X-Ban the process! (How a Product Team is improving value delivery rate with Kanban)

Dr Andy CarmichaelHead of Agile Services, Clearvision-CM.com

@andycarmich - #lkuk14

Why is this relevant to me?

• Job title: Head of Agile Services, Clearvision (since May 2013)

• Role: Development Manager; Product Owner for Spectrum ALM*

• Nominally a Scrum development process when I arrived• Spectrum 1.0 released January 2014• Spectrum 1.2 released Autumn 2014

We needed a process that would allow us to deliver the next most important product feature to quality… faster

*spectrumALM.com

SpectrumALM.com

Key concern over this time…

How do we improve our development processes to meet the business imperatives?

• Speed• Agility• Efficiency• Responsiveness• Forecasting

Two typical approaches to improving process1. Pick a new one … migrate to it2. Start here … improve (x-ban) it!

Identify the problems

• Retrospectives and reflection• Feedback loops• Purpose & Focus

Improvement

• Improvements suffer the J-Curve syndrome

• Small step improvements (Kaizen) may alleviate deep dips in performance

• Radical change might also be needed (Kaikaku) but may not “stick”

• Kanban is an IMPROVEMENT method based on the Lean flow paradigm

E.G.– Scrumban– Xanpan (XP-ban)– Princeban?– DSDMban?

What does ‘X’ban mean

• Is it a “pick and mix”?• Is it a specific set of practices from both sources? • Is it the same in every implementation?

What is Scrum?

Source: http://www.controlchaos.com

Max 1 month

Potentially shippable increment every Sprint

• Rules (Scrum Guide)

• Roles(Scrum Master, Product Owner, Dev Team)

• Rites(Planning, Stand-up, Retro, Review, Sprint)

• Artifacts – The evolving “Increment” – The Backlog

• The rules are “immutable”• If it’s not all Scrum,

it’s not Scrum (Scrum-but)*• Not specific about technical practice

but …• Requires “potentially shippable

increment” every Sprint (< 1 month)

Scrum: an “Empirical Process Framework”

* “There are no flavours of Scrum” Jem D’jelal

What is Kanban?

A framework for process change (a metaprocess?)1. See work as FLOW (Kanban Lens)2. Start from here (roles, responsibilities, process)3. Make work and policies visible (e.g. board, WIP limits)

Make validated changes (e.g. change WIP limits or DoD)

What is the Kanban Method*?

*cf. a kanban; a kanban system; the Kanban Method

ViewpointPrinciples

Practices

• Where did we start?• Visibility of work (and policies)• Awareness of interruptions

Make work and policies visible

• Portmanteau word coined by Corey Ladas (Scrumban, Modus Cooperandi Lean Series, 2008)

• The evolution of a process that would take place if a team was using Scrum and adopted Kanban

Also used in the community to mean a method made from aspects of Scrum and Kanban (less usefully!)

So what is Scrumban?

Some of Ladas’s expectations of what could happen to a Scrum process…

• Specialisation in teams • efficiency without loss of focus in continuous delivery of features• balance between self-organisation and workflow specialisation

• Relaxation / disappearance of the time-boxed iteration (Sprint)• varying cadences for different functions according to need• “batch and queue buys you nothing”

• Scope of the workflow expands• not just development/test but “concept to cash”

• Limiting WIP with small buffers• towards the ideal of one piece flow• defined workflows, flexible hand-over – the “bucket brigade”

Single piece flow… variable handover

A recent tweet from @corey_ladas

Understanding flow… and lack of it

How has our process evolved?

• From “user stories” to “epics and stories” (above the epic?)• Limits on WIP – less, more, less• Staff liquidity and roles• Emphasis on cadence

• Reviews with stakeholders (monthly – queue replenishment)• Retrospectives monthly (moving to the other fortnight!)• Deliveries – moving from batches to “when ready” as CI/CD improves

• Forecasting still elusive… why? does it matter??

From “Scrum-BUT” to quite Scrum-like?

• Cadence –• renewed emphasis on the monthly cycle (was 4 weekly)

• Roles –• Product Owner role clearer, • still no Scrum Master

• Staff Liquidity emphasis • rather than cross-functional team members

• Potentially shippable increment • on the completion of any Epic• moving to Octopus builds

Change did not come quickly!

• Reflection• Consensus• Shared understanding• More courage required (just do it... undo it if necessary)• Change based on evidence sticks better• Saying is not communicating

How can you x-ban your process?

Kanban: Twitter Version

Essence of Kanban

see flowstart here

with visible work & policies validate improvements

Also see: "How to Adopt Kanban" @andycarmich

X-Ban the process! (How a Product Team is improving value delivery rate with Kanban)

Dr Andy CarmichaelHead of Agile Services, Clearvision-cm.com

@andycarmich - #lkuk14