In February, March and April I'll be repeating my highly successful Kanban Coaching Workshop from London this October. These coaching workshops are designed for experienced agile, project management or process coaches and consultants who are looking to add Kanban skills to their toolbox of offerings. This intensive 3 day collaborative workshop is designed to enable participants to go out in the field and successful implement Kanban and Lean with their teams and client firms. Attendees will receive a recommendation from me that they can use with clients and will be listed on my (yet to be published) "trusted Kanban coach" web page.

You can't learn everything about Kanban in 3 days but those attended in London learned lots of ideas and gained the benefit of lots of experience that will enable them to make significant and valuable progress with clients.

Read what Rachel Davies had to say after attending the London workshop.

In February I'll be facilitating two workshops. The first in Cape Town, South Africa with Scrum Sense, Feb 5-7, and the other at the Conrad Hotel in Miami, Florida February 22-24.

In March, I'll be giving my only European coaching workshop in the first half of 2010 in Stockholm with Crisp. Check out crisp.se for details. Email me if interested in attending meanwhile. I also hope to announce a similar coaching workshop in Brazil, most likely Sao Paulo, March 8-10. Email if interested in attending.

In April, I'll be facilitating another north american workshop in Orange County, California, April 14-16. [venue to be announced soon]

Attendance at my own events in the United States is strictly limited to 8 participants to maximize the quality of the discussion and learning opportunity. So far we have 4 confirmed attendees in Miami, 4 others tentative but uncommitted. So there are 4 places open. Please book soon if want to attend this event. The Orange County workshop has some more possibilities with 3 confirmed attendees and 3 others currently tentative. Please email if you are interested but not ready to sign up immediately.

In addition to these 5 open workshops, I am also holding a closed private client workshop in Seattle in January 2010. If you'd like a closed Kanban coaching workshop at your firm, please get in touch via email. Technorati tag: David+Anderson, Agile+Management, Agile, Lean, Kanban, Project+Management, Software+Engineering, Process+Improvement, Change+Management

I'm teaching a few Kanban classes over the next two months in Europe and South
Africa.

[December]
The first of the 2 day classes in Stockholm with Crisp next week

[January]
Followed by a class in Krakow, Poland and another in Paris, France with Octo

[February]
I'm then heading down to South Africa from Paris in early February for a class with Scrum Sense in Cape Town.

[May]
Week of May 3rd class in Israel to be announced soon. Email for more details.

These 2 day events are aimed at Kanban beginners and team members from companies
trying to adopt Kanban or thinking about alternatives to existing agile or
traditional approaches to change and improvement. Technorati tag: David+Anderson, Agile+Management, Agile, Lean, Kanban, Project+Management, Software+Engineering, Process+Improvement, Change+Management

The first Lean Software & Systems Conference will be held in Atlanta, Georgia, USA between April 21st and 23rd 2010.

Registration and the Call for Papers is now open at atlanta2010.leanssc.org

The first 50 registrants enjoy a super early discount rate of $800 plus entry to the exclusive speaker luncheon and a special limited edition Ltd WIP Society t-shirt, sponsored by David J. Anderson & Associates.

The Call for papers closes on December 14th.

Use the Twitter search tag #lssc10 to filter tweets about the event. Follow @lssc10 on Twitter for news from the organizing team.

If you are speaking or attending the conference you might like to tell people about it by adding these buttons to your web site design. If you want to use these assets on your site just paste the HTML code provided straight into your web source code or content management system.

