Friday, May 15, 2009

Blogosphere Buzz about Lean & Kanban

Since the Lean & Kanban 2009 conference there has been a lot of blogosphere buzz about the conference and Kanban specifically. Here’s a roundup of what I’ve seen…

Mike Cottmeyer posted the most comprehensive thoughts as he was blogging throughout the event. Here are his posts in chronological order.

Day 1 - May 6th - Lean Day
#LK2009 Shalloway, Leffingwell, Middleton
#LK2009 Sutton and Mortensen
#LK2009 Observations from the Lean & Kanban Conference
#LK2009 Rathore & Ladas
#LK2009 Tabaka, Hsu & Shalloway

Day 2 - May 7th - Kanban Day
Announcing the formation of the Lean Software & Systems Consortium
#LK2009 Anderson, Scotland and Hathaway
#LK2009 Vale, Cook and Landes
#LK2009 Willeke, Shinkle and Laribee

Day 3 - Open Space Day
#LK2009 Alan Shalloway (Closing Keynote)

Post Conference Thoughts
Lean or Kanban or Agile
Why a Lean Software & Systems Consortium? Why a Lean Certification?

[update] Mike Bria highlights Mike’s post on InfoQ with additional commentary

There was a lot of talk at the conference about achieving high maturity (the equivalent of CMMI ML4 or ML5, quantitatively managed or optimizing organizations) with Kanban and how Kanban appeared not only to enable achievement of high maturity but also accelerate the rate at which that high maturity could be achieved. Chris Shinkle of SEP reported that some teams had achieved essentially a quantitatively managed maturity in 6 months. The amazing thing is that Chris felt the need to apologize to the audience because it had taken so long Since, the conference some academics have begun to take an interest and we’re likely to see a couple of academic studies over the next year looking at high maturity Kanban teams.

Alisson Vale presented how his team at Phidelis in Brazilia, Brazil, work in a highly mature optimizing fashion and he demonstrated their home grown tool - a sort of cross between an electronic kanban card wall, an electronic executive dashboard and a Facebook-like social media tool. The tool was impressive but the organization behind it humbled us all. I truly believe that Phildelis must be the highest maturity team on the planet. They build software with the kind of supply chain precision that Dell builds computers. It has to be seen to be believed. I would urge you to pick up the proceedings book when it’s available and read Alisson’s paper. Meanwhile, here is his latest blog post with his thoughts on the conference, Inside the Lean & Kanban Conference. And if you can’t wait to get your copy of the proceedings book you might want to read Kanban: When Signalization Matters in the meanwhile.

Though not at the conference, Benjamin Mitchell has been making huge strides with his team at BNP Parisbas in London. Here’s his first ever blog post detailing how they use statistical process control charts to drive a quantitatively managed continuous improvement program, Control/Capability Charts on a Kanban Software Development Project.

Israel Gat kindly published John Heintz’s thoughts on attending the conference. By posting them to the Agile Executive blog Israel gave John’s thoughts and stimulated a really valuable thread of conversation. Do go and read all the comments not just the article.

Alan Shalloway posted his own thoughts on the conference at his Net Objectives blog. Alan made a lot of notes during the event and distilled out some really useful learning. He made the remark at the beginning of the conference that he believed it would be seen as a landmark event and folks who weren’t there would look back and wish they had been in years to come. In this retrospective blog post he explains why even his expectations were exceeded.

Jack Milunsky picked up on Sterling Mortensen’s “Stop Starting stuff and start finishing stuff” in his Successful Lean Philosophy post. Actually, this quote has  a history. I first used it at USC in March 2004 referring to the Device Management project at Motorola and the first real examples of Cumulative Flow Diagrams in action. Later in 2004 and 2005 I used the same charts and story at a couple of Lean events with Don Reinertsen including the Lean Design & Development conference and I believe the other one was the Management Round Table Lean New Product Development event. Don liked the quote so much he started to use it. All of this was pre-Kanban for me.

Sterling liked the Motorola story and the Cumulative Flow Diagrams so much that he took it back and used it in the mix at HP’s Boise location on printer firmware development. It was a part of the mix of Lean initiatives that ultimately improved productivity by 8x and shortened cycle times from 18+ months to 4 months. The following year Sterling returned to the same conference with his case study. He quoted Don, quoting me, and pointed out how this simple message backed with the reference of a cumulative flow diagram is really powerful at changing behavior for the better.

Karl Scotland has been busy with a few blog posts. This one discusses Kanban and Time Boxes. And this other one looks at motivations for improvement and how Kanban appears to differ from earlier agile methods, Anxiety or Boredom Driven Process Improvement. This second post is inspired by Mihalyi Czikszentmihalyi who’s 3 books were a significant influence on some of my early work in management science and process improvement. It’s great to see his work inspiring others in the field.

Karl also announced the Lean Software & Systems Consortium and provided some of his own thoughts on it.

Dean Leffingwell on his Scaling Software Agility blog described the conference as “one of the most impactful events” he’s attended in many years.

Not conference related but a some other interesting perspectives on Kanban appeared this week. Joe Campbell explains why the teachings of Bruce Lee resonate with his Kanban experience in Be Like Water.

