Defect Management using Kanban

Presented by Carl Bruiners

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What is Kanban?• Created by Taiichi Ohno of Toyota

• Japanese for signboard or billboard

• A scheduling system that helps determine what to produce, when to produce it, and how much to produce

• Pull instead of push system

• Backlog can take on any shape or form

• Unlike Scrum Kanban is not a time-boxed Agile methodology

• Kanban reveals bottlenecks dynamically (TOC)

Pull

Parts Supply

Demand Point

Supplier

Spare

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Kanban Task Wall

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W.I.P (Work-In-Progress) limits

• The purpose of W.I.P limits is to ensure that no swim lane is a bottle-neck

• W.I.P limits are set against each lane on the Task Wall

• W.I.P limits are used to ensure that the team is not attempting to work on too many Stories at any given time and that each Story is completed before a new one is worked on.

• W.I.P limits should be reviewed regularly and changed accordingly to avoid bottlenecks – This cannot be done my any individual, this must be a team exercise and agreement.

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Service Class model‘Each Class of Service will have its own policy to reflect prioritisation based on the different risks and business value. Classes of service and knowledge of the policies

associated with them empower the team to self-organize the flow of work to optimize business value. Used effectively this will result in improved customer

satisfaction, elevated employee engagement, and increased trust.’

• There will be two Service Classes; Standard and Expedited.

• A set of Service types (between 3-6) needs to be generated for the Standard class (this needs to be determined by the team; i.e. letters or numeric). Each Type needs to be inline with Defect Teams SLA’s and should be based on business impact.

• Story requests in the Standard class are assigned one of the Standard Service type’s.

• The prioritisation of the Stories is driven by the Service Class model

David Anderson

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Standard Service Class

• Various class types should be created under the standard service class. For example;• A – Under £100000 impact if delayed• B – Under £50000 impact if delayed• C – Under £10000 impact if delayed• D – Under £1000 impact if delayed• E – BAU

• The prioritisation of the Stories is driven by the Standard Service Class Types

• A Story will change service types as it gets closer to its delivery date; i.e. a C type after 5 days would be escalated to a B type and therefore more further up the priority stack. Impact delay would be determined at the point of a story being added to the Task Wall, this will help Stories move up the priority stack as it gets closer to its delivery date.

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Expedited Service Class

Handling the JDI / 11th hour requests

• A Story flagged as expedited must be reviewed by the Defect Manager before it can be added to the task wall.

• All other items in the W.I.P lanes is paused and full attention is given to the expedited Story.

• There can only be 1 expedited item on the task wall at any given time.

• Each Manager is limited to the amount of expedited items they can raise within a calendar year. The amount needs to be negotiated between the Defect Manager and the Managers.

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Example Defect request workflow

Defect gets raised creates a defect review

request

Team receives email

notification that a new defect needs to be

reviewed

Team reviews defect and assigns an

Service Class

Team adds defect to the Task Wall. Prioritisation of

Stories in backlog is amended if

needed

Expedited defect?

Defect manager reviews defect and

determines if it should be expedited

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Measuring team velocityUnlike Scrum we will not be assigning a estimated measurement against each defect.

• The team will track two metrics;• Cycle time of each Story – Whilst in the W.I.P zone and between Taskboard

states• Amount of Stories completed over a time period of x

• A team retrospective should occur each month and part of the discussion should focus on how long each type of defect took to complete.

• At the monthly retrospective the team should assign a ideal lead time figure to each Service class, which can be tracked and reviewed. This will be determined by the cycle time metric from the previous month.

• A chart should be put onto the Task Wall and in a shared location (information radiators) with the delivery teams with a number of hours / days each defect is taking them to complete. This will help manage the expectation of how long it takes to resolve a defect.

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Improving your model - Kaizens

• Japanese for "improvement” or “change for the better”

• Used to improve standardised activities and processes, kaizen aims to eliminate waste

Using 5 Whys• The vehicle will not start. (the problem).• Why? - The battery is dead. (first why)• Why? - The alternator is not functioning. (second why)• Why? - The alternator belt has broken. (third why)• Why? - The alternator belt was well beyond its useful service life and not replaced.

(fourth why)• Why? - The vehicle was not maintained according to the recommended service

schedule. (fifth why, a root cause)• Why? - Replacement parts are not available because of the extreme age of the vehicle.

(sixth why, optional footnote)

• Reviewed by the team and determine which Kaizens should be played when there is either a free space of and prioritised by the Product Owner / team

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Further reading…

http://www.agilemanagement.net - David Anderson (Kanban)

http://www.clarkeching.com - Clarke Ching (Agile, TOC, Scrum)

http://www.carlbruiners.com - Carl Bruiners (Agile, Scrum, Kanban, BDD)

http://theagilepirate.net - Simon Cromarty (Agile, Scrum, Kanban, BDD)

http://blogs.ripple-rock.com/danbrown/default.aspx - Dan Brown (Agile, Scrum, Kanban)