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

[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

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

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

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.

There is still time to register!

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.

• 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.

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.