Leading IT Transformation – Workshop 20 (Implementing Kanban)
The Appleton Greene Corporate Training Program (CTP) for Leading IT Transformation is provided by Ms. Drabenstadt MBA BBA Certified Learning Provider (CLP). Program Specifications: Monthly cost USD$2,500.00; Monthly Workshops 6 hours; Monthly Support 4 hours; Program Duration 24 months; Program orders subject to ongoing availability.
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Learning Provider Profile
Ms. Drabenstadt is a Certified Learning Provider (CLP) at Appleton Greene and she has experience in Information Technology, Information Governance, Compliance and Audit. She has achieved an MBA, and BBA. She has industry experience within the following sectors: Technology; Insurance and Financial Services. She has had commercial experience within the following countries: United States of America, Canada, Australia, India, Trinidad, and Jamaica. Her program will initially be available in the following cities: Madison WI; Minneapolis MN; Chicago IL; Atlanta GA and Denver CO. Her personal achievements include: Developed Trusted IT-Business Relationship; Delivered Increased Business Value/Time; Decreased IT Costs; Re-tooled IT Staff; Increased IT Employee Morale. Her service skills incorporate: IT transformation leadership; process improvement; change management; program management and information governance.
MOST Analysis
Mission Statement
Kanban is a method of workflow management that focuses on minimizing waste and maximizing efficiency. Kanban helps in visualizing the workflow in an organization or a project and helps identify roadblocks that are constricting the path of flow. In the IT transformation process too, Kanban can be sued to accelerate the process with maximum efficiency and achieve output faster. Implementing Kanban is relatively simple. To visualize the workflow, traditionally a Kanban board was used. There are different columns on the board that represent each stage of the workflow and some cards with each work item or task written on them. As a particular task is ready to be taken up, it is added to the board, and as it progresses the corresponding card also moves from one column to the next until the task is completed. The aim here is to improve the flow which means there should be no work getting stuck.
Kanban works on a pull system. That means new work will only be pulled in when there is the capacity to accommodate that work. To achieve this, a limit is set on the work-in-progress column of the Kanban board, so only a specific number of cards should be on that column at a given time. New tasks, or cards, will only be added when there is an available slot. This helps improve the efficiency of the process, reduce the pressure on the team and identify any bottlenecks in the process. Today, there are several software and tools that help organizations implement Kanban effectively.
Objectives
01. Visualize Workflow: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
02. Limit Work in Progress (WIP): departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
03. Make Policies Explicit: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
04. Manage Flow: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
05. Implement Feedback Loops: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
06. Improve Collaboratively, Evolve Experimentally: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
Strategies
01. Visualize Workflow: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
02. Limit Work in Progress (WIP): Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
03. Make Policies Explicit: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
04. Manage Flow: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
05. Implement Feedback Loops: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
06. Improve Collaboratively, Evolve Experimentally: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
Tasks
01. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Visualize Workflow.
02. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Limit Work in Progress (WIP).
03. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Make Policies Explicit.
04. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Manage Flow.
05. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Implement Feedback Loops.
06. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Improve Collaboratively, Evolve Experimentally.
Introduction
Kanban is a popular Lean workflow management technique for outlining, overseeing, and enhancing information work delivery offerings. It assists you in visualizing work, maximizing efficiency, and continually improving during any IT change. On Kanban boards, work is represented, enabling you to manage even the most complicated projects in a single setting while optimizing job delivery across many teams.
Example of core Kanban board elements
Manufacturing was its initial home, but Agile software development teams later claimed it as their own. Recently, company units from diverse industries began to realize it.
As more and more people hear about Kanban, multiple questions arise:
• Exactly what is Kanban?
• What are the principles and practices of Kanban?
• What advantages come with implementing Kanban?
Here are the key details you should be aware of regarding the approach and its practical application.
Kanban Definition and Brief Introduction
Kanban Definition
Since the 1950s, the Japanese phrase “kanban,” which means “visual board” or a “sign,” has been used to refer to a process definition. Toyota invented it and used it as the first just-in-time factory scheduling system. The “Kanban Method,” which was initially defined in 2007, is known and connected with the capitalized term “Kanban,” on the other hand.
The Genesis of Kanban
It first emerged as a lean production scheduling method that was derived from the Toyota Production System (TPS). Toyota began using “just in time” manufacturing in its production in the late 1940s. The strategy resembles a pull system. This implies that rather than the usual push method of manufacturing things and pushing them to the market, production is dependent on customer demand.
Its distinctive production process served as the cornerstone for lean manufacturing. Its main objective is to reduce waste production while maintaining productivity. The fundamental objective is to increase value for the client while reducing costs.
The original Kanban System, Source: TOYOTA Global Website
The Kanban Method
Key figures in the software sector rapidly saw how Kanban could improve the delivery of goods and services at the start of the twenty-first century.
The automobile industry was the original home of Kanban, but it has since been effectively adapted to other complex commercial areas like IT, software development, R&D, and others by focusing more on efficiency and utilizing technological improvements.
In fact, the beginning of 2007 saw the emergence of what is now known as the Kanban Way. It is the culmination of many testing sessions, years of expertise, and the combined efforts of prominent members of the Lean and Agile communities, including David Anderson, Dan Vacanti, Darren Davis, Corey Ladas, Dominica DeGrandis, Rick Garber, and others.
The most basic Kanban board, with the columns “Requested,” “In Process,” and “Done,” is where you can begin constructing your Kanban system. It acts as a real-time information repository, revealing system bottlenecks and anything else that could obstruct efficient working procedures when designed, managed, and functioning properly.
But how does the Kanban method work?
Let’s discover more.
Kanban Principles
Before delving more into the Kanban values, we should make clear that the method’s development in the form that we now appreciate and employ was the result of many people working together. The growing Kanban community should recognize these concepts and contributions for what they are.
The Kanban technique was developed by David J. Anderson, a pioneer in the field of Lean/Kanban for knowledge work and one of the method’s founders, as a strategy for knowledge work organizations to implement gradual, evolutionary process and system change. Its foundations can be divided into two different categories of principles and six different practices, all of which are centered on getting things done.
Let’s look at what the principles of Kanban are.
Change Management Principles
Kanban is not a big-bang transformational model; rather, it is an evolutionary change approach that aims to incrementally and continually enhance already established processes through ongoing cooperation and feedback. Let’s examine the fundamentals of Kanban change management in more detail.
Principle 1: Start With What You Do Now
Kanban provides the freedom to deploy the methodology on top of already-in-place workflows, systems, and processes without interfering with them. The approach acknowledges that current procedures, positions, duties, and titles have importance and are generally worthwhile of preservation. Naturally, it will draw attention to problems that need to be fixed and assist with planning and assessing modifications to ensure minimal disruption during implementation.
Principle 2: Agree to Pursue Incremental, Evolutionary Change
The Kanban approach is made to encounter less opposition. By implementing collaboration and feedback forms, it promotes ongoing modest incremental and evolutionary modifications to the current process. Large-scale changes should generally be avoided since people tend to resist them out of uncertainty or fear.
Principle 3: Encourage Acts of Leadership at All Levels
People’s everyday observations and actions serve as the basis for leadership at all levels. As unimportant as you may believe it is, every shared observation encourages the continuous improvement attitude (Kaizen), which is necessary to achieve the best performance possible for a team, department, or company. This can’t be anything that management would do.
Big Companies Using Kanban for Business Operations: Zara
The well-known apparel brand Zara employs over 17,000 people worldwide. The Kanban system has been tested for years, and it is run directly from the store level.
Zara’s processes are divided into stages like Pre Control (prioritizing), Control (now being done), and Post Control (tasks completed). They have all the data necessary on their Kanban board to decide on workflows. They are able to make more precise and better business decisions because to it.
Kanban works successfully for Zara because it improves productivity, giving staff members more time to engage in creative activities. They benefit by reducing the amount of time needed to complete tasks.
Service Delivery Principles
The goal of Kanban is to create a service-oriented methodology. You must have a thorough understanding of your customers’ demands, establish a network of services where people may self-organize around the task, and make sure that your system is constantly evolving in order to succeed.
Principle 1: Focus on Customer’s Needs and Expectations
Each organization’s core mission should be to provide value to its customers. The quality of the services offered and the value they provide are highlighted when you are aware of your consumers’ requirements and expectations.
Principle 2: Manage the Work
By overseeing the work in your network of services, you can be confident that you’re enabling people’s natural propensities for self-organization. This makes it possible for you to concentrate on the intended results without being distracted by the “noise” that comes from micromanaging the service providers.
Principle 3: Regularly Review the Network of Services
Once established, a service-oriented strategy necessitates ongoing assessment to promote a customer service culture. Kanban promotes the improvement of the given results via the usage of routine evaluations of the network of services and evaluation of the used work policies.
Kanban Practices
Every organization that seeks to apply the Kanban approach must be cautious with the operational procedures. For an implementation to be successful, six key practices must be present. Even though mastering these is essential, it’s a lifelong effort; close to 40% of firms acknowledge that their use of the Kanban techniques is still developing. Let’s examine more closely and learn about the six Kanban practices.
Limit work in progress, manage flow, make process policies explicit, implement feedback loops, and improve collectively by visualizing the workflow.
• Visualize the workflow
• Limit work in progress
• Manage flow
• Make process policies explicit
• Implement feedback loops
• Improve collaboratively
1. Visualize the Workflow
A simple Kanban Board
You will need a board with cards and columns if you want to use a Kanban system to illustrate your workflow. A step in your workflow is represented by each column on the board. A work item is represented by each Kanban card. The actual state of your process, complete with all of its risks and requirements, is represented by the Kanban board.
Understanding what it takes to turn a request into a deliverable product is the first and most crucial thing for you to do. By implementing well-observed and necessary adjustments, understanding how work moves through your system will put you on the road to continual improvement.
You select item X from the “To Do” column to begin working on it, and you transfer it to the “Done” column once it has been finished. This makes it simple to monitor development and identify bottlenecks. Naturally, based on your unique demands and operations, your Kanban board may have a distinct outlook.
2. Limit Work in Progress (WIP)
Digital Kanban Board with WIP Limits
Keeping a manageable amount of active tasks in progress at any given time is one of Kanban’s main goals. You are not using Kanban if there are no constraints on the amount of work-in-progress. The process will typically suffer if a team changes its emphasis midway through, and multitasking is a surefire method to produce waste and inefficiency.
By using a pull system for either individual pieces or the entire workflow, WIP can be reduced. A card is only “drawn” into the following step when there is space available thanks to the maximum items per stage setting, which prevents overflow. Such limits will rapidly highlight any flow issues so you can find and fix them.
3. Manage Flow
It’s about managing the work, not the people, when managing the flow. By “flow,” we mean the predictable and sustainable flow of work items through the manufacturing process.
The creation of an efficient, healthy flow is one of the primary objectives when a Kanban system is put in place. You should concentrate on managing the work processes and learning how to get that work through the system more quickly rather than micromanaging people and attempting to keep them occupied all the time. As a result, your Kanban system would be producing value more quickly.
4. Make Process Policies Explicit
Anything you don’t grasp can’t be improved. This is why it’s important to define, document, and promote your method. People wouldn’t join and take part in something they didn’t think would be beneficial.
Everyone will be able to work and make decisions that will have a good influence if they are all aware of the shared objective. Work policies have the capacity to improve people’s self-organization if they are concise, clear, well-defined, and subject to change (if/when necessary).
