Don’t Start with Kanban!Marcin Czenko
Eindhoven, The Netherlands
Agile By Example, Warsaw, 15-16 September 2011Marcin Czenko
All team members received an introductory Scrum training.
No prisoners in the teams.
Product Owners selected and empowered.
Scrum Masters selected and empowered.
Pilot project selected.
Scrum - steps you may need to take...
Agile By Example, Warsaw, 15-16 September 2011Marcin Czenko
PO and the team received sufficient coaching in writing User Stories, estimating them and grooming the Product Backlog.
Empowerment levels clearly defined.
The team members received sufficient training and coaching in eXtreme Programming engineering practices.
Informative workspace facilitated.Developers directly involved in hiring.
Senior stuff trained in mentoring and coaching.
Agile By Example, Warsaw, 15-16 September 2011Marcin Czenko
Common excuses
Agile By Example, Warsaw, 15-16 September 2011Marcin Czenko
We cannot have Product Owners authorised to decide about budget...
Agile By Example, Warsaw, 15-16 September 2011Marcin Czenko
There is no way to give the team appropriate space to work...
Agile By Example, Warsaw, 15-16 September 2011Marcin Czenko
It is impossible for a developer to be associated with one project only...
Agile By Example, Warsaw, 15-16 September 2011Marcin Czenko
We have to keep the high reporting level to senior management...
Agile By Example, Warsaw, 15-16 September 2011Marcin Czenko
There is no budget for training and coaching...
Agile By Example, Warsaw, 15-16 September 2011Marcin Czenko
We cannot align our business with Scrum...
Agile By Example, Warsaw, 15-16 September 2011Marcin Czenko
KANBAN
Agile By Example, Warsaw, 15-16 September 2011Marcin Czenko
It is a nice book.
“Product Owner role is an especially egregious error that trivializes the problems of product planning, product design, and requirements analysis and hides them behind a black-box role that encompasses at least as much complexity as the development part of software creation process.”
Agile By Example, Warsaw, 15-16 September 2011Marcin Czenko
“The Product Owner plays a crucial part not only in bringing new products to life but also in managing the product lifecycle. Having one person in charge across releases ensures continuity and reduces handoffs, and it encourages long-term thinking.”
It is a nice book too!
Agile By Example, Warsaw, 15-16 September 2011Marcin Czenko
Workflow
Agile By Example, Warsaw, 15-16 September 2011Marcin Czenko
Design Code Review Test Deploy
Workflow
Agile By Example, Warsaw, 15-16 September 2011Marcin Czenko
Because there is a false perception that Kanban is all about workflow, many organisations believe they can avoid serious organisational changes by
only optimising their workflow.
Agile By Example, Warsaw, 15-16 September 2011Marcin Czenko
Organisation suffers from heavy functional silos - heavy well-defined workflow.
No functional silos
Two most popular cases
Agile By Example, Warsaw, 15-16 September 2011Marcin Czenko
Design Code Review Test Deploy
CASE 1: Functional silos
Agile By Example, Warsaw, 15-16 September 2011Marcin Czenko
Design Code Review Test Deploy
Introduce queues
Not Good Problem
Agile By Example, Warsaw, 15-16 September 2011Marcin Czenko
Design Code Review Test Deploy
Limit the queue sizes
Agile By Example, Warsaw, 15-16 September 2011Marcin Czenko
Design Code Review Test Deploy
Get Rid of the queues = Perfect Flow
Agile By Example, Warsaw, 15-16 September 2011Marcin Czenko
And what then ?
Agile By Example, Warsaw, 15-16 September 2011Marcin Czenko
“Sequential development in a short iteration does not work.”
Agile By Example, Warsaw, 15-16 September 2011Marcin Czenko
Cross-functional teams
Concurrent engineering
eXtreme Programming (Test Driven Development, Continuous Integration, Pair
Programming, etc).
Acceptance Test Driven Development
Heavy stuff :)
Agile By Example, Warsaw, 15-16 September 2011Marcin Czenko
Which means you will have to get through all this Scrum/XP stuff first anyway before
you can proceed to a more Lean process.
Agile By Example, Warsaw, 15-16 September 2011Marcin Czenko
For many, however, functional silos is not an issue (ie. they don't have them). So they could start right from the start, right ?
They don't...
CASE 2: No functional silos
Agile By Example, Warsaw, 15-16 September 2011Marcin Czenko
Instead they start something best named SrumBUT or KanBUT
Agile By Example, Warsaw, 15-16 September 2011Marcin Czenko
Introduction of the sequential workflow in a potentially cross-functional teams.
