Friday Special, Yet Another Kanban example

Photo and arts Jari Jokivuori

Does kanban boards have to look so boring?

Two weeks ago I blogged about one team having their small board upgraded to bigger one. The old board rebirth as 2.5D Backlog.

And here is what the team did for extra space they have on new bigger board...

I think Beagle Boys stole our WIP limits, but fortunately Phantom is on rescue. Darwinism got hold on your develop column and natural selection cleared the select column. And still there is on log on the back...

Since it's almost May-Day I tried to find some balloons to picture, but could not find any...

Yet Another Kanban

Lean principles - Defer Commitment

Decide as late as possible.

Defer commitment to have as much as possible information to back your decisions. Delaying irreversible decisions at the last reasonable moment allows time to learn more about problem in hand, which results in better decisions. Deferring commitment is positive procrastination.

But do not close your options too early. Sometimes it is worth to pay added cost that options can be held open, allowing decisions to be delayed until more information is available. Decision should be made at the moment at which failing to make a decision eliminates an important alternative.

Active customer participation helps to defer Commitment: Involving customers throughout the process eliminates the need to make decisions up front. Keeping decisions about features and the development of those features close together leaves less room for change.

Break dependencies so your decisions are separated to each other for easier procrastination.

On the other hand, committing early can be motivating. It also changes risks and opportunities. So there could be some value making early choices.

Keep your options open. Do not block your options by delaying too long.

If you wait too long, you could end up dancing with your sister instead of second best cheerleader.

See also

• 7 Lean principles

“Making software is really hard: it is non-sequential, non-linear, unpredictable work”-- Jan Machacek

Friday Special, Automatic backlog expiration.

In addition of 2.5D Backlog, we also kind of implemented Kanban backlog where tasks will automatically expire when they have been on board too long without anybody touching them. You only need no-name sticky notes with bad glue… And large garboard box under board to collect dropped task notes for second review before housekeeping get to handle them. This actually works since we are using magnetic avatars over task notes when work is on progress… Anderson suggest using models for improvement opportunities and making small continuous, incremental and evolutionary changes that stick. This is kind-of anti-stick non-model, so I cannot suggest it? 

But seriously; we are in process to create simple tools to improve our measurement part of Kanban. “Stay tuned”… 

“Kanban is so simple! No plans, no estimations, no iterations, no overhead” - Unknown Besserwisser

2.5D Backlog

Since we already are visualizing the flow, defined WIP’s, established some measurements and agreed what “done” means, it’s time to use models to suggest improvement opportunities.

So my first suggestion is to use Cost-Benefit / Effort-Value models as improvement opportunity to visualize backlog. First little background; we changed one A3 sized whiteboard to larger model in one room. I started to think what to do it or should I consider it as waste. After hard thinking and 2 cups of coffee I had the Illumination. Let’s put there some axis and have at least 2D visualization of something. After yet another thinking session it finally came to me; The Backlog. So we got this.

2.5D Backlog

X-axis shows business value of the task. Y-axis is combination of known effort/cost and technical risks involved to task. There is no defined scale or values to axis. Task notes are just put to board relatively to each other. Now we can see Easy-Wins from lower right portion of backlog to be priority candidates for selection. Not forgetting that Technical-Risks with great business value on top-right of chart should start as early as possible. But actual selection criteria can vary from project to project or even during the project.

Everybody is allowed to change position of notes. Fortunately our customer proxies do not touch on cost dimension. Currently project manager does check and pull the tasks he wants to the “selected”-column on Kanban board, but on long run I think we can get a rid of the “selected”-column all together and let the team to do decisions themselves. Project Manager just checks and realigns notes taking special care of tasks with hard deadline or where value has dependency to time.

The colors represent different types of tasks. That's the "point five" dimension. We use red-defect, yellow-improvement of current feature, blue-complete new feature.

There have been some discussions lately if estimation is even needed in Agile/Lean development? (we do estimations - at least for some tasks…) Our 2.5D backlog is more team visualization tool rather than formal estimation, but I think it can replace formal estimation at least for some domains.

We are also in process to create simple tools to improve our measurement part of Kanban. “Stay tuned”…

Lean principles - Amplify learning

Most things I have ever learned, I learned from failures. Not necessarily my own failures but something somebody has tried and failed so that I have not need to try it myself. Fortunately sometimes I have also learned from other people's success too. And I have to say; sometimes I have success before failing and learnt. And after all, I have gained experience while trying or following others.

( success | failure ) of (your | other people's)
-> experience
-> skills and knowledge

Sharing information regularly creates group knowledge from individual knowledge. Daily Standups are your local best friend.