5. Feedback Loops
Putting feedback loops into place is a requirement for teams and businesses looking to become more agile. They guarantee that organizations respond to possible changes appropriately and facilitate knowledge sharing among stakeholders.
Kanban recommends the use of service-oriented cadences as well as team-level cadences (feedback loops).
The daily Team Kanban Meeting for tracking the status and flow of work is an illustration of a team-level cadence. It aids in determining capacity that is available and opportunities for speeding up delivery. Each participant informs the others what they did the day before and what they would be doing today in front of the Kanban board.
Team-level cadences
Operations, service delivery, and risk meetings are a few examples of service-oriented cadences in Kanban that work to coordinate and enhance your service delivery. The results of these evaluations, such as knowledge of the obstacles to good service delivery, should be used as a decision-making input for the ongoing development of your service network.
Service-oriented cadences
While having shorter, more focused meetings on a frequent basis has been shown to be a good practice, the appropriate length of a given Kanban cycle may vary depending on your context, the size of your team, and the themes.
6. Improve Collaboratively (Using Models & the Scientific Method)
An organization can achieve continuous improvement and long-lasting change by collectively adopting improvements based on tested scientific techniques, user feedback, and metrics.
For the development of a mindset centered on improvement through evolutionary change, it is essential to cultivate an organizational culture in which every hypothesis is demonstrated to have either favorable or unfavorable outcomes.
Big Companies Using Kanban for Business Operations: Apple
Apple is an American multinational firm that creates and sells computer software and consumer electronics goods all over the world. With about 97,000 employees using Kanban to efficiently manage their workflow globally. Nevertheless, the modified form of Kanban utilized here is referred to as “Dynamic Kanban,” which assists staff in prioritizing work in accordance with the demands of the moment.
The Apple workflow begins with a backlog part; following that, the work is done by various teams in the “Doing” area, which leads to the “Done” portion. The business has separated the many stages of its process into “Ready,” “Doing,” and “Done” stages.
They add a card to show that each stage has been successfully completed at the end of it. It aids in maintaining attention on fresh activities and finishing them as quickly as possible. Because everyone works together to accomplish their objectives in a collaborative setting, Kanban works effectively for Apple.
Top 6 Benefits of Kanban
According to the 1st State of Kanban report, the leading reasons for adopting the Kanban method are the need for enhanced visibility of work and continuous improvement. Let’s reveal some more of the benefits of using Kanban today.
Image Credit: State of Kanban
• Increased visibility of the flow
• Improved delivery speed
• Alignment between goals and execution
• Improved predictability
• Improved dependencies management
• Increased customer satisfaction
Increased Visibility of the Flow
Visualizing every piece of labor is the fundamental principle of Kanban. In this approach, the Kanban board becomes a focal point for information sharing and keeps everyone informed. Because all tasks are visible and never lost, the entire working process is transparent. The status of each project or task can be quickly updated for every team member.
Improved Delivery Speed
Kanban provides project managers with a variety of tools to track task distribution carefully and conduct informed analyses. The stages when jobs take the longest to complete and bottlenecks are simple to spot with a clear view of the work items done for a specific amount of time. To overcome these obstacles and ultimately increase their delivery rate, teams are given the tools they need.
Alignment between Business Goals and Execution
Kanban procedures provide for the alignment of the company’s strategic goals with the day-to-day work of teams by fostering transparency, promoting feedback, and holding regular review sessions. The business direction and execution are in line, which improves an organization’s agility. It enables teams to adjust to shifting priorities and reorganizations brought on by modifications in the market or in the needs of the customers.
Improved Predictability
You can use flow metrics to fully understand your process once you’ve created a Kanban board and begun adding work items to it. Your ability to forecast how much work you can complete in the future will be improved by looking at the amount of time tasks spend in your process (cycle time). Forecasts and judgments based on historical data will be more accurate if you understand your delivery rate consistency (throughput).
Improved Ability to Manage Scale and Dependencies
Mapping and managing dependencies both use the visualization technique that is fundamental to Kanban. Managing the flow between the current dependencies and starting with what you’re doing now entails visualizing them. Managing dependencies offers suggestions for workflow enhancement as well as insights into the current state of a workflow. On the other side, it also makes the workflow and current connections across teams completely transparent for strategic management.
Increased Customer Satisfaction
Work is completed when there is a demand, according to the pull system upon which the Kanban technique is founded. In other words, by focusing only on tasks that are required right now, Kanban guides you to eliminate waste. Additionally, you may make sure that the final product meets your customer’s expectations by implementing visualization techniques and work-in-progress constraints to the process.
Scrum vs. Kanban
The main distinction between Scrum and Kanban is that the latter is a framework, whereas the former is a practice. While Scrum divides work into sprints, Kanban creates a continuous delivery paradigm where teams offer value as soon as they are prepared. Yet, it may be claimed that Kanban gives a more individualized approach whereas Scrum relies on established standards. Using either one depends on the nature of your process. The attitude and underlying philosophies of Scrum and Kanban serve as another important defining feature that sets the two apart.
According to the data in this graphic from the 14th Annual State of Agile Report by 2020 Digital.ai, Kanban is the second most widely utilized agile methodology behind Scrum. Scrumban (Kanban plus Scrum) and pure Kanban together account for 17% of all poll respondents.
Applying Kanban Across the Organization for Enterprise Agility
Kanban is a flexible approach that may be used at all organizational levels by nature. To map the management of your portfolios and link strategy to execution, use connected Kanban boards. Organizations can profit from Kanban’s concepts and practices at many management levels with the aid of the Portfolio Kanban concept.
The Portfolio Kanban approach can be used in four different forms:
• Team-level Portfolio Kanban
• Portfolio Kanban on the Project/Product level
• Portfolio Kanban on the Program level
• Portfolio Kanban on the Strategic level
Portfolio Kanban Scheme
What Are the Main Kanban Terms You Should Know?
Kanban, at its core, is a style of working that enables you to maximize the flow of value via your value streams, from ideation to customer. Kanban is more than just visualizing your work, despite the fact that it appears to be a simple solution to enhance your work processes. If you want to use the Kanban technique effectively, you must pay close attention to detail and familiarize yourself with the fundamental concepts and artifacts.
This is a quick glossary of Kanban terms to get you going.
• Kanban board: A Kanban board is one of the Kanban method’s key components and is where you visualize all work items. It should be divided into a minimum of 3 columns – Requested, In Progress, Done, representing different process stages.
• Kanban card: Kanban cards represent the different work items moving through a Kanban board. They contain important details about the tasks, such as description, deadline, size, assignees, etc.
• Columns: They split the Kanban board vertically, and each of them represents a different stage of the workflow. Each Kanban board has 3 default columns: Requested, In Progress, Done. Depending on the complexity of a work process, these three stages can be divided into many smaller sub-columns.
• Swimlanes: Horizontal lanes that split a Kanban board into sections. Teams use them to visually separate different work types on the same board and organize homogenous tasks together.
• Cycle Time: Cycle time begins at the moment when a new task enters the “in progress” stage of your workflow, and somebody is actually working on it.
• Lead Time: Lead time starts at the moment a new task is being requested (it doesn’t matter if somebody is actually working on it) and ends with its final departure from the system.
• Throughput: The number of work items passing through (completed) a system or process over a certain period. The throughput is a key indicator showing how productive your team is over time.
• Work in Progress (WIP): This is the amount of work you are currently working on, and it is not finished yet.
• WIP limits: Limiting work in progress means limiting the number of tasks your team can work on simultaneously to avoid overburdening and context-switching.
• Classes of Service: Set of policies that help Agile teams prioritize work items and projects.
• Kanban Cadences: Cyclical meetings that drive evolutionary change and “fit for purpose” service delivery.
• Kanban software: Refers to a digital system that allows the practical application of the Kanban practices and principles to be used by various teams and organizations of all sizes.
Kanban in a Nutshell
A Kanban system is more than just a wall of sticky notes. Adopting the Kanban principle and putting it to use in your daily job is the simplest way to comprehend it. The practical shift would appear reasonable and even inevitable if you read, comprehend, and agree with its fundamental ideas.
Your process will go far beyond what you could have imagined with the help of workflow visualization, defining WIP limits, regulating flow, assuring specific policies, and continuous improvement. When all of these components are organized, the true potential of Kanban will become apparent.
Big Companies Using Kanban for Business Operations: Pixar
With more than 1500 staff members, the name Pixar is well-known in the animation and film industries. The workflows for this company’s several departments, including concept art, modeling, production management, and others, are managed using Kanban boards.
Beginning with a specific activity like “Concept Art” or “Model,” each department’s process is organized. That is, after all, the first task to show up on its Kanban board. The departments are separated into several lanes, and based on their status, each lane has a different sort of card (new, in progress, etc.)
To enable other teams to plan appropriately, the team members update the statuses when work is completed. In the development process, they communicate using unique Kanban card labels. When they need input from another department on their work, such as concept art or modeling, they could use the “Request Feedback” card.
Executive Summary
Chapter 1: Visualize Workflow
Let’s discuss the importance of visual elements in our daily lives. People love visual elements. A single image conveys more information to our minds than many pages of text do. Also, we can assimilate visual components far more quickly than verbal ones.
Visual perception requires the participation of 30% of our brain’s neurons. In comparison, only 8% of brain neurons are engaged in hearing, and only 3% are engaged in our sensation of touch.
Our brains can interpret multiple pieces of information simultaneously when we look at visual components. Our brains can digest visual information about 60,000 times more quickly than textual information.
Images, graphics, illustrations, and infographics are examples of visual data that significantly relieve our brain from the information deluge that permeates both our personal and professional lives. The reason why visual processing is considerably faster and more effective is rather straightforward. In the ancient world, threats did not come in the form of memos, protocols, or other written materials.
The Kanban board is a tool used by the Kanban framework to make its process transparent and visible.
The Kanban board’s configuration should support effective planning, visualization, task delivery, ongoing workflow development, and the individual performance of Kanban team members.
How You Visualize Your Kanban Workflow
The task of visualizing your workflow and operations might be very difficult. This is especially true if your organization has historically tolerated opaque work practices amid various matrix organizational structure divisions.
Some people could become rapidly impatient with the lengthy process involved in creating your product or service. They may abandon up because they believe that it is difficult to begin with to visualize their workflows. performing the work yet being unable to picture it. Go figure.
But, the next four stages will assist you in creating your first Kanban board and visualizing your workflow.
• Step 1: Identify the scope of your process you would like to visualize.
• Step 2: List the steps that get into your process, which creates outcomes such as products and services.
• Step 3: Transform steps of your process into lanes of your Kanban board.
• Step 4: Get back to work, experiment with, visualize and improve your Kanban workflow.
While you go through this procedure, keep in mind that your visualization needs to include the following:
• Acceptance Criteria of business demands coming from the upstream work center before they can be taken into the Kanban workflow.
• Explicit policies which are similar to Definition of Done’s (DoD). These will guide the Kanban team while their works flow from the left side to the right side of their Kanban board throughout various steps of development and delivery phase.
• Explicit policies to limit Work In Progress (WIP).
• Definition of Done (DoD) of Kanban team’s deliverables before they can be dispatched to the down-stream work center.