Even though there is no functional silos
issue.
KanBUT #1
Agile By Example, Warsaw, 15-16 September 2011Marcin Czenko
This might be a step back.
KanBUT #1 - consequences
By not working for short sprints, sequential engineering demonstrates its limited efficiency, which means that further improvement will be significantlylimited.
Agile By Example, Warsaw, 15-16 September 2011Marcin Czenko
Multiple access points to the team.
No Product Owner.No Scrum Master.
KanBUT #2
Agile By Example, Warsaw, 15-16 September 2011Marcin Czenko
Stakeholders are going directly to theteam members.
KanBUT #2 - consequences
Tight relation between a developer and a stakeholder leads to further specialization of the developer.
Agile By Example, Warsaw, 15-16 September 2011Marcin Czenko
A group of engineers sitting in their proximity but actually working independently from each other.
KanBUT #2 - consequences
No code ownership.
It is not important who is doing the job but that the job is being done at a right time - this can be fully explored only in cross-functional teams.
Agile By Example, Warsaw, 15-16 September 2011Marcin Czenko
Because there is no team, someone has tosynchronise that. Team Leads will feel very happy.
KanBUT #2 - consequences
Agile By Example, Warsaw, 15-16 September 2011Marcin Czenko
Lots of Work In Progress.
KanBUT #3
Agile By Example, Warsaw, 15-16 September 2011Marcin Czenko
One developer may be working on only one story but looking at the whole system there are multiple changes happening at the same time.
KanBUT #3 - consequences
Conflict resolution.
Agile By Example, Warsaw, 15-16 September 2011Marcin Czenko
More and more technical debt.
KanBUT #3 - consequences
Lower and lower internal quality.
WAY DOWN TO HELL.
Agile By Example, Warsaw, 15-16 September 2011Marcin Czenko
Experienced/senior members/architects are the source of impediments.
KanBUT #4
Afraid of being useless.
They may try to convince you that a deeper reorganization is a bad idea.
Agile By Example, Warsaw, 15-16 September 2011Marcin Czenko
Often THEY ARE USELESS: their only activity is to keep themselves busy in an everlasting sequence of meetings so that it looks to everyone they do not have time. They are always busy and under strong time-pressure.
Be understanding. Training/coaching in mentoring is the thing. They can be great coaches and mentors for less experienced members.
KanBUT #4
Agile By Example, Warsaw, 15-16 September 2011Marcin Czenko
If the organisation would satisfy some standard Scrum constraints, most probably they would be able to avoid most of the problems mentioned.
Observation
Agile By Example, Warsaw, 15-16 September 2011Marcin Czenko
Conclusions
Agile By Example, Warsaw, 15-16 September 2011Marcin Czenko
Because there is a perception that Kanban is all about workflow, organisations blindly
believe that by hanging a Kanban board they can bypass heavy organisational changes.
Agile By Example, Warsaw, 15-16 September 2011Marcin Czenko
Avoid introducing a sequential workflow to your engineering process.
It is a step backward...
Agile By Example, Warsaw, 15-16 September 2011Marcin Czenko
Do use ATDD and eXtreme Programming for shortest cycle time.
Agile By Example, Warsaw, 15-16 September 2011Marcin Czenko
Don't forget that well-implemented Kanban is Lean.
Agile By Example, Warsaw, 15-16 September 2011Marcin Czenko
Scrum can help you getting there.
Agile By Example, Warsaw, 15-16 September 2011Marcin Czenko
All these "horrible" constraints that Scrum puts on your organisation is a
safety net that protects you.
Use it...
Agile By Example, Warsaw, 15-16 September 2011Marcin Czenko
Most of the organisations we saw (and we saw quite a number of them) are not doing
Scrum well. If you cannot adopt Scrum it may be just unrealistic to expect magic from
Kanban.
Agile By Example, Warsaw, 15-16 September 2011Marcin Czenko
FunctionalSilos
Cross-functional feature teams
2 weeksSCRUM
Kanban
Use Kanban here if necessary
Towards a Lean process...
Agile By Example, Warsaw, 15-16 September 2011Marcin Czenko
Final Conclusion
Agile By Example, Warsaw, 15-16 September 2011Marcin Czenko
Start with Scrum
Agile By Example, Warsaw, 15-16 September 2011Marcin Czenko
Refactor to Kanban
(or just Lean)
Agile By Example, Warsaw, 15-16 September 2011Marcin Czenko
Acknowledgements
Quantum of Value Ltd.
Thank you !Marcin Czenko
Eindhoven, The Netherlands
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