Source: <a href="http://atlanta2010.leanssc.org/"><img alt="Atlanta 2010 Attendee" src="http://www.agilemanagement.net/lssc10/Atlanta2010Attendee.png" border="0" /></a>

Source: <a href="http://atlanta2010.leanssc.org/"><img alt="Atlanta 2010 Speaker" src="http://www.agilemanagement.net/lssc10/Atlanta2010Speaker.png" border="0" /></a>

Conference Chair: David J. Anderson

Track Chairs: Alan Shalloway, Joshua Kerievsky, James Sutton, Eric Willeke, Chris Shinkle, Richard Turner & David Anderson

Event Planner: Kelly Wilson
Organizing Sponsor: Software Engineering Professionals (SEP)
Event Team: Dennis Stevens, Janice Linden-Reed, Aaron Sanders, Eric Landes

Sponsorship opportunities email info@leanssc.org

This week at QCon I am launching a new Limited WIP Society supporter T-shirt design. The new design is also available as a button that you can place on your web site to show support for the adoption of Kanban.

If you want to use these assets on your site just paste the HTML code provided straight into your web source code or content management system.  

Source: <a href="http://www.limitedwipsociety.org/"><img alt="Go Lean Limit WIP" src="http://www.agilemanagement.net/ltdwip/GoLeanLimitWIPOrange.png" border="0" /></a>

Source: <a href="http://www.limitedwipsociety.org/"><img alt="Go Lean Limit WIP" src="http://www.agilemanagement.net/ltdwip/GoLeanLimitWIPGreen.png" border="0" /></a> 

Source: <a href="http://www.limitedwipsociety.org/"><img alt="Go Lean Limit WIP" src="http://www.agilemanagement.net/ltdwip/GoLeanLimitWIPBrown.png" border="0" /></a> 

 Technorati tag: David+Anderson, Agile+Management, Agile, Lean, Kanban, Software+Engineering, Project+Management

We've had a robust registration for the Kanban class I am giving in San Francisco on November 16th and 17th. We've got quite a few international attendees. Perhaps they are coming into town for QCon later that week? As well as a handful of locals. We still have room for about 6 more. So don't miss out. This is the only Kanban class I am teaching in the United States this year.

Register now for 2 Day Kanban Class in San Francisco, Nov 16-17! Each attendee will receive an exclusive new Limited WIP Society T-shirt or Tank Top. Be the first to wear one of the new designs and colors. Or choose the popular "Yes We Kanban" shirt from Agile 2009 as modeled here by Bernd Schiffer.

I'll be chairing the Kanban Track at QCon in San Francisco on November 18th. We've got a good list of speakers lined up including Jeff Patton (reprising his presentation from the UK Lean 2009 conference) and Henrik Kniberg with his Kanban vs Scrum - A Practical Guide (from The Future of Agile, Stockholm) and Chris Shinkle and David Laribee (reprising their presentations from the Lean & Kanban 2009 in Miami). I'll be reprising my Agile 2009 presentation New Approaches to Managing Risk which features some more advanced ideas that have emerged from the Kanban community. This line up should serve to provide a good broad sweep of what Kanban is, how to use it and what its benefits are.

There is still time to register!

This presentation from the Software Engineering Institute's SEPG 2009 conference in San Jose was voted one of the top 10 best at the event. In it I synthesize experience from team with Kanban and the CMMI model. I make the observation that some teams using Kanban to drive change towards improved agility have also exhibited accelerated achievement of model level 4 behaviors.

[Download the slides 7MB PDF]

David Joyce has posted a quite remarkable blog summarizing the results at BBC Worldwide since they introduced the use of Kanban, to drive process improvements, one year ago.

Improved Predictability as well as Business Agility

Many people will review this post and look only at the data. As David himself summarizes, the average lead time fell by 8 days from 22 to 14. This does demonstrate improved business agility, a 33% drop in lead time is not to be sneazed at. However, the more careful viewer will observe the dramatic drop in the spread of variation. The upper control limit drops from 70+ to well under 40, almost a 50% drop in spread. What this means is that the team is much more predictable in delivery of new functionality. David is also verifiying that the newer data shows genuine special cause variations outside the limits. While he isn't stating categorically that the system is stable, in an SPC sense, as there may be some special cause variations hiding inside the limits, the performance shows a dramatic improvement in stability since Kanban was introduce. This is further evidence that the team is performing in a much more predictable fashion. It also implies that the team ought to be experiencing a much smoother working environment with far fewer events that randomize their schedule and distract their attention away from immediate customer-valued work.