(The Kanban Framework Uses The Kanban Board To Visualize The Workflow)
Chapter 2: Apply WIP constraints
The next step is learning how to optimize teams’ workflows for value delivery once they have mastered Kanban as a tool for visualizing their work. Learning how to reduce WIP, or work-in-process, is the most efficient approach to improve flow in a Kanban system. WIP restrictions enable teams to produce higher quality work faster than ever before, in a healthier, more sustainable environment, and they unlock the full potential of Kanban.
Why do we need a definition of Work In Progress (WIP) Limit in Kanban?
Because Kanban is a pull system. Thus, based on their capacity, each stage of the Kanban process pulls tasks for processing. In a push system, by contrast, the demand centers push tasks and start them.
Work In Progress (WIP) Limit in Kanban corresponds to this maximum capacity of a Kanban team that is in charge of a particular step.
WIP limits are a result of effective lean manufacturing concepts. At each stage of the manufacturing phase, Kanban encourages reducing the number of items that are still in progress. As a result, issues can be resolved more quickly, processes can stabilize more quickly, and waste is reduced.
Smaller batch sizes of work made feasible by restricting Work In Progress (WIP) have been demonstrated to provide a variety of other advantages for Kanban teams, including fostering a culture of ownership over their work, system-thinking, and innovative mindsets.
What are WIP Limits?
WIP limits are fixed restrictions that people, teams, or organizations place on themselves to control the overall volume of work items that are active at any given time. WIP limitations can be set for certain players or specific lanes on a board, although teams typically use them to restrict the number of cards that can be in an active lane at once.
WIP restrictions are expressed as a numerical value. For instance, the phrase “This board has a WIP limit of 7” denotes that up to 7 cards may be in progress without going over the allotted number.
Why Do We Need WIP Limits?
Waste is everything that does not create value for the consumer according to lean thinking. We work in settings that are wasteful by nature and where concentration and clarity are luxury items. Waste can take many different forms, such as:
• Context switching
• Excess meetings
• Communication breakdowns
• Rework
• Duplicate effort
• Handoff delays
• Missed deadlines
It is quite challenging to pinpoint costly and ineffective procedures without reducing WIP.
The effects on our system could be terrible in terms of turnaround time, product quality, expenditures, and employee morale.
There are two advantages to using Kanban’s Work In Progress (WIP) limit to manage disorder.
1. Focus Of Kanban Team: WIP Limits restrict the number of tasks influenced by altering priorities and demands. Hence, Kanban teams are prevented from giving up on their ongoing work.
2. Improvement Of Kanban Process: A Kanban team can only complete its task as quickly as its slowest step. WIP Limits are able to immediately demonstrate to the Kanban team whether a particular step is a bottleneck or whether the other stages are overly optimized. This feedback can be quickly converted into actions that enhance the Kanban process’ overall effectiveness.
Pro tip: Although it is the most straightforward and effective technique, it also encounters the most resistance because it is so counterintuitive. People adhere to the belief that if they work on multiple things at once, they will accomplish more and do so more quickly, despite overwhelming empirical evidence to the contrary. It is blatantly false.
Chapter 3: Make Policies Explicit
Establishing clear process standards is the secret to a successful Kanban implementation. It is also, in many respects, the stage of The Kanban Method that is least understood.
Many people associate the word “policy” with staff handbooks and manuals. And let’s face it—while these organizational documents are vital, they aren’t precisely a work-related holy book that enables us to complete our tasks more efficiently.
Thus, why are process policies so crucial to Kanban? Kanban is a continuous flow methodology that gives the team the freedom to choose the best way to keep work moving rather than dictating what needs to be done at each stage of the process. Additionally, we’re not just talking about procedural rules; we’re also talking about how individuals interact with one another and their jobs.
These choices are made by the group as a whole, and they are made public as process policies. By making these policies clear, you can ensure that everyone knows what to expect, which will reduce misunderstanding and improve process consistency. Process policies can be changed and revised to match the current circumstances as the team develops and grows.
We’ll go over the advantages of process policies and why it’s crucial to make them both clear and visible in this course manual.
Explicit Kanban policies are designed to provide predictability and improve team productivity.
The busyness of the Kanban team is not something a certified Kanban project manager is concerned with. A project manager’s objective and goal, including that of a Kanban project manager, is for the Kanban team to be engaged in the right activities, completed correctly, and on schedule to produce the desired business results.
Using a Kanban board, processes and policies are made clear. The Kanban team and its stakeholders can develop a thorough grasp of their Kanban workflow and the status of Work In Progress (WIP) tasks by examining the Kanban board.
The Kanban team’s thoughts are made obvious by explicitly stating Kanban policies. What is important should be reflected in explicit Kanban policies. They specify which jobs the Kanban team can voluntarily neglect so they can concentrate on crucial tasks. The Kanban team is willing to accept trade-offs in terms of cost, speed, and quality, and under what circumstances.
Examples of explicit Kanban policies are provided below:
• Make the Kanban team members familiar with the flow of work.
• Create Definition of Done’s (DoD) with their associated quality assurance checks in macro workflow) and micro (workflow steps) levels.
• How to handle the backlog. Who can add items, who can prioritize, and how
• How to handle new requirements from stakeholders.
• How to handle scope creep.
• How to handle impediments and situations when Kanban team members are blocked from doing their work.
• How to handle defects from work delivered in the past.
Chapter 4: Manage Flow
What is flow?
The movement of a thing, piece of information, or piece of work through a business process is known as flow in the context of project management. It’s how it goes throughout the factory floor or through various departments. It is more the one-time experience of an object passing through the process than the repeated path work takes. Does an item proceed uninterruptedly through each department, or does it encounter delays?
If you’ve ever been annoyed by having to start and stop working on an interesting project numerous times a day, you may already be aware that this annoyance is a direct result of your flow being disrupted.
Visualizing the workflow, the first Kanban technique, demonstrates how an item progresses through a process. The second, which involves limiting work in progress, makes ensuring that team members aren’t clogging up resources or wasting time. Analyzing how these two processes are affecting your flow and searching for methods to make them more efficient is the task of managing and assessing the flow.
How is flow measured?
Kanban boards and daily stand-ups
Team members view the Kanban board during the brief stand-up meetings and watch as work progresses from stage to stage as they assess flow. It helps the team keep track of how long it takes for an item to move from one column to another and determine whether or not similar items require similar amounts of time to complete. As you become aware of why items pause or become stuck in particular places and how they do so, you may begin to consider what can be done to rectify that.
A fundamental principle of flow is that what matters is how smoothly anything travels from beginning to end rather than how quickly it gets there. Similar to rush hour traffic, it doesn’t matter how quickly your car drives for a short distance; what matters is your average speed over the course of the trip. Results will be more predictable the more consistently objects move through the process. Also, keeping your clients pleased depends on how well you fulfill your promises to them.
The “anybody blocked” query and “how can we help you?” come first in a specialized Kanban stand-up session. In other words, the team is trying to find strategies to enhance flow. It guarantees that everyone contributes ideas and that you make the most of the team’s combined intelligence, fostering teamwork and a sense of empowerment inside your firm.
Using a Kanban board to monitor team work also includes optimizing the process itself. The team should act quickly to take into account any steps or board columns that are not enhancing their productivity or any stages that could increase their productivity if added to the board. The process can only benefit and become more efficient if the Kanban board is an accurate reflection of the process.
A simple Kanban flow
The simplest way to measure Kanban flow is to rely on the most basic 3-column structure common to most Kanban board tools:
• Backlog. All new ideas and work items that are waiting to be worked on.
• Work In Progress. All tasks currently being worked on.
• Done. All completed tasks.
Source: Teamhood
Kanban flow metrics
The best way to measure workflow using Kanban is to focus on these three key metrics:
1. Cycle time
2. Throughput
3. Work in progress
Cycle time (measured from the beginning of the first task to the completion of the last task) – This is the average actual time it takes for the team to finish an item from the time they started working on it. The word “actual” is crucial here because it differs from the anticipated amount of time spent working on the item.
Throughput – The rate at which a business creates or processes its goods or services is referred to as throughput. When referring to projects, it usually refers to the quantity of units that go through a process in a given amount of time, usually hours, days, or weeks.
The number of cards that move through your Kanban board over the course of a week or the life of a project is the common unit of measurement for this.
Work in progress is the area of the Kanban board where all work that the team is currently working on but has not yet finished is listed. Limiting work in progress is essential to boost productivity and prevent multitasking, duplication, mistakes, and lack of concentration.
However, you may determine your Kanban flow efficiency by integrating the three metrics mentioned above into a cumulative flow diagram (CFD), sometimes referred to as a Kanban flow diagram or Kanban flow chart.
How to read a cumulative flow diagram
The CFD keeps track of how many tasks are daily added to the “In Progress” columns of your Kanban board. The period for which the chart is displaying data is indicated by the horizontal axis. The total number of cards in the workflow at different times is displayed on the vertical axis.
The various stages of your process are represented by the chart’s variously colored bands in the same order as they appear on the Kanban board. The number of tasks in your process will determine whether these bands move upward or downward.
Source: Broadcom.com
With the aid of this Kanban process flow chart, you can quickly determine the estimated cycle time of your tasks. Your difficulties will be identified by the spacing between the chart’s lines.
If the colored bands are developing simultaneously, your throughput is stable. A good number of tasks are being added, and they are also being finished, at the same rate.
Your throughput is greater than the rate at which new jobs are entering your process if one of the colored bands is quickly narrowing. You might need to reallocate resources to improve efficiency if you have overcapacity.
The quick widening of one or more of your colored bands indicates that more cards are entering your process than you can successfully handle. You might need to check your WIP limitations because your productivity isn’t as high as it could be.
Monitoring Flow Efficiency
One of the most crucial KPIs in lean management is the productivity of your team’s workflow. It is essential to measure it in order to assess how well the model is being used.
It is very simple to keep track of your workflow efficiency, and doing so will enable you to see exactly where your team’s performance is lacking.
What is Flow Efficiency in Lean?
The ratio of value-adding time to lead time needed to finish a process is called flow efficiency. When a person or a machine is actively working toward the accomplishment of a certain goal, they are adding value. Lead time is the interval between placing an order and having the product delivered.
Monitoring your team’s workflow productivity is essential for streamlining the entire procedure.
According to this logic, waiting on something is a typical non-value-adding time activity and one of the seven wastes in Lean management. It can be divided into two groups:
• Wait time
• Blocked time
When a job waits for something that is not dependent on the person working on it, wait time builds up. Waiting for a card to be reviewed before moving on to the next column of the Kanban board is the most frequent instance of creating wait time in a Kanban system.
Yet, blocked time is created when an assignment becomes trapped in the workflow and there is a barrier to getting back to work.
Blocking causes can range from awaiting personal availability (often because another work needs immediate attention) to awaiting a repair crew to address a hardware or software issue.
Whether the inactive time is anticipated or not makes a significant difference between these two types of waste. You should consider it a wait time if it is expected. If not, it is assumed that the job accumulating it is stalled.
Understanding how much time is wasted waiting on things might help you identify process improvements that can increase Lean efficiency.
How to Measure Flow Efficiency?
Measuring flow efficiency may appear to be a challenging assignment if you are a new leader to Lean management. Actually, it’s done with the aid of the following straightforward formula:
Flow Efficiency[%]=Value-added Time/Lead Time*100
The flow efficiency of developing this specific feature is 20% if one of your software engineers needs 5 days to complete a feature but only spends one day actively working on it.
