Kanban in Action

by Marcus Hammarberg, Joakim Sunden

Overview

Summary

Kanban in Action is a down-to-earth, no-frills, get-to-know-the-ropes introduction to kanban. It's based on the real-world experience and observations from two kanban coaches who have introduced this process to dozens of teams. You'll learn the principles of why kanban works, as well as nitty-gritty details like how to use different color stickies on a kanban board to help you organize and track your work items.

About the Book

Too much work and too little time? If this is daily life for your team, you need kanban, a lean knowledge-management method designed to involve all team members in continuous improvement of your process.

Kanban in Action is a practical introduction to kanban. Written by two kanban coaches who have taught the method to dozens of teams, the book covers techniques for planning and forecasting, establishing meaningful metrics, visualizing queues and bottlenecks, and constructing and using a kanban board.

Written for all members of the development team, including leaders, coders, and business stakeholders. No experience with kanban is required.

Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications.

What's Inside

• How to focus on work in process and finish faster
• Examples of successful implementations
• How team members can make informed decisions

About the Authors

Marcus Hammarberg is a kanban coach and software developer with experience in BDD, TDD, Specification by Example, Scrum, and XP. Joakim Sundén is an agile coach at Spotify who cofounded the first kanban user groups in Europe.

Table of Contents

Team Kanbaneros gets started
1. Kanban principles
2. Visualizing your work
3. Work items
4. Work in process
5. Limiting work in process
6. Managing flow
Classes of service
7. Planning and estimating
8. Process improvement
9. Using metrics to guide improvements
10. Kanban pitfalls
11. Teaching kanban through games

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781617291050
Publisher:	Manning
Publication date:	03/17/2014
Edition description:	1st Edition
Pages:	360
Product dimensions:	7.30(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Marcus Hammarberg is a software developer and kanban coach. He is experienced with numerous modern methodologies including BDD and TDD, Specification By Example, Scrum, and XP.

Joakim Sunden has been a kanban practitioner and coach since 2008. He co-founded two of the first kanban user groups in Europe and now speaks regularly at conferences worldwide

