Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Kanban Weekly Roundup - Jan 10,2012

                                                                                            By Dominica DeGrandis

The New Year has people experimenting with new ideas and challenging popular arguments.
This week, we check out ideas and arguments across four different countries.

News

Mike Burrows (@asplake) continues his series of “Real Kanban Questions” with a third post on,
“What makes for a good improvement?”  He questions “ROI driven” change and suggests we look instead at faster, better, cheaper drivers.
http://positiveincline.com/index.php/2011/12/real-kanban-questions-3-what-makes-for-a-good-improvement/

Alexei Zheglov (@az1) tackles the iteration-less argument with his post on “Kanban is for attacking flow problems, not for dropping iterations”.  Kanban’s main strength, he says refreshingly, “is to bring teams closer to their problems and understanding the science of their operations”.
http://learningagileandlean.wordpress.com/2012/01/10/kanban-is-for-attacking-flow-problems-not-for-dropping-iterations/

“The Project Portfolio Kanban Story: A Basic Approach”, by Pawel Brodzinski (@pawelbrodzinski).
This post captures a portfolio experiment.  I like how the last column is titled “Maintenance” instead of “Done” – a friendly reminder that projects once deployed will need to be maintained.
http://blog.brodzinski.com/2011/12/project-portfolio-kanban-basic-approach.html

An experience report from Jim Benson (@ourfounder) on the Pomodoro Daisuki app.
The story alone prompted me to either complete a task or find a good stopping point at the top of the hour without actually using the tool.  I can see how a timer would have been useful instead of watching the clock all day.
http://www.personalkanban.com/pk/applications/pomodoro-daisukisession-based-personal-kanban-and-pomodoro/

Here’s the slide deck from a presentation by Charan Atreya on using Kanban together with the Theory of Constraints (TOC).  Note slides approx 60% through showing the difference between a Scrum visualboard and a Scrum Kanban board.
http://www.kanbanway.com/agile-project-management-using-kanban-and-theory-of-constraints#.TvEsyNXNmLE

Tools

Kanbana launches a new Kanban Windows phone app.
http://www.windowsphone.com/en-US/apps/ce601c0b-161d-4255-b308-c238c1a4e1c6

Events

Agile and Beyond Conference - Dearborn, MI.  March 10, 2012
http://agileandbeyond.org/

Lean Kanban Southern Europe - Madrid, May 9-10, 2012
#lkse12

Lean Software Systems Conference – Boston May 2012
http://lssc12.leanssc.org/program/

 

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