Evidence of Little's Law Cause and Effect

The chart for development cycle time shows direct evidence that Little's Law is true and that the quantity of WIP has a direct causal relationship with cycle time. The mean drops from 9 days to 3 days but again the spread of variation drops even more dramtically from 31 days to 7 days. Again this is evidence that the team has much greater predictability. Reducing WIP not only reduces cycle time but it dramatically reduces variability too.

The Engineering cycle time chart simply reflects more of the same. Reducing WIP and the policies of Kanban and its expectation that blocking issues will be escalated and resolved quickly has a dramatic effect on both lead time and variability and shows significant measurable gains in both business agility and predictability as a result.

Improved Configuration Management Discipline and Reduced Deployment Transaction Costs

The Throughput chart doesn't tell us how much value is being delivered but it does show a dramatic increase in the number of releases to production. This rises from one every one or two weeks before Kanban to one almost every working day since Kanban was introduced. To make this possible there must have been an improvement in configuration management discipline and capability and an equal reduction in the transaction and coordination costs associated with a release. This is all indicative of an organization that is maturing and improving in capability as well as an organization that is considerably more "Lean" than it was a year ago, as waste associated with making a release has dramatically reduced.

Bugs decrease with less WIP and Improved Organizational Maturity

The final chart showing defects per week shows that quality did not suffer as a result of introducing Kanban and limiting WIP and that after some time for changes to kick-in that might be associated with an organization growing in maturity and capability the variability in the defect rate dropped dramatically with a small decrease in the mean number of bugs per week. Again this indicative of an organization that is much more predictable.

Conclusions

David is using the SPC charts as report cards. In Donald Wheeler's scale of adoption of SPC, this is the lowest level of maturity, and SPC as report cards doesn't fully qualify as quantitative management associated with level 4 in the CMMI model. However, we can conclude that this team exhibits significantly improved performance. They exhibit significantly lower variability and greater predictability and any use of SPC indicates a leadership that is determined to drive process improvement in a quantitative fashion. There is significant evidence of behaviors associated with CMMI model level 4 and this growth in maturity has been achieved in only 12 months.

This seems to be further evidence to back up my claims from my SEPG North America 2009 presentation that Kanban is proving to be a method that leads to accelerated organizational maturity and catalyst of organizational process improvement. We've now seen two teams at two significant companies in London adopt statistical process control and show significant progress towards higher maturity behaviors and performance. Perhaps it isn't a coincidence? Hopefully we'll see more like this emerge from the Kanban community over the next 12 months.

I'll be holding my only Kanban class in North America this year in San Francisco on November 16-17. The two day class is now divided into 2 parts:

• Day 1 - Mechanics of Kanban
• • The first day focuses on case studies, theory and exercises to map a value-stream, model a flow and design a kanban board, identify work item types and classes of service and set WIP limits
• Day 2 - Kaizen
• • The second day focuses on creating a Kaizen (continuous improvement) culture in your organization and using Kanban as a catalyst of change. Attendees will learn how to identify improvement opportunities managing bottlenecks, reducing waste, and reducing variability. They will also learn how to choose and use appropriate metrics to drive change and measure improvement together with an understanding of organizational maturity and how Kanban accelerates the achievement of higher maturity behaviors such as quantative management, causal analysis and resolution and organizational innovation and deployment

Register Now! Both days at the San Francisco State University Downtown Campus for just $1300.

I'm going to be touring Europe over the next 3 months giving a series of Kanban classes. These 2 day classes will give you the knowledge to understand what Kanban is all about, why it's important and how it might help your organization. You may be surprised to learn that it is a lot more than just puting a few story cards on a board. Kanban is about enabling evolutionary change with minimal resistance. It's about learning how to set and change policies that constrain performance and hold back organizational effectiveness. It's about learning how to empower people without loss of control - to make self-organization an organizational discipline and effective capability. It's about learning how to make objective decisions that optimize business outcomes.