Every leader who implements the Lean management model will produce more waste than value if they manually calculate this for each task that moves through their team’s workflow.
This is particularly true when you have to take into consideration every element that influences it.
Chapter 5: Implement Feedback Loops
A feedback loop is a period of time after which you evaluate your performance and look for areas for improvement. You could say that a timebox is not necessary (and that the reflection is more significant), but I disagree. In this sense, a timebox is a feedback loop in and of itself because it forces a feedback loop at a specific time.
Feedback loops are crucial because they compel introspection and system improvements. Never do you end up with the system you started with. You begin with what you have after all. It is silly to assume that what you start with is great since you would be overlooking all the additional insights Kanban may provide.
Feedback loops can be two things:
• Automated triggers/notifications
• Meetings
Let’s explore both.
Automated triggers/notifications
Automation and triggers can be quite helpful for kanban systems. You may, for instance, set up events or notifications to be sent out when you reach WIP limitations, an item spends too much time in a particular stage, or there are bottlenecks. These automatic feedback loops are straightforward to start with and are low hanging fruit.
For instance, in a software development process, I would wish to put up a trigger whenever a single item is ongoing for more than five days. Although it’s not necessarily a bad thing to have anything ongoing at that period, I would like to know when it’s over. This enables me to assess the situation and make adjustments as necessary.
Your life will be made easier by automated triggers because you won’t have to spend as much time manually verifying or considering these items. Even if you hold regular meetings like a Daily Scrum or Daily Standup, they might not always — and not always well — act as feedback loops for straightforward tasks like the in-progress check. You won’t have to worry about this because the check is automatic. When something is wrong within the boundaries that you have set, your toolset will alert you.
Try to start small and use a limited number of automatic triggers as a starting point, like with everything in Kanban. As you become more familiar with your system and potential metrics you might use, you can extend later.
Meetings
Meetings are the other kind of feedback loop. Automate what you can, and make arrangements for what you can’t because these are a lot more complicated and challenging than automatic triggers.
Meetings may take place at several levels, from the most strategic in business to the most routine. Nevertheless, not every Kanban team need every kind of meeting. We would at the very least suggest the following:
• Daily check-in: brief meetings of no more than 15 minutes to assess and adjust progress and spot potential bottlenecks. This feedback loop is excellent for ensuring that daily operations remain smooth.
• Bi-weekly process meeting: a check in to reflect on the overall process. This might be referred to as a “Manage flow meeting” because it is largely focused on the people involved as well as the Kanban system. Two hours should be the allotted time for this. That will give us enough time to talk about things, but it also won’t be too short to cover larger themes.
• Biweekly product meeting: the objectives of these meetings should be the product’s goals and the value you have already provided and plan to provide in the upcoming iteration. While Kanban should produce continuous flow, this feedback loop enables more immediate, smaller-scale strategic course corrections. This meeting should have a one-hour time limit, and stakeholders may be present!
• Quarterly strategic meeting: It’s crucial to consider how your job and workflow will be affected by longer-term goals. The quarterly strategic meeting will provide long-term emphasis while the daily check-in will provide short-term focus. A bigger change’s impending arrival is also beneficial. To guarantee cross-team strategic alignment, other teams may also be invited to this meeting.
One guiding principle applies to all meetings: keep to the allotted time. Nothing is worse than meetings that go on forever, and time limits are feedback loops in and of themselves. They can really increase the effectiveness of your meetings by teaching you what you can accomplish in a specific amount of time!
Chapter 6: Improve Collaboratively, Evolve Experimentally
The culture of self-diagnosis, self-learning, and self-improvement must be developed inside a Kanban team, and it must be founded on genuine collaboration and unrestricted experimentation.
For a Kanban team, removing obstacles is not a particularly difficult task. Errors are not viewed by Kanban as unfortunate exceptions that shouldn’t have occurred in the first place. Mistakes are acknowledged as part of daily operations to support your Kanban organization’s and your company’s entire enterprise’s path of continuous learning and improvement. By making them clear, available, and simple to use throughout the whole Kanban organization, a Kanban team increases the effects of these solutions for the problems it solves.
A Kanban team prioritizes actions to highlight obstacles rather than blaming, criticizing, and demeaning those who cause issues. Members of the team promote organizational learnings from mistakes and inefficiencies so that everyone in the Kanban firm may learn about these challenges, solutions, and know-how.
When employees in a Kanban organization feel comfortable sharing details about their mistakes, they are prepared to go above and above and put in a lot of effort to ensure that the same issue won’t arise in their work center or any other work centers along their value stream. Engineers will worry about making mistakes if they experience consequences for their errors or even if they believe they will. The outcome will be:
1. They perform less activity to make fewer mistakes.
2. They are not open about their work, difficulties, and results.
3. They are not incentivized to transform resolutions of difficulties into organizational learning.
4. It is guaranteed that the identical or related problem will repeatedly occur because nobody ever uses time and drive to learn, distribute, and inform about issues and their resolutions and make them visible.
This “No blame, We are here to learn model” must be fully accepted by all Kanban team members and their relevant business stakeholders engaged in an incident.
Several firms continue to put a lot of effort into creating such safe workplaces. For instance, the FAA provides an Aviation Safety Reporting System via which pilots who make “mistakes” might be shielded from regulatory penalties if they choose to independently report those instances. Such techniques should be used in your Kanban company in order to foster an open-book approach to error and work.
Evolve Your Kanban Process and Business Result Experimentally
Before a Kanban team completes a project and disseminates its best practices to the rest of the Kanban organization, team members should consider whether the project is worthwhile of their attention and resources. To ascertain whether your suggestions for enhancing procedures, goods, and features will have the desired commercial effects, you must design and carry out the quickest and least expensive trials feasible.
The emphasis must be on getting real people from the real world to participate in your experiments rather than just relying on your gut and the best practices you and your Kanban team have been collecting and monitoring so far.
Kanban project managers and their business stakeholders should view their ideas for new features and products, as well as their intentions to use the Kanban process more effectively, as hypotheses that need to be tested.
Only when they have been objectively demonstrated to be sound concepts and business cases can these hypotheses be thoroughly planned, developed, and delivered.
Curriculum
Leading IT Transformation – Workshop 20 – Implementing Kanban
- Visualize Workflow
- Limit Work in Progress (WIP)
- Make Policies Explicit
- Manage Flow
- Implement Feedback Loops
- Improve Collaboratively, Evolve Experimentally
Distance Learning
Introduction
Welcome to Appleton Greene and thank you for enrolling on the Leading IT Transformation corporate training program. You will be learning through our unique facilitation via distance-learning method, which will enable you to practically implement everything that you learn academically. The methods and materials used in your program have been designed and developed to ensure that you derive the maximum benefits and enjoyment possible. We hope that you find the program challenging and fun to do. However, if you have never been a distance-learner before, you may be experiencing some trepidation at the task before you. So we will get you started by giving you some basic information and guidance on how you can make the best use of the modules, how you should manage the materials and what you should be doing as you work through them. This guide is designed to point you in the right direction and help you to become an effective distance-learner. Take a few hours or so to study this guide and your guide to tutorial support for students, while making notes, before you start to study in earnest.
Study environment
You will need to locate a quiet and private place to study, preferably a room where you can easily be isolated from external disturbances or distractions. Make sure the room is well-lit and incorporates a relaxed, pleasant feel. If you can spoil yourself within your study environment, you will have much more of a chance to ensure that you are always in the right frame of mind when you do devote time to study. For example, a nice fire, the ability to play soft soothing background music, soft but effective lighting, perhaps a nice view if possible and a good size desk with a comfortable chair. Make sure that your family know when you are studying and understand your study rules. Your study environment is very important. The ideal situation, if at all possible, is to have a separate study, which can be devoted to you. If this is not possible then you will need to pay a lot more attention to developing and managing your study schedule, because it will affect other people as well as yourself. The better your study environment, the more productive you will be.
Study tools & rules
Try and make sure that your study tools are sufficient and in good working order. You will need to have access to a computer, scanner and printer, with access to the internet. You will need a very comfortable chair, which supports your lower back, and you will need a good filing system. It can be very frustrating if you are spending valuable study time trying to fix study tools that are unreliable, or unsuitable for the task. Make sure that your study tools are up to date. You will also need to consider some study rules. Some of these rules will apply to you and will be intended to help you to be more disciplined about when and how you study. This distance-learning guide will help you and after you have read it you can put some thought into what your study rules should be. You will also need to negotiate some study rules for your family, friends or anyone who lives with you. They too will need to be disciplined in order to ensure that they can support you while you study. It is important to ensure that your family and friends are an integral part of your study team. Having their support and encouragement can prove to be a crucial contribution to your successful completion of the program. Involve them in as much as you can.
Successful distance-learning
Distance-learners are freed from the necessity of attending regular classes or workshops, since they can study in their own way, at their own pace and for their own purposes. But unlike traditional internal training courses, it is the student’s responsibility, with a distance-learning program, to ensure that they manage their own study contribution. This requires strong self-discipline and self-motivation skills and there must be a clear will to succeed. Those students who are used to managing themselves, are good at managing others and who enjoy working in isolation, are more likely to be good distance-learners. It is also important to be aware of the main reasons why you are studying and of the main objectives that you are hoping to achieve as a result. You will need to remind yourself of these objectives at times when you need to motivate yourself. Never lose sight of your long-term goals and your short-term objectives. There is nobody available here to pamper you, or to look after you, or to spoon-feed you with information, so you will need to find ways to encourage and appreciate yourself while you are studying. Make sure that you chart your study progress, so that you can be sure of your achievements and re-evaluate your goals and objectives regularly.
Self-assessment
Appleton Greene training programs are in all cases post-graduate programs. Consequently, you should already have obtained a business-related degree and be an experienced learner. You should therefore already be aware of your study strengths and weaknesses. For example, which time of the day are you at your most productive? Are you a lark or an owl? What study methods do you respond to the most? Are you a consistent learner? How do you discipline yourself? How do you ensure that you enjoy yourself while studying? It is important to understand yourself as a learner and so some self-assessment early on will be necessary if you are to apply yourself correctly. Perform a SWOT analysis on yourself as a student. List your internal strengths and weaknesses as a student and your external opportunities and threats. This will help you later on when you are creating a study plan. You can then incorporate features within your study plan that can ensure that you are playing to your strengths, while compensating for your weaknesses. You can also ensure that you make the most of your opportunities, while avoiding the potential threats to your success.
Accepting responsibility as a student
Training programs invariably require a significant investment, both in terms of what they cost and in the time that you need to contribute to study and the responsibility for successful completion of training programs rests entirely with the student. This is never more apparent than when a student is learning via distance-learning. Accepting responsibility as a student is an important step towards ensuring that you can successfully complete your training program. It is easy to instantly blame other people or factors when things go wrong. But the fact of the matter is that if a failure is your failure, then you have the power to do something about it, it is entirely in your own hands. If it is always someone else’s failure, then you are powerless to do anything about it. All students study in entirely different ways, this is because we are all individuals and what is right for one student, is not necessarily right for another. In order to succeed, you will have to accept personal responsibility for finding a way to plan, implement and manage a personal study plan that works for you. If you do not succeed, you only have yourself to blame.