Table of Contents

foreword xiii

preface xvii

about this book xix

about the authors xxiii

about the cover illustration xxv

acknowledgments xxvi

Part 1 Learning Kanban 1

1 Team Kanbaneros gets started 3

1.1 Introductions 5

1.2 The board 8

1.3 Mapping the workflow 12

1.4 Work items 18

1.5 Pass the Pennies 22

1.6 Work in process 27

1.7 Expedite items 35

1.8 Metrics 38

1.9 The sendoff 41

1.10 Summary 42

Part 2 Understanding Kanban 45

2 Kanban principles 47

2.1 The principles of kanban 49

2.2 Get started right away 53

2.3 Summary 55

3 Visualizing your work 56

3.1 Making policies explicit 58

Information radiator 59

3.2 The kanban board 63

The board 63

Mapping your workflow to the board 66

3.3 Queues 67

3.4 Summary 69

4 Work items 70

4.1 Design principles for creating your cards 72

Facilitate decision making 72

Help team members optimize outcomes 73

4.2 Work-item cards 75

Work-item description 75

Avatars 78

Deadlines 79

Tracking IDs 80

Blockers 81

4.3 Types of work 83

4.4 Progress indicators 85

4.5 Work-item size 86

4.6 Gathering workflow data 87

Gathering workflow metrics 87

Gathering emotions 89

4.7 Creating your own work-item cards 90

4.8 Summary 90

5 Work in process 92

5.1 Understanding work in process 93

What is work in process? 93

What is work in process for software development? 96

5.2 Effects of too much WIP 99

Context switching 99

Delay causes extra work 101

Increased risk 103

More overhead 104

Lower quality 105

Decreased motivation 106

5.3 Summary 107

6 Limiting work in process 109

6.1 The search for WIP limits 110

Lower is better than higher 110

People idle or work idle 111

No limits is not the answer 111

6.2 Principles for setting limits 112

Stop starting, start finishing 112

One is not the answer 113

6.3 Whole board, whole team approach 115

Take one! Take two! 115

Come together 116

Dropdown and give me 20 117

Pick a number, and dance 118

6.4 Limiting WIP based on columns 119

Start from the bottleneck 119

Pick a column that will help you improve 120

A limited story, please 120

How to visualize WIP limits 122

6.5 Limiting WIP based on people 123

Common ways to limit WLP per person 123

6.6 Frequently asked questions 126

Work items or tasks-what are you limiting? 126

Should you count queues against the WLP limit? 127

6.7 Exercise: WIP it, WIP it real good 128

6.8 Summary 128

7 Managing flow 130

7.1 Why flow? 132

Eliminating waste 132

The seven wastes of software development 133

7.2 Helping the work to flow 134

Limiting work in process 134

Reducing waiting time 135

Removing blockers 137

Avoiding rework 140

Cross-functional teams 141

SLA or lead-time target 143

7.3 Daily standup 143

Common good practices around standups 144

Kanban practices around daily standups 146

Get the most out of your standup 148

Scaling standups 151

7.4 What should I be doing next? 154

7.5 Managing bottlenecks 158

Theory of Constraints: a brief introduction 159

7.6 Summary 163

Part 3 Advanced Kanban 165

8 Classes of service 167

8.1 The urgent case 168

8.2 What is a class of service? 170

Aspects to consider when creating a class of service 170

Common classes of service 171

Putting classes of services to use 177

8.3 Managing classes of services 181

8.4 Exercise: classify this! 184

8.5 Summary 184

9 Planning and estimating 185

9.1 Planning scheduling: when should you plan? 187

Just-in-time planning 188

Order point 189

Priority filter: visualizing what's important 191

Disneyland wait times 194

9.2 Estimating work-relatively speaking 196

Story points 197

T-shirt sizes 199

9.3 Estimation techniques 201

A line of cards 202

Planning Poker 203

Goldilocks 206

9.4 Cadence 208

9.5 Planning the kanban way: less pain, more gain 210

The need diminishes 211

Reasoning logically: the customer's plea 212

#NoEstimates-could you do without this altogether? 213

9.6 Summary 215

10 Process improvement 216

10.1 Retrospectives 218

What is a retrospective? 218

How does it work? 219

10.2 Root-cause analysis 222

How it works 223

10.3 Kanban Rata 228

What is Kanban Rata? 229

What happened 234

Why does this work? 234

10.4 Summary 236

11 Using metrics to guide improvements 237

11.1 Common metrics 238

Cycle and lead times 238

Throughput 243

Issues and blocked work items 245

Due-date performance 247

Quality 249

Value demand and failure demand 251

Abandoned and discarded ideas 252

11.2 Two powerful visualizations 254

Statistical process control (SPC) 254

Cumulative flow' diagram (CED) 260

11.3 Metrics as improvement guides 264

11.4 Exercise: measure up! 269

11.5 Summary 269

12 Kanban pitfalls 270

12.1 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy 271

Creating cadences for celebration 274

12.2 Timeboxing is good for you 275

12.3 The necessary revolution 279

12.4 Don't allow kanban to become an excuse to be lazy 281

12.5 Summary 285

13 Teaching kanban through games 286

13.1 Pass the Pennies 288

What you need to play the game 288

How to play 288

Questions for discussion 290

Main take-aways 291

Tips and variants 291

13.2 The Number Multitasking Game 291

What you need to play the game 292

How to play 292

Questions for discussion 294

Main take-aways 294

13.3 The Dot Game 295

What you need to play the game 295

How to play 296

First iteration 297

Second iteration 299

Third (and final) iteration 300

Main take-aways 301

Tips and variants 302

13.4 The Bottleneck Game 302

What you need to play the game 303

How to play 303

Questions for discussion 304

Main take-aways 304

13.5 getKanban 304

What you need to play the game 305

How the game is played 305

Questions for discussion 306

Tips and variants 306

Main take-aways 306

13.6 The Kanban Pizza Game 307

What you need to play the game 307

How to play 307

Questions for discussion 308

Main take-aways 308

13.7 Summary 309

appendix A Recommended reading and other resources 311

appendix B Kanban tools 316

index 323