You can read more about the class here.

Participants in the classes will learn how to use the simple process of limiting work-in-progress as a driver of change. Kanban is a change management method and a different approach to striking agreements between IT and the business. Kanban is about making promises you can keep and reaping the rewards of the trust divide that delivering on your promises enables. Kanban enables you to say "Yes" without compromising your core values of sustainable pace, craftsmanship, high quality, integrity, agility, and economic benefit.

To do this you'll learn how to define the policies that constrain the collaborative game of software development. You'll learn how to use those policies to manage risk and to reset negotiations and recast them as collaborative problem solving. "Yes, we can do that... Now how would you like to change things to accommodate this decision?"

Used effectively, Kanban will change you and your organization. If your workplace has been stagnating and you are looking for new ideas to unleash innovation, collaboration and creativity take 2 days of your precious time and come along. Find out what all the fuss is about!

I'll be in...

Stockholm September 24-25 (Crisp)

London October 1-2 (Skillsmatter)

Frankfurt October 5-6 (IT-Agile)

Brussels November 23-24 (ACA IT)

Utrecht November 26-27 (ACA IT)

There has also been suggestions of me coming to Denmark, Poland and France. If you'd like to me to run a Kanban class in your country, please get in touch.

I've made my slides for Agile 2009 available in the document archive of agilemanagement.net for everyone who attended or not to use. The great news is that Ryan Martens is interested in applying these ideas at Rally Development already.

I should also mention that my 3rd technique in these slides is similar to Todd Little's model which appeared in the recent book, Stand Back and Deliver! The model uses four classifications of projects that Todd calls Sheep Dogs, Colts, Bulls and Cows. The Cows are analogous to my Cash Cows, Bulls to Major Growth Market and Colts to Innovative/New. If there is a difference it's that my model is entirely market driven / external while Todd considers a complexity a dimension in the classification. These models are so similar that I will consider merging mine with Todd's with full attribution.

Chris Matts' believes that my first technique, previously published here in 2005 is similar to but less useful than Neil Nickolaisen's model also published in the recent book, Stand Back and Deliver! Neil's model maps projects at a portfolio level into 4 categories via a 2x2 matrix or dimensional assessment of market differentiation and alignment with corporate mission. He calls the segments: Don't Care; Partner; Differentiating; Parity. While this model is certainly compatible with my model they are not the same. Neil's model works at the project and portfolio level and assumes that the corporate mission is somehow correctly aligned with a strategic position and the market demands. My model works at the individual feature level and is again directly market facing insuring that the feature mix chosen for a project or iteration are aligned with the strategic positioning of the business and the allocation of types is aligned with the propensity for risk in the business plan or prospectus. Neil's model is certainly compatible with mine. If for example, a project initiative assessed as "Parity" but the product owner was picking a lot of "Differentiator" class features for the product mix then there is clearly a miss match. So I believe that Neil's model could be added as a fourth technique to the three presented here.

However, it's worth noting that these are tools that can be used as choices and are not necessarily all designed to be used together. My 3rd technique, like Todd's and Neil's are designed to allocate resources to control commitment to projects across a portfolio. To spread risk effectively. It may not make sense to use more than one of these techniques at any one company or division. Choose the one that resonates best with your organization. Technorati tag: David+Anderson, Agile+Management, Agile, Lean, Kanban, Software+Engineering, Project+Management, Risk+Management, Risk, Portfolio+Management, Program+Management

I've uploaded a PDF of my slides for Agile 2009.

Download New Approaches to Risk Management PDF

Here is the original session submission...

Presenter: David J. Anderson

Title: New Approaches to Risk Management

Background

----------

For almost a decade the agile community has claimed that agile development is a risk-driven approach. Yet there is very little published material on agile risk management. A survey of the transactions of the Agile conference over 4 years reveals no explicit presentation on risk management. An online search reveals a number of blog entries and articles on agile risk management(of which more later.)