Planning
By far the most critical contribution to stress, is the feeling of not being in control. In the absence of planning we tend to be reactive and can stumble from pillar to post in the hope that things will turn out fine in the end. Invariably they don’t! In order to be in control, we need to have firm ideas about how and when we want to do things. We also need to consider as many possible eventualities as we can, so that we are prepared for them when they happen. Prescriptive Change, is far easier to manage and control, than Emergent Change. The same is true with distance-learning. It is much easier and much more enjoyable, if you feel that you are in control and that things are going to plan. Even when things do go wrong, you are prepared for them and can act accordingly without any unnecessary stress. It is important therefore that you do take time to plan your studies properly.
Management
Once you have developed a clear study plan, it is of equal importance to ensure that you manage the implementation of it. Most of us usually enjoy planning, but it is usually during implementation when things go wrong. Targets are not met and we do not understand why. Sometimes we do not even know if targets are being met. It is not enough for us to conclude that the study plan just failed. If it is failing, you will need to understand what you can do about it. Similarly if your study plan is succeeding, it is still important to understand why, so that you can improve upon your success. You therefore need to have guidelines for self-assessment so that you can be consistent with performance improvement throughout the program. If you manage things correctly, then your performance should constantly improve throughout the program.
Study objectives & tasks
The first place to start is developing your program objectives. These should feature your reasons for undertaking the training program in order of priority. Keep them succinct and to the point in order to avoid confusion. Do not just write the first things that come into your head because they are likely to be too similar to each other. Make a list of possible departmental headings, such as: Customer Service; E-business; Finance; Globalization; Human Resources; Technology; Legal; Management; Marketing and Production. Then brainstorm for ideas by listing as many things that you want to achieve under each heading and later re-arrange these things in order of priority. Finally, select the top item from each department heading and choose these as your program objectives. Try and restrict yourself to five because it will enable you to focus clearly. It is likely that the other things that you listed will be achieved if each of the top objectives are achieved. If this does not prove to be the case, then simply work through the process again.
Study forecast
As a guide, the Appleton Greene Leading IT Transformation corporate training program should take 12-18 months to complete, depending upon your availability and current commitments. The reason why there is such a variance in time estimates is because every student is an individual, with differing productivity levels and different commitments. These differentiations are then exaggerated by the fact that this is a distance-learning program, which incorporates the practical integration of academic theory as an as a part of the training program. Consequently all of the project studies are real, which means that important decisions and compromises need to be made. You will want to get things right and will need to be patient with your expectations in order to ensure that they are. We would always recommend that you are prudent with your own task and time forecasts, but you still need to develop them and have a clear indication of what are realistic expectations in your case. With reference to your time planning: consider the time that you can realistically dedicate towards study with the program every week; calculate how long it should take you to complete the program, using the guidelines featured here; then break the program down into logical modules and allocate a suitable proportion of time to each of them, these will be your milestones; you can create a time plan by using a spreadsheet on your computer, or a personal organizer such as MS Outlook, you could also use a financial forecasting software; break your time forecasts down into manageable chunks of time, the more specific you can be, the more productive and accurate your time management will be; finally, use formulas where possible to do your time calculations for you, because this will help later on when your forecasts need to change in line with actual performance. With reference to your task planning: refer to your list of tasks that need to be undertaken in order to achieve your program objectives; with reference to your time plan, calculate when each task should be implemented; remember that you are not estimating when your objectives will be achieved, but when you will need to focus upon implementing the corresponding tasks; you also need to ensure that each task is implemented in conjunction with the associated training modules which are relevant; then break each single task down into a list of specific to do’s, say approximately ten to do’s for each task and enter these into your study plan; once again you could use MS Outlook to incorporate both your time and task planning and this could constitute your study plan; you could also use a project management software like MS Project. You should now have a clear and realistic forecast detailing when you can expect to be able to do something about undertaking the tasks to achieve your program objectives.
Performance management
It is one thing to develop your study forecast, it is quite another to monitor your progress. Ultimately it is less important whether you achieve your original study forecast and more important that you update it so that it constantly remains realistic in line with your performance. As you begin to work through the program, you will begin to have more of an idea about your own personal performance and productivity levels as a distance-learner. Once you have completed your first study module, you should re-evaluate your study forecast for both time and tasks, so that they reflect your actual performance level achieved. In order to achieve this you must first time yourself while training by using an alarm clock. Set the alarm for hourly intervals and make a note of how far you have come within that time. You can then make a note of your actual performance on your study plan and then compare your performance against your forecast. Then consider the reasons that have contributed towards your performance level, whether they are positive or negative and make a considered adjustment to your future forecasts as a result. Given time, you should start achieving your forecasts regularly.
With reference to time management: time yourself while you are studying and make a note of the actual time taken in your study plan; consider your successes with time-efficiency and the reasons for the success in each case and take this into consideration when reviewing future time planning; consider your failures with time-efficiency and the reasons for the failures in each case and take this into consideration when reviewing future time planning; re-evaluate your study forecast in relation to time planning for the remainder of your training program to ensure that you continue to be realistic about your time expectations. You need to be consistent with your time management, otherwise you will never complete your studies. This will either be because you are not contributing enough time to your studies, or you will become less efficient with the time that you do allocate to your studies. Remember, if you are not in control of your studies, they can just become yet another cause of stress for you.
With reference to your task management: time yourself while you are studying and make a note of the actual tasks that you have undertaken in your study plan; consider your successes with task-efficiency and the reasons for the success in each case; take this into consideration when reviewing future task planning; consider your failures with task-efficiency and the reasons for the failures in each case and take this into consideration when reviewing future task planning; re-evaluate your study forecast in relation to task planning for the remainder of your training program to ensure that you continue to be realistic about your task expectations. You need to be consistent with your task management, otherwise you will never know whether you are achieving your program objectives or not.
Keeping in touch
You will have access to qualified and experienced professors and tutors who are responsible for providing tutorial support for your particular training program. So don’t be shy about letting them know how you are getting on. We keep electronic records of all tutorial support emails so that professors and tutors can review previous correspondence before considering an individual response. It also means that there is a record of all communications between you and your professors and tutors and this helps to avoid any unnecessary duplication, misunderstanding, or misinterpretation. If you have a problem relating to the program, share it with them via email. It is likely that they have come across the same problem before and are usually able to make helpful suggestions and steer you in the right direction. To learn more about when and how to use tutorial support, please refer to the Tutorial Support section of this student information guide. This will help you to ensure that you are making the most of tutorial support that is available to you and will ultimately contribute towards your success and enjoyment with your training program.
Work colleagues and family
You should certainly discuss your program study progress with your colleagues, friends and your family. Appleton Greene training programs are very practical. They require you to seek information from other people, to plan, develop and implement processes with other people and to achieve feedback from other people in relation to viability and productivity. You will therefore have plenty of opportunities to test your ideas and enlist the views of others. People tend to be sympathetic towards distance-learners, so don’t bottle it all up in yourself. Get out there and share it! It is also likely that your family and colleagues are going to benefit from your labors with the program, so they are likely to be much more interested in being involved than you might think. Be bold about delegating work to those who might benefit themselves. This is a great way to achieve understanding and commitment from people who you may later rely upon for process implementation. Share your experiences with your friends and family.
Making it relevant
The key to successful learning is to make it relevant to your own individual circumstances. At all times you should be trying to make bridges between the content of the program and your own situation. Whether you achieve this through quiet reflection or through interactive discussion with your colleagues, client partners or your family, remember that it is the most important and rewarding aspect of translating your studies into real self-improvement. You should be clear about how you want the program to benefit you. This involves setting clear study objectives in relation to the content of the course in terms of understanding, concepts, completing research or reviewing activities and relating the content of the modules to your own situation. Your objectives may understandably change as you work through the program, in which case you should enter the revised objectives on your study plan so that you have a permanent reminder of what you are trying to achieve, when and why.
Distance-learning check-list
Prepare your study environment, your study tools and rules.
Undertake detailed self-assessment in terms of your ability as a learner.
Create a format for your study plan.
Consider your study objectives and tasks.
Create a study forecast.
Assess your study performance.
Re-evaluate your study forecast.
Be consistent when managing your study plan.
Use your Appleton Greene Certified Learning Provider (CLP) for tutorial support.
Make sure you keep in touch with those around you.
Tutorial Support
Programs
Appleton Greene uses standard and bespoke corporate training programs as vessels to transfer business process improvement knowledge into the heart of our clients’ organizations. Each individual program focuses upon the implementation of a specific business process, which enables clients to easily quantify their return on investment. There are hundreds of established Appleton Greene corporate training products now available to clients within customer services, e-business, finance, globalization, human resources, information technology, legal, management, marketing and production. It does not matter whether a client’s employees are located within one office, or an unlimited number of international offices, we can still bring them together to learn and implement specific business processes collectively. Our approach to global localization enables us to provide clients with a truly international service with that all important personal touch. Appleton Greene corporate training programs can be provided virtually or locally and they are all unique in that they individually focus upon a specific business function. They are implemented over a sustainable period of time and professional support is consistently provided by qualified learning providers and specialist consultants.
Support available
You will have a designated Certified Learning Provider (CLP) and an Accredited Consultant and we encourage you to communicate with them as much as possible. In all cases tutorial support is provided online because we can then keep a record of all communications to ensure that tutorial support remains consistent. You would also be forwarding your work to the tutorial support unit for evaluation and assessment. You will receive individual feedback on all of the work that you undertake on a one-to-one basis, together with specific recommendations for anything that may need to be changed in order to achieve a pass with merit or a pass with distinction and you then have as many opportunities as you may need to re-submit project studies until they meet with the required standard. Consequently the only reason that you should really fail (CLP) is if you do not do the work. It makes no difference to us whether a student takes 12 months or 18 months to complete the program, what matters is that in all cases the same quality standard will have been achieved.
Support Process
Please forward all of your future emails to the designated (CLP) Tutorial Support Unit email address that has been provided and please do not duplicate or copy your emails to other AGC email accounts as this will just cause unnecessary administration. Please note that emails are always answered as quickly as possible but you will need to allow a period of up to 20 business days for responses to general tutorial support emails during busy periods, because emails are answered strictly within the order in which they are received. You will also need to allow a period of up to 30 business days for the evaluation and assessment of project studies. This does not include weekends or public holidays. Please therefore kindly allow for this within your time planning. All communications are managed online via email because it enables tutorial service support managers to review other communications which have been received before responding and it ensures that there is a copy of all communications retained on file for future reference. All communications will be stored within your personal (CLP) study file here at Appleton Greene throughout your designated study period. If you need any assistance or clarification at any time, please do not hesitate to contact us by forwarding an email and remember that we are here to help. If you have any questions, please list and number your questions succinctly and you can then be sure of receiving specific answers to each and every query.
Time Management
It takes approximately 1 Year to complete the Leading IT Transformation corporate training program, incorporating 12 x 6-hour monthly workshops. Each student will also need to contribute approximately 4 hours per week over 1 Year of their personal time. Students can study from home or work at their own pace and are responsible for managing their own study plan. There are no formal examinations and students are evaluated and assessed based upon their project study submissions, together with the quality of their internal analysis and supporting documents. They can contribute more time towards study when they have the time to do so and can contribute less time when they are busy. All students tend to be in full time employment while studying and the Leading IT Transformation program is purposely designed to accommodate this, so there is plenty of flexibility in terms of time management. It makes no difference to us at Appleton Greene, whether individuals take 12-18 months to complete this program. What matters is that in all cases the same standard of quality will have been achieved with the standard and bespoke programs that have been developed.