Have you seen any more blogosphere buzz about Lean & Kanban 2009? Please leave a comment Technorati tag: David+Anderson, Agile+Management, Agile, Lean, Kanban, CMMI, Software+Engineering, Project+Management

Friday, April 24, 2009

XP2009: Kanban Tutorial

I’ll be teaching a 1 day class on Kanban at XP2009 in Sardinia in May. Full details are here. This is probably the cheapest and best way to get a 1-day immersion in Kanban in Europe this year. If you are attending XP2009 and have an interest in Kanban please sign up. The classes I teach commercially elsewhere in Europe cost more $$$ (ah hem, Euros, Pounds and Crowns ). Technorati tag: David+Anderson, Agile+Management, Agile, Lean, Kanban, XP2009, Sardinia, Software+Engineering, Project+Management

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Best Lean Software Conference in 2009: Still time to attend

Now that the Dear John letters have gone out to the unsuccessful submissions for Agile 2009 in Chicago, I’m expecting a surge of last minute registrations for Lean & Kanban 2009 even though there are less than 2 weeks to go until the event in Miami. Why?

Well Agile 2009 was inundated with submissions, typically 6 times more submissions per stage than there was room to accept. Many Lean and Kanban sessions have been rejected, for example, Karl Scotland’s KFC (Kanban, Flow and Cadence) submission to the Coaching stage. Some potential speakers at the event would only be granted permission to attend if they got a speaking slot. With a rejection in hand they now know that attending in Chicago is unlikely.

Meanwhile, there is an audience that really cares about Lean and Kanban. Even though the program isn’t published, the word is getting out. People are beginning to realize that there will be more and better Lean and Kanban content at the Lean & Kanban 2009 conference than the Agile 2009 conference. The economy of scale argument that suggests Agile is better value doesn’t hold up for these people. Attending Lean & Kanban 2009 will cost approximately half what it will cost to attend Agile 2009 as an attendee.

I’ve already been contacted by one rejected Agile 2009 submitter who now realizes that her interests lie in Lean and Kanban and she wants to make a last minute switch and come to Miami. I’ve also seen a small boost in registration this morning.

Meanwhile, if you do want to come along, the hotel is honoring the group booking rate even though our room block is now sold out. Registration for the full event is only $800 and a single day is available for as little as $295. So don’t miss out. Don’t miss _the_ best Lean software development conference to be held in 2009. Register now and make your travel plans to be in Miami for May 6th-8th! Technorati tag: David+Anderson, Agile+Management, Agile, Lean, Kanban

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

L&K2009 Highlight:s Corey Ladas

At the Lean & Kanban 2009 Conference in Miami May 6-8. Corey Ladas will present his Scrumban approach to evolving Agile teams . Corey will be presenting on May 6th Lean Day at the conference.

Scrumban: Lean Thinking for Agile Process Evolution

The popularity of the Scrum method of Agile project management is largely due to its ease of adoption. In Lean terms, Scrum organizes product development resources into workcells and imposes constraints on batch transfers of work requests, while leaving other concerns to complementary methods. The Scrumban method builds on these simple Scrum practices in order to introduce pull, flow, standard work, throughput metrics, and continuous improvement to the Scrum framework, while also reducing the overhead associated with planning batch transfers. Scrumban aims to reduce cycle time for new feature development, and establish a kernel of flow which can expand along the length of the product development value stream. Scrumban breaks its practices into a sequence of evolutionary enhancements, so that teams can improve their processes according to their needs and capability. Scrumban allows new teams to start with Scrum as a simple starting point for Lean development, or it allows existing Agile teams to improve their processes by making Lean methods more easily available.

Bio

Corey Ladas has been an enthusiastic student of software engineering methodology since the early 1990’s. Encouraged by the cross-disciplinary advancements of the Design Patterns movement and the eclectic approach of Steve McConnell’s Rapid Development, Corey went off in search of unconventional inspiration from the worlds of systems engineering, industrial engineering, and product development. Lean Thinking is one of Corey’s favorite discoveries from that process, and he has been experimenting with Lean methods in software development since the early 2000’s. Corey edits a popular Lean software development blog http://www.LeanSoftwareEngineering.com, and provides consulting and coaching services through http://www.ModusCooperandi.com. Technorati tag: David+Anderson, Agile+Management, Agile, Lean, kanban, Corey Ladas

L&K2009: David Anderson Key Note

I will give the opening Kanban day keynote at Lean & Kanban 2009 in Miami on May 7th. Register now for the whole event. It great value at only $800 for two and a half days of exposure to the best talent using Lean and Kanban in software development, or for register for a single day only. The one day Lean event May 6th is $335 and the one day Kanban event on May 7th is only $295.

I’ve been thinking of retitling this talk “Forget the Japanese words! Focus on risk management & cultural change!” But for now this is what I published. The final talk will definitely touch on these points.

What’s Next in the Agile Word: The Need for Lean

The motivation and use of kanban in software engineering is often being misunderstood. It isn’t a prescriptive method or process template. Kanban offers us a set of guidelines and principles for implementing a pull system. When followed appropriately these principles will lead every kanban process implementation to different and uniquely tailored to its environment, value stream and risk profile of the work being undertaken. Kanban offers us a new way to think about change within software development organizations. It offers an incremental approach to change. Kanban allows us to implement my Recipe for Success: focus on quality; reduce work-in-progress and release often; balance demand against throughput; and prioritize. It also offers us a visual and transparent mechanism to see opportunities for improvement and change: bottlenecks; waste; and variability.

Bio

David Anderson is a thought leader in the software engineering management field. He was an early advocate of agile methods. His first book, Agile Management for Software Engineering focused on enterprise scale issues of managing teams in large organizations, and was published by Prentice Hall in 2003. David is regarded as the father of use of kanban in software development and project management. He’s been infusing Lean ideas into his work since 2002. David is also well respected in the formal and academic software engineering field and recently co-authored a Technical Note from the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University titled CMMI and Agile: Why not embrace both! Technorati tag: David+Anderson, Agile+Management, Agile, Lean, kanban