Traditional risk management (defined in the PMBoK, Prince II, CMMI and other frameworks) takes an event driven approach to risk. It seeks to model external variations that affect schedule, budget and scope on projects. Traditional risk management focuses on what Walter Shewhart called "assignable cause" variation [Deming renamed this "special cause".] The model is simple: try to build a list of external events that might occur; assess the impact and likelihood of occurrence; assess the cost of mitigation options; decide whether to mitigate (reduce chance of occurence) or create a contingency plan (to recover in the event of occurence.)

Most of the agile risk management articles surveyed look at how to implement traditional risk management in a more agile way. They address how to fit risk management into iterative, incremental development and how to assess and manage risks in a collaborative, transparent manner. There appears to be no literature that discusses how to apply agile and lean ideas that revolutionize risk management.

Meanwhile, traditional (non-agile) project scheduling techniques treat all tasks homogeneously from a risk management perspective. Elementary scheduling techniques do not account for variance in task completions, e.g. the Gantt chart technique. More advanced techniques (PERT, Critical Chain, Last Planner) account for variation and provide some risk mitigation against chance (or common) cause variation through time buffering. However, these techniques still tend to treat all tasks homogeneously from a risk perspective.

Project risk management literature does not appear to have advanced much in the last 30 years.

New Approaches

--------------

The application of Lean pull systems (kanban) and Real Options Theory in agile methods is providing new sophisticated means to manage overall business risk in technology projects and software delivery.

This tutorial will describe in detail 3 techniques that have evolved in the kanban community that provide improved project flexibility and business agility together with increased sophistication in risk management.

(1) Using classes of service based on cost of delay/failure functions

Classifying customer-valued deliverables according to the cost of delay (or failure) function allows for different prioritization policies to be implemented on the fly by self-organizing teams significantly reducing the business risks of late delivery. This scheme classifies customer deliverables such as user stories heterogeneously according to the loss incurred due to late delivery. Assigning different colored sticky notes, or index cards according to the classification allows team members to quickly assess risk and pull the most important item through the system in a self-organizing manner

Four example classes of service will be discussed along with their related pull system policies (for prioritization and scheduling) will be presented. The examples are: expedite; fixed delivery date (unit step cost of delay function); quantitative value delivery; and qualitative value delivery. Other classification schemes are possible and would be domain specific.

(2) Iteration Backlog selection based on market risk

This scheme allows for classification of customer-valued deliverables into 4 categories that are aligned with strategic planning and marketing objectives, namely: commodity (or table stakes); differentiator; spoiler; and cost saver. Features or user stories in each category exhibit different risk of change (deletion from scope, or change in definition) due to market conditions during the lifetime of the project, prior to release. The variance in market risk can be used to quickly prioritize iteration backlogs and target backlog items for iterations within an overall project schedule. The scheme mitigates the risk of rework (or waste) caused by changes in scope associated with changing market and business conditions.

(3) Risk-based Portfolio Management

This scheme allows the balance of resources and funding across a portfolio of projects or business initiatives based on the alignment of a project or development initiative with the strategic positioning of the business and its desired risk exposure.

Projects can be classified in to 3 categories: cash cow; mainstream developing market; and emerging market. Portfolio management is conducted similar to investment portfolio management by balancing investments and risk according to the risk preference of the investor. Hence, cash cow is analogous to bonds in an investment portfolio, mainstream developing market, is analogous to large cap stocks, and emerging market to small cap stocks. Resources and funding are allocated according to desired risk profile and kanban systems established for each line of business (or business initiative). Market releases (or projects) are defined to release value optimally based on transaction and coordination costs of making such a release.

