experiences of introducing Kanban to a law firm several years ago. Although I couldn’t capture any photos of the card wall due to client confidentiality I’ve pulled together the following diagram to illustrate the key features of the Kanban system. It is from memory so may not be entirely accurate, but it should capture the essence of the system.
Kanban from the Inside: 22. Design kanban systems
It hardly seems possible, but this is the penultimate installment! We have two excerpts this time, both from towards the end of the chapter 22. We’ll finish with reviewing your kanban board’s initial design, but first we’ll look at ways to limit work-in-progress (WIP).
Kanban from the Inside: 21. Classes of service
This much should be obvious: You can’t plan to have everyone occupied 100% of their time on fixed-date work, allow them to be interrupted by expedited items, and still expect predictability.
Kanban from the Inside: 20. Model workflow
It’s important to remember that the result that we’re working toward is a working kanban system, not a static model. It’s best not to get too attached to the products of this exercise—they will quickly lose their value once the system begins to evolve.
I’ll keep this simple by assuming that there is just one main workflow involved. If you have more than one, you can take each workflow in turn or use one as the baseline by which the others are described.
Featureban – notes for facilitators
It’s about time I posted the notes I email to people who ask about facilitating Featureban, so here goes…
Kanban from the Inside: 19. Analyze demand and capability
We’re two chapters into Part III and getting into the nitty-gritty of Kanban implementation using the STATIK model. This week’s excerpt comes from the chapter introduction.
The previous chapter was all about context and perceptions, mostly keeping implementation considerations off the table. This chapter is about gathering some specific qualitative and quantitative facts about the current process that will inform the design of kanban systems.
Kanban from the Inside: 18. Sources of dissatisfaction
Any kind of deliberate change needs two key pieces of context: Its scope—some boundary around what we do now, within which the change will be focused—the “what” of the change. And Its objective—an expression of what we hope to achieve from the change, relative to how things currently are—the “why” of the change
10 tips to improve your Agile daily stand-ups
When coaching teams I regularly share tips with them on improving their daily stand-ups. Here are ten of those most commons tips: Get each team member to take a turn facilitating the daily stand-up. This stops any one person dominating the stand-up. Rotate daily. Walk the wall from right to left. Focus on the work, … Continue reading →
Kanban from the Inside: 17. Smaller Models
The Triad is a very simple model of collaboration and collaborative leadership that has been practiced deliberately in a surprising variety of places. Thanks to Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization, the book by Dave Logan, John King, and Halee Fischer-Wright, we understand its applicability to corporate and community life. Triads appear in some churches in the form of prayer triplets (my wife, Sharon, has been a member of several of these); the model was even practiced by the KGB!
Data Driven Retrospectives
Searching for “Data Driven Retrospectives” in Google yields very few results for what I’m looking for. In the search results I can see a single reference to a paragraph in David Anderson’s Kanban book. Apart from that, nothing relevant. Perhaps I’m searching for the wrong keywords? What I’m after are examples or tips on using data to … Continue reading →