Distance Learning Guide
The distance learning guide should be your first port of call when starting your training program. It will help you when you are planning how and when to study, how to create the right environment and how to establish the right frame of mind. If you can lay the foundations properly during the planning stage, then it will contribute to your enjoyment and productivity while training later. The guide helps to change your lifestyle in order to accommodate time for study and to cultivate good study habits. It helps you to chart your progress so that you can measure your performance and achieve your goals. It explains the tools that you will need for study and how to make them work. It also explains how to translate academic theory into practical reality. Spend some time now working through your distance learning guide and make sure that you have firm foundations in place so that you can make the most of your distance learning program. There is no requirement for you to attend training workshops or classes at Appleton Greene offices. The entire program is undertaken online, program course manuals and project studies are administered via the Appleton Greene web site and via email, so you are able to study at your own pace and in the comfort of your own home or office as long as you have a computer and access to the internet.
How To Study
The how to study guide provides students with a clear understanding of the Appleton Greene facilitation via distance learning training methods and enables students to obtain a clear overview of the training program content. It enables students to understand the step-by-step training methods used by Appleton Greene and how course manuals are integrated with project studies. It explains the research and development that is required and the need to provide evidence and references to support your statements. It also enables students to understand precisely what will be required of them in order to achieve a pass with merit and a pass with distinction for individual project studies and provides useful guidance on how to be innovative and creative when developing your Unique Program Proposition (UPP).
Tutorial Support
Tutorial support for the Appleton Greene Leading IT Transformation corporate training program is provided online either through the Appleton Greene Client Support Portal (CSP), or via email. All tutorial support requests are facilitated by a designated Program Administration Manager (PAM). They are responsible for deciding which professor or tutor is the most appropriate option relating to the support required and then the tutorial support request is forwarded onto them. Once the professor or tutor has completed the tutorial support request and answered any questions that have been asked, this communication is then returned to the student via email by the designated Program Administration Manager (PAM). This enables all tutorial support, between students, professors and tutors, to be facilitated by the designated Program Administration Manager (PAM) efficiently and securely through the email account. You will therefore need to allow a period of up to 20 business days for responses to general support queries and up to 30 business days for the evaluation and assessment of project studies, because all tutorial support requests are answered strictly within the order in which they are received. This does not include weekends or public holidays. Consequently you need to put some thought into the management of your tutorial support procedure in order to ensure that your study plan is feasible and to obtain the maximum possible benefit from tutorial support during your period of study. Please retain copies of your tutorial support emails for future reference. Please ensure that ALL of your tutorial support emails are set out using the format as suggested within your guide to tutorial support. Your tutorial support emails need to be referenced clearly to the specific part of the course manual or project study which you are working on at any given time. You also need to list and number any questions that you would like to ask, up to a maximum of five questions within each tutorial support email. Remember the more specific you can be with your questions the more specific your answers will be too and this will help you to avoid any unnecessary misunderstanding, misinterpretation, or duplication. The guide to tutorial support is intended to help you to understand how and when to use support in order to ensure that you get the most out of your training program. Appleton Greene training programs are designed to enable you to do things for yourself. They provide you with a structure or a framework and we use tutorial support to facilitate students while they practically implement what they learn. In other words, we are enabling students to do things for themselves. The benefits of distance learning via facilitation are considerable and are much more sustainable in the long-term than traditional short-term knowledge sharing programs. Consequently you should learn how and when to use tutorial support so that you can maximize the benefits from your learning experience with Appleton Greene. This guide describes the purpose of each training function and how to use them and how to use tutorial support in relation to each aspect of the training program. It also provides useful tips and guidance with regard to best practice.
Tutorial Support Tips
Students are often unsure about how and when to use tutorial support with Appleton Greene. This Tip List will help you to understand more about how to achieve the most from using tutorial support. Refer to it regularly to ensure that you are continuing to use the service properly. Tutorial support is critical to the success of your training experience, but it is important to understand when and how to use it in order to maximize the benefit that you receive. It is no coincidence that those students who succeed are those that learn how to be positive, proactive and productive when using tutorial support.
Be positive and friendly with your tutorial support emails
Remember that if you forward an email to the tutorial support unit, you are dealing with real people. “Do unto others as you would expect others to do unto you”. If you are positive, complimentary and generally friendly in your emails, you will generate a similar response in return. This will be more enjoyable, productive and rewarding for you in the long-term.
Think about the impression that you want to create
Every time that you communicate, you create an impression, which can be either positive or negative, so put some thought into the impression that you want to create. Remember that copies of all tutorial support emails are stored electronically and tutors will always refer to prior correspondence before responding to any current emails. Over a period of time, a general opinion will be arrived at in relation to your character, attitude and ability. Try to manage your own frustrations, mood swings and temperament professionally, without involving the tutorial support team. Demonstrating frustration or a lack of patience is a weakness and will be interpreted as such. The good thing about communicating in writing, is that you will have the time to consider your content carefully, you can review it and proof-read it before sending your email to Appleton Greene and this should help you to communicate more professionally, consistently and to avoid any unnecessary knee-jerk reactions to individual situations as and when they may arise. Please also remember that the CLP Tutorial Support Unit will not just be responsible for evaluating and assessing the quality of your work, they will also be responsible for providing recommendations to other learning providers and to client contacts within the Appleton Greene global client network, so do be in control of your own emotions and try to create a good impression.
Remember that quality is preferred to quantity
Please remember that when you send an email to the tutorial support team, you are not using Twitter or Text Messaging. Try not to forward an email every time that you have a thought. This will not prove to be productive either for you or for the tutorial support team. Take time to prepare your communications properly, as if you were writing a professional letter to a business colleague and make a list of queries that you are likely to have and then incorporate them within one email, say once every month, so that the tutorial support team can understand more about context, application and your methodology for study. Get yourself into a consistent routine with your tutorial support requests and use the tutorial support template provided with ALL of your emails. The (CLP) Tutorial Support Unit will not spoon-feed you with information. They need to be able to evaluate and assess your tutorial support requests carefully and professionally.
Be specific about your questions in order to receive specific answers
Try not to write essays by thinking as you are writing tutorial support emails. The tutorial support unit can be unclear about what in fact you are asking, or what you are looking to achieve. Be specific about asking questions that you want answers to. Number your questions. You will then receive specific answers to each and every question. This is the main purpose of tutorial support via email.
Keep a record of your tutorial support emails
It is important that you keep a record of all tutorial support emails that are forwarded to you. You can then refer to them when necessary and it avoids any unnecessary duplication, misunderstanding, or misinterpretation.
Individual training workshops or telephone support
Please be advised that Appleton Greene does not provide separate or individual tutorial support meetings, workshops, or provide telephone support for individual students. Appleton Greene is an equal opportunities learning and service provider and we are therefore understandably bound to treat all students equally. We cannot therefore broker special financial or study arrangements with individual students regardless of the circumstances. All tutorial support is provided online and this enables Appleton Greene to keep a record of all communications between students, professors and tutors on file for future reference, in accordance with our quality management procedure and your terms and conditions of enrolment. All tutorial support is provided online via email because it enables us to have time to consider support content carefully, it ensures that you receive a considered and detailed response to your queries. You can number questions that you would like to ask, which relate to things that you do not understand or where clarification may be required. You can then be sure of receiving specific answers to each individual query. You will also then have a record of these communications and of all tutorial support, which has been provided to you. This makes tutorial support administration more productive by avoiding any unnecessary duplication, misunderstanding, or misinterpretation.
Tutorial Support Email Format
You should use this tutorial support format if you need to request clarification or assistance while studying with your training program. Please note that ALL of your tutorial support request emails should use the same format. You should therefore set up a standard email template, which you can then use as and when you need to. Emails that are forwarded to Appleton Greene, which do not use the following format, may be rejected and returned to you by the (CLP) Program Administration Manager. A detailed response will then be forwarded to you via email usually within 20 business days of receipt for general support queries and 30 business days for the evaluation and assessment of project studies. This does not include weekends or public holidays. Your tutorial support request, together with the corresponding TSU reply, will then be saved and stored within your electronic TSU file at Appleton Greene for future reference.
Subject line of your email
Please insert: Appleton Greene (CLP) Tutorial Support Request: (Your Full Name) (Date), within the subject line of your email.
Main body of your email
Please insert:
1. Appleton Greene Certified Learning Provider (CLP) Tutorial Support Request
2. Your Full Name
3. Date of TS request
4. Preferred email address
5. Backup email address
6. Course manual page name or number (reference)
7. Project study page name or number (reference)
Subject of enquiry
Please insert a maximum of 50 words (please be succinct)
Briefly outline the subject matter of your inquiry, or what your questions relate to.
Question 1
Maximum of 50 words (please be succinct)
Maximum of 50 words (please be succinct)
Question 3
Maximum of 50 words (please be succinct)
Question 4
Maximum of 50 words (please be succinct)
Question 5
Maximum of 50 words (please be succinct)
Please note that a maximum of 5 questions is permitted with each individual tutorial support request email.
Procedure
* List the questions that you want to ask first, then re-arrange them in order of priority. Make sure that you reference them, where necessary, to the course manuals or project studies.
* Make sure that you are specific about your questions and number them. Try to plan the content within your emails to make sure that it is relevant.
* Make sure that your tutorial support emails are set out correctly, using the Tutorial Support Email Format provided here.
* Save a copy of your email and incorporate the date sent after the subject title. Keep your tutorial support emails within the same file and in date order for easy reference.
* Allow up to 20 business days for a response to general tutorial support emails and up to 30 business days for the evaluation and assessment of project studies, because detailed individual responses will be made in all cases and tutorial support emails are answered strictly within the order in which they are received.
* Emails can and do get lost. So if you have not received a reply within the appropriate time, forward another copy or a reminder to the tutorial support unit to be sure that it has been received but do not forward reminders unless the appropriate time has elapsed.
* When you receive a reply, save it immediately featuring the date of receipt after the subject heading for easy reference. In most cases the tutorial support unit replies to your questions individually, so you will have a record of the questions that you asked as well as the answers offered. With project studies however, separate emails are usually forwarded by the tutorial support unit, so do keep a record of your own original emails as well.
* Remember to be positive and friendly in your emails. You are dealing with real people who will respond to the same things that you respond to.
* Try not to repeat questions that have already been asked in previous emails. If this happens the tutorial support unit will probably just refer you to the appropriate answers that have already been provided within previous emails.
* If you lose your tutorial support email records you can write to Appleton Greene to receive a copy of your tutorial support file, but a separate administration charge may be levied for this service.
How To Study
Your Certified Learning Provider (CLP) and Accredited Consultant can help you to plan a task list for getting started so that you can be clear about your direction and your priorities in relation to your training program. It is also a good way to introduce yourself to the tutorial support team.
Planning your study environment
Your study conditions are of great importance and will have a direct effect on how much you enjoy your training program. Consider how much space you will have, whether it is comfortable and private and whether you are likely to be disturbed. The study tools and facilities at your disposal are also important to the success of your distance-learning experience. Your tutorial support unit can help with useful tips and guidance, regardless of your starting position. It is important to get this right before you start working on your training program.