Summary

-------

These three techniques combine elements of Lean Thinking and Edwards Deming's New Economics (cost of delay/failure functions, waste (transation and coordination costs, rework or scrap)), Real Option Theory and Decision Tree analysis to provide methods that enable simple, fast, and often self-organizing approaches to maximize business value and manage risk throughout a portfolio and the project lifecycle.

Notes

-----

Most of this material has been previously presented anecdotally as part of presentations on kanban. Some of it has been documented at agilemanagement.net as blog posts. However, this tutorial will pull it all together, formalize it as a risk management approach and refine and develop some of the ideas.

The material is therefore new in this format but based on work and presentations given over the last 2 years.

The presentation will likely be trialed at various smaller venues prior to Agile 2009. In the first instance at the kanban conference in Miami in February 2009 to an audience of perhaps 50 people. Other opportunities of rehearsal performances will be available at local events such as the San Diego XP Users Group in May 2009.

I intend to submit a formal paper for the transations.

Reference Material

------------------

Survey of online articles on agile risk management

Appelo, Jurgen, http://www.noop.nl/2008/06/agile-risk-management.html

Cottmeyer, Mike, http://blog.versionone.net/blog/2008/05/agile-risk-mana.html

Cottmeyer, Mike, http://blog.versionone.net/blog/2008/05/agile-risk-ma-1.html

Cottmeyer, Mike, http://leadinganswers.typepad.com/leading_answers/2007/09/agile-risk-mana.html

Fitzgerald, Donna, http://www.cutter.com/research/2006/edge060711.html

Griffiths, Mike, http://leadinganswers.typepad.com/leading_answers/2007/09/agile-risk-mana.html

Rangaswami, JP, http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2007/07/06/how-risk-management-affects-agile-approaches/

Smith, Preston and Roman Pichler, http://www.ddj.com/architect/184415308

Thomas, Steven, http://www.itsadeliverything.com/articles/agile_risk_management.htm

The guys at Silverstripe in India have their own version of how to migrate from Scrum to Kanban.

Customer demand is finally driving the major tools vendors to respond and supply Kanban features in their product. Here David Laribee demonstrates on video, the shiny new Kanban features in the VersionOne product. This is very significant. It's the first tool that allows a company to manage Kanban initiatives within a portfolio that includes other Agile projects using methods like Scrum and XP. Apparently, customers are tell the folks at VersionOne that they want to use Kanban for product maintenance and upgrade releases with Scrum for new green-field projects. If this is true then, due to the fact that around 80% of all software development is maintenance and product upgrades, we should see significantly more adoption of Kanban over the next 10 years.

Stephan Schmidt has released a thin eBook that is available as a free download - 12 Things You can do do to shorten Lead Time and Time to Market in Software Development. It doesn't explicitly mention Kanban but does talk about visualizing and managing flow. Much of sentiment of the message is encapsulated in what we know as Kanban.

Stefan Rusek has announced a Kanban plug-in for FogBugz! Woohoo! FogBugz is a popular work tracking tool and now you Joel Spolsky fans can Kanban too. Yes you kan!

Mike Suarez is introducing Kanban at his workplace. He refers to it on his blog as the Coolban process. One of the rules is that no one is allowed to talk about Kanban ;-) I love this! Introduce process changes because you need them and they will help. No need to label them. I have to label Kanban so you can all follow it and learn it but no need to label it when introducing it on your team. Just do it!

Coolban Part 1 - Enter Kanban
Coolban Part 2 - Meet the Column
Coolban Part 3 - Welcome to Coolban!

And finally, Jim Benson is still advancing the Person Kanban meme...

Post 15: Visualizing the Flow - Polar State Based Personal Kanban with Habit Trackers
Post 14: Personal Kanban and Existential Overhead
Post 13: The MAN THAT WAS AWFUL approach to Personal Kanban

I suspect that this will become the topic for Jim's second book when he finishes his current manuscript on social media, Instant Karma! Technorati tag: David+Anderson, Agile+Management, Agile, Lean, Kanban, Software+Engineering, Project+Management