kanban - a crash course
DESCRIPTION
This talk was delivered internally to the Neo crew to help level up our use of Kanban on our projects.TRANSCRIPT
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KanbanA Crash CourseSeptember 25, 2014
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Increasing speed and quality, simultaneously.
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Backgrounda lightning history of quality control.
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W. E. Deming“In God we trust. All others must bring data.”
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Taichi Ohno“People who can't understand numbers are useless… However, people who only look at the numbers are the worst of all.”
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Eli Goldratt“The entire bottleneck concept is not geared to decrease operating expense, it’s focused on increasing throughput.”
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Getting startedin five easy steps.
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1. Visualize the Workflow
• Map your current process as-is.
• Columns represent process steps for value-added work.
• Include every step from idea to end consumer.
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Pro-tip:
The board is not permanent. Iterate the board configuration periodically, as a team, to find the optimal configuration for your process. Use retros for this.
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2. Apply WIP Limits
• Only allow a limited amount of work to be in each column.
• Work does not move into the next column until a space opens up.
• The effect is a “pull system” where the end consumer gradually pulls work through like a vacuum.
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Pro-tip:
Despite overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary, people still think if they multitask they will get more done, more quickly. It is simply not true.
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3. Make Policies Explicit• Some work items have higher “cost-of-delay”. Allow them to take
the “carpool” lane, using explicit service classes.
• Most items will be a “Standard” (FIFO) class of service. Others might be “Expedite” or “Fixed Date”.
• Separate classes of service will smooth flow overall. In business, predictability can be worth more than speed.
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Pro-tip:
Reserve some capacity for unexpected work, perhaps with an 80/20 distribution. This will allow for more urgent work to move faster through the system, without affecting the flow of standard items.
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4. Measure and Mange Cycle Time
• The metric for speed is Cycle Time or Throughput. They are mathematically equivalent.
• Cycle time = the average work time from idea to consumption.
• Throughput = the number of items completed per time period.
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A Cumulative Flow Diagram (CFD) is the best visualization for this, but it takes some getting used to. You can also use a Control Chart, but it is best to have both.
Pro-tip:
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5. Optimize with Science!
• Think carefully before you modify the board.
• Make changes to the board based on a stated expected outcome.
• Measure whether it actually improves performance, and change it back if it doesn’t work.
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Pro-tip:
Consistent violations of WIP limits at the same column indicate a communication or coordination breakdown. Half-done work is probably being stalled or blocked, prompting the premature pull of new work.
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The Science of KanbanBecause, well… math.
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WIP Limits Increase Speed• Knowledge workflows, like networks, are subject to the same
constraints as any flow-based systems.
• In systems with variable arrival and processing rates, queues tend to form between process steps.
• Queue size increases exponentially with linear increases in capacity.
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WIP Limits Increase Speed
• As capacity increases, systems risk catastrophic collapse (think traffic jams).
• WIP limits place an upper bound on the capacity of the system to prevent exponential growth of queues.
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What About Velocity?Worse than useless
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Velocity
• Velocity obscures the most important source of waste: queues.
• Most of the waste in knowledge workflows comes from items waiting in queues between processing steps.
• The relative difficulty of engineering tasks has an insignificant impact on the overall throughput of the system.
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Estimates• Planning poker encourages “group think”. Statistics beats human
intuition every time.
• Uncalibrated gut-feeling estimates are worse than useless. They are dangerous.
• You can predict with 95% confidence that an item will be completed within two standard deviations of the mean cycle time.
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ReviewFive easy steps
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Review1. Visualize the workflow.
2. Apply WIP constraints.
3. Make policies explicit.
4. Measure and manage flow.
5. Improve the board configuration iteratively.
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Thank you!