Planning your program objectives
It is important that you have a clear list of study objectives, in order of priority, before you start working on your training program. Your tutorial support unit can offer assistance here to ensure that your study objectives have been afforded due consideration and priority.
Planning how and when to study
Distance-learners are freed from the necessity of attending regular classes, since they can study in their own way, at their own pace and for their own purposes. This approach is designed to let you study efficiently away from the traditional classroom environment. It is important however, that you plan how and when to study, so that you are making the most of your natural attributes, strengths and opportunities. Your tutorial support unit can offer assistance and useful tips to ensure that you are playing to your strengths.
Planning your study tasks
You should have a clear understanding of the study tasks that you should be undertaking and the priority associated with each task. These tasks should also be integrated with your program objectives. The distance learning guide and the guide to tutorial support for students should help you here, but if you need any clarification or assistance, please contact your tutorial support unit.
Planning your time
You will need to allocate specific times during your calendar when you intend to study if you are to have a realistic chance of completing your program on time. You are responsible for planning and managing your own study time, so it is important that you are successful with this. Your tutorial support unit can help you with this if your time plan is not working.
Keeping in touch
Consistency is the key here. If you communicate too frequently in short bursts, or too infrequently with no pattern, then your management ability with your studies will be questioned, both by you and by your tutorial support unit. It is obvious when a student is in control and when one is not and this will depend how able you are at sticking with your study plan. Inconsistency invariably leads to in-completion.
Charting your progress
Your tutorial support team can help you to chart your own study progress. Refer to your distance learning guide for further details.
Making it work
To succeed, all that you will need to do is apply yourself to undertaking your training program and interpreting it correctly. Success or failure lies in your hands and your hands alone, so be sure that you have a strategy for making it work. Your Certified Learning Provider (CLP) and Accredited Consultant can guide you through the process of program planning, development and implementation.
Reading methods
Interpretation is often unique to the individual but it can be improved and even quantified by implementing consistent interpretation methods. Interpretation can be affected by outside interference such as family members, TV, or the Internet, or simply by other thoughts which are demanding priority in our minds. One thing that can improve our productivity is using recognized reading methods. This helps us to focus and to be more structured when reading information for reasons of importance, rather than relaxation.
Speed reading
When reading through course manuals for the first time, subconsciously set your reading speed to be just fast enough that you cannot dwell on individual words or tables. With practice, you should be able to read an A4 sheet of paper in one minute. You will not achieve much in the way of a detailed understanding, but your brain will retain a useful overview. This overview will be important later on and will enable you to keep individual issues in perspective with a more generic picture because speed reading appeals to the memory part of the brain. Do not worry about what you do or do not remember at this stage.
Content reading
Once you have speed read everything, you can then start work in earnest. You now need to read a particular section of your course manual thoroughly, by making detailed notes while you read. This process is called Content Reading and it will help to consolidate your understanding and interpretation of the information that has been provided.
Making structured notes on the course manuals
When you are content reading, you should be making detailed notes, which are both structured and informative. Make these notes in a MS Word document on your computer, because you can then amend and update these as and when you deem it to be necessary. List your notes under three headings: 1. Interpretation – 2. Questions – 3. Tasks. The purpose of the 1st section is to clarify your interpretation by writing it down. The purpose of the 2nd section is to list any questions that the issue raises for you. The purpose of the 3rd section is to list any tasks that you should undertake as a result. Anyone who has graduated with a business-related degree should already be familiar with this process.
Organizing structured notes separately
You should then transfer your notes to a separate study notebook, preferably one that enables easy referencing, such as a MS Word Document, a MS Excel Spreadsheet, a MS Access Database, or a personal organizer on your cell phone. Transferring your notes allows you to have the opportunity of cross-checking and verifying them, which assists considerably with understanding and interpretation. You will also find that the better you are at doing this, the more chance you will have of ensuring that you achieve your study objectives.
Question your understanding
Do challenge your understanding. Explain things to yourself in your own words by writing things down.
Clarifying your understanding
If you are at all unsure, forward an email to your tutorial support unit and they will help to clarify your understanding.
Question your interpretation
Do challenge your interpretation. Qualify your interpretation by writing it down.
Clarifying your interpretation
If you are at all unsure, forward an email to your tutorial support unit and they will help to clarify your interpretation.
Qualification Requirements
The student will need to successfully complete the project study and all of the exercises relating to the Leading IT Transformation corporate training program, achieving a pass with merit or distinction in each case, in order to qualify as an Accredited Leading IT Transformation Specialist (ALITTS). All monthly workshops need to be tried and tested within your company. These project studies can be completed in your own time and at your own pace and in the comfort of your own home or office. There are no formal examinations, assessment is based upon the successful completion of the project studies. They are called project studies because, unlike case studies, these projects are not theoretical, they incorporate real program processes that need to be properly researched and developed. The project studies assist us in measuring your understanding and interpretation of the training program and enable us to assess qualification merits. All of the project studies are based entirely upon the content within the training program and they enable you to integrate what you have learnt into your corporate training practice.
Leading IT Transformation – Grading Contribution
Project Study – Grading Contribution
Customer Service – 10%
E-business – 05%
Finance – 10%
Globalization – 10%
Human Resources – 10%
Information Technology – 10%
Legal – 05%
Management – 10%
Marketing – 10%
Production – 10%
Education – 05%
Logistics – 05%
TOTAL GRADING – 100%
Qualification grades
A mark of 90% = Pass with Distinction.
A mark of 75% = Pass with Merit.
A mark of less than 75% = Fail.
If you fail to achieve a mark of 75% with a project study, you will receive detailed feedback from the Certified Learning Provider (CLP) and/or Accredited Consultant, together with a list of tasks which you will need to complete, in order to ensure that your project study meets with the minimum quality standard that is required by Appleton Greene. You can then re-submit your project study for further evaluation and assessment. Indeed you can re-submit as many drafts of your project studies as you need to, until such a time as they eventually meet with the required standard by Appleton Greene, so you need not worry about this, it is all part of the learning process.
When marking project studies, Appleton Greene is looking for sufficient evidence of the following:
Pass with merit
A satisfactory level of program understanding
A satisfactory level of program interpretation
A satisfactory level of project study content presentation
A satisfactory level of Unique Program Proposition (UPP) quality
A satisfactory level of the practical integration of academic theory
Pass with distinction
An exceptional level of program understanding
An exceptional level of program interpretation
An exceptional level of project study content presentation
An exceptional level of Unique Program Proposition (UPP) quality
An exceptional level of the practical integration of academic theory
Preliminary Analysis
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Research Paper
“On the benefits and challenges of using kanban in software engineering: a structured synthesis study
By The Journal of Software Engineering Research and Development
1 Introduction
The emphasis on delivering business value was one of the leading driving forces behind the adoption of most agile software development approaches. This goal also motivated the introduction of lean thinking in the software development processes, with the elimination of waste as a core principle – along with the continuous learning through short cycles and frequent builds, and the promotion of late changes and fast iterations (Poppendieck and Cusumano 2012).
These movements took place in the context of a business shift to the digital transformation era, in which disruptive business processes and models are seen as necessary paths to promote competitiveness, mainly for those companies that are not willing to give significant control of their processes to big software vendors (Andriole 2017). Together with the technological evolution (e.g., cloud computing), this compelled the software industry to recall the programming-in-the-small (DeRemer and Kron 1976) principles and to revisiting the overwhelming technical complexity and inflexibility of huge, standardized software systems and processes (Andriole 2017). Hence, the need to eliminating waste with unnecessary complexity or promote late changes to keep the software systems up-to-date with the business processes changes.
Despite its origins in manufacturing, lean principles are continuously being explored in new industries, even among those involving intensive knowledge work as in the case of Software Engineering (SE). Staats et al. (2011) state that “knowledge work not only has a context separate from manufacturing but also differs fundamentally in structure, calling into question lean principles’ universal applicability.” By one hand, agile software development approaches succeeded attaining goals such as adaptability and iterative processes (Abrantes and Travassos 2013), although being very developer-centric and relatively opaque to management regarding effort estimation, duration, and development costs (Maglyas et al. 2012; Fitzgerald et al. 2014). Lean approaches, on the other hand, are more geared towards quantitative measurement and decision making based on evidence (Fitzgerald et al. 2014).
One of the leading lean approaches used in SE is Kanban, which has been increasingly adopted by software organizations (Versionone 2017). Given its rising in popularity, researchers are increasing their attention to this theme, as can be seen in the four secondary studies analyzing different perspectives regarding Kanban (Corona and Pani 2013; Ahmad et al. 2013; Al-Baik and Miller 2015; Ahmad et al. 2018) covering over 20 primary studies. The technical literature is quite comprehensive reporting evidence regarding the benefits expected from Kanban and the challenges involved in its utilization.
However, despite the essential efforts in organizing a body of knowledge as observed in these four secondary studies (systematic reviews and mappings), there is still a lack of synthesis of the benefits and challenges of Kanban. Research syntheses are essential to provide a summarization, integration, combination, and comparison of findings from different studies. They are proposed on the premise that single studies are limited in the extent to which they may be generalized (Cruzes and Dybå 2011). Thus, a research synthesis represents a vital knowledge tool employed to manage and put scientific findings to use (Santos and Travassos 2016).
The primary goal of this paper is to investigate and identify the benefits and challenges of using Kanban in SE evidenced in the technical literature. It is a fundamental step in organizing an empirically-grounded reference for supporting the decision-making on this subject in SE. Also, the aggregated evidence presented in this paper aims to help software practitioners to understand and analyze the benefits and challenges of adopting and using Kanban in their software projects. Besides, to support SE researchers to identify areas where further research is needed to consolidate, understand or evolve the current knowledge regarding the use of Kanban in SE.
This paper is organized as follows. The next section briefly presents the basic concepts of Kanban and lean thinking. In Section 3, the study methodology is detailed, showing how primary studies were selected and aggregated using the Structured Synthesis Method (SSM). Section 4 describes how the primary studies were analyzed before aggregation. In the SSM, the primary studies have to be translated into diagrammatic representations used to aggregate the studies’ outcomes. In Section 5, the aggregation process and results are presented. The main benefits and challenges are explained and detailed. Then, Section 6 examines the results in the light of the existing body of evidence and discusses what can be learned from the aggregation. The threats to the validity of this synthesis study are explored in Section 7, and Section 8 concludes this paper.
2 Background
The Lean Methodology, also known as the Toyota Production System, is a production management process developed by Taiichi Ohno in the 40’s in the Japanese manufacturing industry context. In its conception, the term “Lean” was primarily associated with the reduction of costs (Ohno and Bodek 1988) through the “elimination of waste” or “doing more with less” (Conboy 2009). In the course of time, it became also focused on value for the customer and flow of work. It is common to refer to the lean concept as “lean thinking,” meaning that it is a mental model of how the world works (Poppendieck and Poppendieck 2013). In Womack and Jones (1997) the core lean principles are defined as follows:
• Value: can only be defined by the customer. Also, it must be expressed regarding a specific product;
• Value stream: the course of action through which a specific product must go to make it available;
• Flow: the pursuit of continuous production keeping interruptions at a minimal level;
• Pull: the customer pulls the product from the producer when it is needed rather than pushing the products, often unwanted, onto the customer;
• Perfection: a virtuous cycle is created by the interaction of the previous four principles. “Organizations begin to accurately specify value, identify the entire value stream, make the value-creating steps for specific products flow continuously, and let customers pull value from the enterprise.”
