Kanban in 30 Days

Tomas Bjorkholm, Jannika Bjorkholm

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Year: 2015
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781783000913
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

If you want to simplify your processes, improve collaboration and manage projects successfully, this guide to Kanban is an essential companion. Created primarily for software developers, but packed with insights and tips for anyone that understands the challenges of project management, this is your rapid route into innovative and Agile ways of working.

Kanban in 30 Days

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Kanban in 30 Days

Copyright © 2015 Impackt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

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Impackt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Impackt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

First published: June 2015

Production reference: 1290615

Published by Impackt Publishing Ltd.

Livery Place

35 Livery Street

Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.

ISBN 978-1-78300-090-6

www.Impacktpub.com

Credits

Authors

Tomas Björkholm

Jannika Björkholm

Reviewer

Anna Sandell

Project Coordinator

Priyanka Goel

Content Development Editor

Sweny M. Sukumaran

Copy Editors

Utkarsha S. Kadam

Vikrant Phadke

Proofreaders

Simran Bhogal

Stephen Copestake

Paul Hindle

Cover Work

Melwyn D'sa

Production Coordinator

Melwyn D'sa

Acquisition Editor

Richard Gall

About the Authors

Tomas Björkholm works as a consultant at Crisp in Sweden. Since 2008, he has been helping companies implement and succeed with Kanban and Scrum. He is also a frequently hired speaker and has held more than 150 classes about Agile and Lean for software development. This is Tomas' second book but the first in English.

Jannika Björkholm is the team manager of a developer team, and has been working with Agile methods since 2009.

We wish to thank Anna Sandell, Johan Burén, Peter Kerschbaumer, and Mattias Skarin.

About the Reviewer

Anna Sandell lives in Sweden and has spent approximately 15 years working on leading software development projects. She is always on the lookout for better ways of visualizing the progress of development teams in order to improve their work. Agile methods such as Scrum and Kanban give her lots of inspiration in this area. Her other professional interests include organizational development and writing and proofreading texts of various kinds.

In her spare time, Anna enjoys playing curling and sewing patchwork quilts.

I would like to thank my family and my nearest colleagues who helped me in implementing enough of my ideas to keep me in a creative mood.

Preface

It's just an ordinary day at work for Lisa, the project leader. Already, at the parking place outside the office she meets Ted, the marketing manager. In his normal irritating way, he asks for the project status. Lisa answers with the normal "Fine" and doesn't give any more details. After three years of working with Ted, she knows that this is just his way to start a normal conversation, the request for changed requirements. That's exactly what happens today as well, as usual.

"We met some customers yesterday and they were very clear that some changes were absolutely needed", he started.

Lisa knows there was no point in arguing.

"OK", she said, "what kind of changes are we talking about?"

"Nothing big, just some adjustments. I will pass you later today. See you later, got to run."

Before he left her he fired away the phrase she hated:

"You know, we need to be Agile."

She hated that word, "agile". She didn't know what it meant. It was just used by everybody to excuse their bad behaviour.

Lisa felt that the energy from a good night's sleep was running out of her. A good night's sleep was maybe not the right description. She was no longer able to leave her work behind at the office. Instead it followed her home, spinning around in her head and didn't give her enough peace for a good night's sleep.

She knows this was just the beginning and she was right. Even before she reached her desk, the department manager Alice grabbed her.

"Don't forget to send me the report about the delays in the project. I need it by 2:00 p.m."

Lisa felt how her stress level was increasing. When they are delayed she has to spend her time on writing reports to managers about the delay, instead of spending her time with the developers and helping them speed up.

She went to the kitchen to get a cup of coffee. She had to calm down before entering the project area. She didn't want the developers to see how stressed she felt. She totally failed. And there was no help from the developers. The more stressed she felt the more silent and vague they were. No one was able to say when they thought they would be done. They were only complaining about unclear specifications, short deadlines, and scope creep. And she didn't even dare to mention that Ted would, during the day, introduce new changes.

The frustration increased inside of her. She felt torn between managers, business people, and developers.

Is it time for Lisa to give up and quit? No it isn't! It's just time for a process that can handle changes and at the same time is transparent especially when it comes to status and consequences of a late change.

Kanban is a method that can help Lisa create a process that will improve her working day. If you recognize Lisa's situation, this book, Kanban in 30 Days will guide you to a better situation. It will take you through the basics of Kanban, Agile, and Lean. It will also help you reach the advanced levels, not only on a theoretical level but also on a practical level. The format of the book is a 30-day calendar that day by day gives you tools for setting up a Kanban organization that is continuously optimizing your way of working. The book will be handy even if you prefer to implement Kanban principles and practices in a different way or in another timeframe as well.

There are also a lot of tips that will be helpful for the more advanced Kanban users, such as tips about where waste can be found and eliminated and also how to better understand your context and how to improve it.

Make a note

Throughout the book, you will find that we have used different words to mean the same thing. They are as follows:

• A team, development unit, and people involved in a system refers to the people who are working together or separately on features to improve the same product
• A task, story, user story, feature, item, issue, work, or work task refers to the work the team is doing

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Days 1-2 – Understanding Kanban, Lean, and Agile, covers the principles and values for Kanban, Agile, and Lean.

Chapter 2, Days 3-5 – Getting to Know Your System, covers value stream mapping as a tool to better understand your system.

Chapter 3, Days 8-9 – Visualizing Your Process and Creating Your Initial Kanban Board, informs you how to visualize your process and create your initial Kanban board, and covers some tools to help you create your Kanban board.

Chapter 4, Days 10-11 – Setting the Limits, sets the limits and covers a game to play to get an understanding of how limits improve time to market.

Chapter 5, Day 12 – Choosing the Roles and Meetings You Need, covers examples of roles and meetings that are commonly used in organizations doing Kanban.

Chapter 6, Day 15 – First Day Running Kanban, covers an example of how the agenda for the first day could look, including planning and retrospective.

Chapter 7, Days 16-29 – Improving Your Process, covers the PDCA cycle, methods to find waste, and ways to improve your efficiency.

Chapter 8, Day 30 – Release Planning, covers how to get control over your Agile projects, how to follow up projects, and find delivery dates.

Who this book is for

This book is for those of you who want to get started with Kanban. It's practical and many parts are simplified to easily get you started. It's also for those of you who have been practicing Kanban for some time and want to get help to switch to a higher gear.

Conventions

In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.

For Reference

For Reference appear like this

Lists

Lists appear like this

Action Point

Action points appear like this

Make a note

Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.

Tip

Tips and tricks appear lik...

Table of contents

• Kanban in 30 Days