Competence = skill * discipline * knowledge * social connectivity
And connectivity has more effect than knowledge
@jurgenappelo: from "The Hidden Power of Social Networks", Cross, Bob et.al

But usually I tend to give away little bit discipline by varying my methods. Doing little changes to project plan on every project. Using different test libraries on different projects etc. Some changes are rejected, but best changes remain in effect. It's kind of genetic algorithm for developement process.

Although you can learn some ungooglable little things with other ways too.


Get feedback.

Getting constant feedback from customer, and more importantly from the actual end-user, is essential way to learn about the problem we are trying to solve with the end product. By (my) definition Agile requirements management is a learning process where both the customer and the developer are working together to learn more about the problem. But even then requirements are constantly evolving and only way to make things work is have continuous feedback from actual users of the end product. So you have to commit to continuous integration, deployment and delivery so that the customer has something she can use to give the valuable feedback we need.

Use pretotyping to get feedback (actually you are trying to get prefeed...) on early stages. The main objective of pretotyping is to answer questions about the product's appeal and usage: Would people be interested in it? Will they use it as expected? Will they continue to use it? ... Failing ideas even before prototype stage is much cheaper and you have more time for new ideas to prototype.

Use prototypes to learn about technical challenges you are facing before starting large scale production. The main objective of prototyping is to answer questions related to building the product: Can we build it? Will it work as expected? How cheaply can we build it? How fast can we make it?

But sometimes you can introduce deliberately failures to learn. For example Netflix uses system they call Chaos Monkey. The Chaos Monkey’s job is to randomly kill instances and services within their architecture to learn what happens during outages.

See also

• 7 Lean principles

"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." -- Thomas Edison

Lean principles - Eliminate waste

Provide market and technical leadership by creating nothing but value. By definition waste is anything that does not contribute value to the final product or customer. Also first principle of Agile Manifesto says: "Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software." Everything else is considered to be waste.

Mary and Tom Poppendieck later mapped original seven wastes from Toyota Production System to wastes we found on software development. (Poppendieck, Mary and Tom. Implementing Lean Software Development: From Concept to Cash. Addison-Wesley, 2006.)

1. Partially Done Work
2. Extra Features
3. Relearning; Extra processes
4. Handoffs, Motion
5. Delays; Waiting
6. Task Switching
7. Defects

With value stream mapping we can try to identify steps on processes that add value to customer. But how we can measure direct value for example Configuration Management or Risk Management?

Root cause analysis can be used to try to find what was the original problem. There exists many methods, but I have find most effective to just ask enough why's to get the answer. Official name for this is 5 Whys. IMHO Most of time (1-5) whys should be enough.

But even then seeing the waste is hard. And is it actually always necessary?
If carrying along few extra unnecessary lines of code does not cost you anything, is it just waste of time to remove them? Is refactoring always necessary?

Manual work is eliminated by automation. But which one is waste; spending 4 hours to create one time script or doing 2 hours of manual work that accomplishes same thing?

We all are happily carrying 90% unnecessary DNA with us. I don’t want to eliminate it even that I do not know what to do with it. So my best practice for eliminating waste is; use your brain - or 10% of your brain, since nobody knows how to use the rest of it.

See also

• 7 Lean principles

"Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless." -- Thomas Edison

Pro waterfall?

<humor>

The customer knows what he wants; developers know how to build it and nothing will change along the way? If that’s your context you should take look on waterfall manifesto or attend some conferences.
</humor>

Otherwise agile manifesto is way to go.

But is there actually anything good on waterfall or v-model?

It seems that it easier to sell and buy projects with predefined focus and clear ending than “we just do what you want”-kind of deal. Are we bold enough to share the risk with customer and can customer participate enough for "Money for Nothing, Change For Free".

Or do auditors like so much the verification and validation that there's no way to use agile methods on certified quality management system?

Most of time we have to do some compromise between traditional and agile methods, but I think that's actually good thing. Isn't it actually more agile to use even waterfall if customer really wants that than selfishly trying to push scrum? 

Introduction

Several years I have been consuming open source projects and reading published text from other people. For some time I have been thinking how to do my own contribution. So I finally decided to start my own blog and try to give something back to community.

I am CTO at FastROI which is small software company based on Joensuu, Finland. We are making our own products which we are mostly selling by SaaS model. We are learning and implementing Lean and Kanban practices. Same time our quality management system is being prepared for ISO 9001:2008 compatibility. We are trying to sell customizations as agile contracts to quite “old-school” customers.

Definitely there is a lot learn on these areas and I hope I can share as much I can during the process.