Introduction to Kanban for Creative Agencies

Post on 17-Oct-2014

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Will Evans Director of User Experience Design TLCLabs @semanticwill This is an introduction to Kanban. Creative agencies, like most organizations that do knowledge work, are defined by the projects they deliver that (hopefully) delivers value for the clients. Most agencies also struggle with multiple competing stakeholders, multiple client engagements, tight deadlines and long hours – it’s amazing any creative work happens at all. Most projects – brand campaigns, websites, landing pages, social, pr, direct, everything, can be viewed as a process - a series of steps or tasks that achieve some desired result – delivery of the project, a happy client, drinks in Tribeca. There are all kinds of processes - simple and complex, individual and team, quick and time-consuming. Sometimes large or over-arching processes consist of a series of smaller processes. Kanban is a tool for managing the flow of materials or information (or whatever) in a process. Not having the materials, whether it is a part, a document, or customer information, at the time you need it causes delay and waste. On the other hand, having too many parts (too much design, creative briefs, design assets, code) on hand or too much work in process (WIP) is also a form of waste. Kanban is a tool to learn and manage an optimal flow of work within the process. It can also (potentially) make working in agencies a more human, and humane, place to do one’s best work.

Transcript of Introduction to Kanban for Creative Agencies

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Who are we?

WILL EVANS Director of UX Design !e Library Corporation

@semanticwill

Who I Am

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Let’s start with an exercise!

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Which is timeboxed

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You have 5 minutes

•  Write down everything that you are working

on (or need to be working on) on a post-it

•  ALL CAPS

•  One item per post-it

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Draw Personal Kanban

TO DO DOING DONE

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What is a Kanban?

“A Card (or traditionally, a Kanban), is a symbolic token representing a unit of effort, either to be completed or in the process of being completed.”

- Jabe Bloom

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A Pull System

TODO DOING DONE

Boundary

Jabe Bloom, “!e Moment of Pull”

Future Past Present

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Why Lord? Why?

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How can Kanban help?

•  Where are we now? •  Who is working on what? •  What should I be doing? •  What should I not be doing?

Is it hard for every person in your organization to answer these questions:

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5 Basic Principles

•  Visualize your workflow

•  Limit your work-in-progress (WIP)

•  Make policies explicit

•  Measure your flow

•  Model process improvement

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Visualize Workflow

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Management Interaction Gap

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Inference Ladder

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Why Limit Your WIP?

WIP (work-in-progress) is the proverbial “balls in the air you are juggling.”

!e more balls in the air, the harder it is to

concentrate; attention to detail suffers; quality goes down; shit goes undone; you feel bad; work

becomes overwhelming and unpleasant.

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David Anderson, “WIP Limits are for Adults, Too!”

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Typical Multi-tasking

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Shorter Cycle Time

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More Value & !roughput

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Minimize TOTAL Cycle Time

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Minimize TOTAL Cycle Time

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10 Reasons to Limit Your WIP

Jim Benson “Why Limit Your WIP: A PK Flow Series”

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Simple Kanban

TO DO DOING (3) DONE

Options Constraint

Chris Matts & Olav Maassen, “Real Options Underlie Agile Practices”

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WIP Limits

TO DO DOING (3) DONE

Forces conversation

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Measure & Manage Flow

Lead Time Cycle Time

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Small Batches & Cycles Reduce Risk

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Backlog To Do Doing (3) Testing (3) Done

WIP Limit

Explicit Policy

Make Policies Explicit

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Model Process Improvement

Value Stream Mapping: A graphical representation of the flow of work involved in turning an idea into a product consumed by a customer

Request Approve Requirements Signoff

Research Design Build Test Deploy

Delay

Customer

Delay

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Incremental Improvement

•  Review bottlenecks

•  Pair to increase flow

•  Adjust WIP Limits

•  Suggest improvements

•  Measure Lead Time & Cycle Time

•  Perform experiments

•  Track results with metrics

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Real World Examples

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Challenges & Observations

Walk the Gemba > Walking up the inference ladder Make the board work for you & your team •  Start with your existing process •  !ere is no “One True Board!”

Keeping the value stream filled Pull is a mindset! Beware of “Infinite WIP” Recognize the true cost of context switching

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Further Reading

Start here !en Advanced

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THANKS!

WILL EVANS

@semanticwill