The Lean philosophy uses a number of tools to support management its operation. One of these tools is called kanban (based on Toyota Production System). In contrast, there is an adaptation of the kanban, made by Anderson (2010), which is called Capital K (or Kanban). In this paper, our focus is on the latter, the Kanban with Capital K used in the software development context. Kanban is an approach to visualize the workflow of a production system. It makes use of the queue theory to control and improve the value stream by aiming attention at the production flow. In SE, David Anderson was the first to use Kanban in 2004 with a software development team at Microsoft. According to Anderson (2010), Kanban has five principles:
• Visualize workflow: The board is the primary tool used to visualize and coordinate teamwork. Its columns show a sequence of activities, where the cards represent the features under work;
• Limit work in progress: WIP is a way to manage and limit the amount of working in progress. There should always be a way to limit and signal to pull a new task;
• Measure and manage flow: different statistics and diagrams can be used to monitor the Kanban process such as cycle/lead time, queue size, and cumulative flow diagrams;
• Make process policies explicit: policies are an essential part of assuring that the flow is achieved. They establish the conditions to make the pull system work. They include, for instance, how to assign tasks and activities to developers and when a work item can be pulled from one state to another;
• Use models to recognize improvement opportunities: three models are suggested (i) the Theory of Constraints, (ii) a subset of ideas from Lean Thinking that identifies wasteful activities as economic costs, and (iii) some variants that focus on understanding and reducing variability.
In SE, a Kanban system is usually implemented as a board on a wall with columns representing the different development process stages, i.e., the value stream (Poppendieck and Cusumano 2012). Cards are used to describe pieces of work or tasks, which are moved through the chart columns. A typical configuration used in a Kanban chart in the software context contains at least columns for the stages of specification, development, test, and deploy (Corona and Pani 2013). For each column, a limit for the work in progress is determined. As a result, flow and bottlenecks are usually the main issues addressed in daily meetings and play a crucial role in identifying improvement opportunities. Furthermore, as a visual tool, the chart stimulates the value stream evaluation materialized in it, also prompting not only the process improvement itself but also the defined policies supporting it.”
If you would like to continue reading this research paper, please visit: https://jserd.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40411-018-0057-1
Online Article
“Misconceptions about Kanban
By Leon Tranter, Extreme Uncertainty
There is an enormous amount of confusion and misinformation about Kanban. This article will clear up some of the major misconceptions that surround this topic. Let’s go through them one by one.
You have to choose between Kanban and Scrum
The most common misconception I’ve found is that people think you have to choose between Kanban and Scrum. This question is being asked and answered all over the internet right now.
Of course, it is a misconception, because the two are not incompatible.
Scrum is a product development framework. It is a system that defines roles, rules and artefacts that allow a small team to define and structure the work required to build and enhance a product.
Kanban is a system for controlling, limiting and eventually improving the flow of work through a system. Kanban concepts can be applied to any type of work – Scrum product development work, service management work, even traditional project management (AKA Waterfall) work.
Yes, Kanban can be applied to a Waterfall project. If there is work flowing through a system, Kanban can be applied. There’s nothing that says it has to be “agile” or “Scrum” – or not!
You can’t do sprints with Kanban
Another common misconception is that you can’t do sprints if you are doing Kanban – further reinforcing the “Kanban vs Scrum” myth. Kanban is a system that can be applied and overlaid upon any existing structure of work.
Now, many experienced Kanban practitioners move their system towards a “continuous flow” model, which does not have formal sprint boundaries. But if you’re starting off with Kanban, there’s nothing saying you can’t be doing it within sprints.
Kanban is only for production support
Another common misconception is that because Kanban does not have sprints (again, not true), it is not good at forward planning. And so it should only be used for production support, not development.
This is not true and based on other misconceptions. Kanban can be applied to any product system that has work flowing through it, whether it be support, enhancement, maintenance, development, and so on. It can be used for small or large projects, software work, manufacturing work, inventory management (where it came from), or service provision.
Explicit policies mean Kanban is rigid
Some people think that because Kanban required policies to be explicit, that they must, therefore, be rigid and carved in stone. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Kanban is about process optimization and continuous improvement. Making policies explicit is important: it ensures everything is transparent and agreed to, rather than the hidden rules and secret loopholes that govern many organizations.
But just because a policy is explicit doesn’t mean it cannot be changed. Policies and should change as the team learns and improves. Kanban just requires that whatever the latest policies are, are explicit and communicated transparently.
Kanban is all about visual boards
Some people think that Kanban is synonymous with visual management boards (or VMBs). They conclude that if you have a VMB, you’re doing Kanban, and if you don’t, you’re not. This is not true.
Visualising work is often an important step in the Kanban journey since it helps teams immediately spot queues, blockages, overloaded people, unattended work, and so on. Setting up a VMB is therefore often one of the first things a team will do when starting out with Kanban.
However, having a VMB does automatically mean you are doing Kanban! If a team does nothing about the problems on their board, they are not doing Kanban.
The real objective is Kanban is not to visualize work, but to improve it. And this is done fundamentally by two practices:
• Pull instead of push work
• Limit Work in Progress (or WIP).
If a team is pulling work instead of having it pushed on them, and if they are controlling their work in progress through WIP limits, they are doing Kanban. Even if they don’t have a board (though they probably will).
Kanban is easy to master
There is a misconception that Kanban is a “light” or “simple” system, best suited for teams that are finding Scrum “hard”. They think it is some sort of cheap “shortcut” or “hack” to get results without going through the pain of Scrum.
There is actually a nugget of truth here. Kanban is much easier to begin with than Scrum. Moving to Scrum requires major changes in how an organization structures teams, releases software, funds work, and so on. Many companies don’t, won’t or can’t make these changes, and just assign people Scrum role titles and leave it at that. This, of course, leads to “Scrumfall”, “Cargo Cult Agile“, “Zombie Scrum” and other horror movie titles.
Kanban is much easier, to begin with. You start by not changing anything and simply visualising the work that is in the system. However, it is a gross mistake to think that there is nothing more to it than that.
Moving properly on the Kanban journey will eventually involve many radical changes to how work flows through a system. Kanban is a system of continual change and improvement. Some of these, such as moving from a Push to a Pull system, will be just as difficult as some of the changes implemented by Scrum.
However, Kanban implementations may often be more successful in the long run because of the more gentle learning curve. Kanban leaves the more difficult changes until later, after teams have achieved some successes and built confidence in Kanban.”
If you would like to view the original article, please visit: https://www.extremeuncertainty.com/misconceptions-about-kanban/?ref=refind
Online Article
“The use of Kanban in commodity trading digital transformation
By Chris McManaman,
Commodity Trading Technology
Human driven digital transformation
I have a lot of tools in my garage. I bought a whole bunch of expensive Japanese carpentry saws so that I could get into Japanese carpentry. If you look in my backyard, you will find a garden but not much else. Subsequently, I am no longer allowed on Pinterest. The saws sit in the tool bench neatly arranged and full of potential.
I have personal AWS and Azure accounts. I go into these accounts and I see a mind boggling amount of tools that I can use to build stuff. I play with alot of them but I am barely scratching the surface. So much potential in these tools. If only the human had more time and resources to build something.
Most people leave out the human stuff and focus on the technology stuff. Digital transformation only works if you bring in the humans. Just ask the guys selling emerging technologies. Out of the following three factors, which matter most in digital transformation?
Organization?
People?
Tools?
Answer: All of the above.
Modifying the segregated conveyor belt
Segregation of duties is important to minimize operational risk in commodity trading. However, we have gone way are stifling innovation in the way that we have gone about it. Each person has a job. They do that job. They know the inputs and they know the outputs. They can prescribe efficiencies within the confines of their role.
In a commodity trading operation, everyone has personal tasks that they execute on an hourly, daily, weekly, monthly and annual schedule.
I need to make sure all the prices are loaded by 7 pm.
I need to make sure the confirmations are sent out by the end of the day.
I need to send out my weekly status report.
I need to make sure that all actual quantities are captured and reconciled by the end of the month.
This deadline type of thinking is good for running a trading transaction conveyor belt.
Now let’s apply this type of thinking to digital transformation.
I need to implement machine learning by 7 pm.
I need to create a blockchain by the end of this week.
I need to set the drones free at the end of each month.
By the end of the year I need to disrupt the industry.
Why the operational level matters to digital transformation
Digital Transformation is the process of creating effective teams that leverage advanced technologies to reinvent products and services from design and engineering to manufacturing and support, accelerating operational efficiency and enterprise-wide growth.
You don’t get this executed at the strategic level. You need the operational level involved in the conceptualization, design and execution phase.
But they are so locked in their ways…
No one said it was easy. This is a big reason why most digital transformation projects and software implementations fail or deliver meager results. The operational folks that keep the lights on are too busy…keeping the lights on. Innovation is fun until everyone is sitting in the dark.
In 2004, I came up with a stock options trading idea. The price of the stock went up exactly as I predicted. I just didn’t press the SELL button. Strategically, tactically I was ready to go. Operationally, I let a bunch of call options expire worthless because I was to busy doing my day job that actually paid the bills. Nothing like sitting in a design session while your options crater. Back in 2004 there was no app for that.
Start with the humans
Purchasing/trialing an emerging technology for a organization that is segregated by business functions and follow linear processes is a useless endeavor.
To help innovation while managing risk, we need to move from linear to agile without introducing operation chaos.
How?
Implement Kanban into the business.
Why Kanban?
It is the least disruptive Agile method to a business operation. It can layer onto your existing workflows. From Kanban you can go anywhere but to organizationally prep your business to be able to adapt to a digital transformation lifestyle start with Kanban.
Kanban is Japanese for “visual sign” or “card.” It is a visual framework used to implement Agile that shows what to produce, when to produce it, and how much to produce. It encourages small, incremental changes to your current system and does not require a certain set up or procedure (meaning, you could overlay Kanban on top of other existing workflows).
Kanban was inspired by the Toyota Production System and Lean Manufacturing. In the 1940s, Toyota improved its engineering process by modeling it after how supermarkets stock shelves. Engineer Taiichi Ohno noticed that supermarkets stock just enough product to meet demand, optimizing the flow between the supermarket and customer. Inventory would only be restocked when there was empty space on the shelf (a visual cue). And because inventory matched consumption, the supermarket improved efficiency in inventory management.
How does Kanban prep for Digital Transformation?
Kanban allows you to execute your options at the operational level so that your technology initiatives do not expire worthless.
At Toyota, different teams would create a card (or Kanban) to communicate that they had extra capacity and were ready to pull more materials. Because all requests for parts were pulled from the order, Kanban is sometimes called the “pull system.”
These same ideas apply in managing business processes and digital transformation initiatives. In this context, development work-in-progress (WIP) takes the place of tasks, and new work can only be added when there is an “empty space” on the team’s visual Kanban board. Kanban matches the amount of WIP to the team’s capacity, improving flexibility, transparency, and output.
The digital transformation can be conceptualized, planned and broken down by the strategic, tactical and operational design sessions and then integrated into the Kanban system.
• CM might have too much on his plate.
• What is wrong with trade 12929?
• Should we switch some of CM’s project tasks to SJ?
The great thing about this is that the operational person is no longer working from an inaccessible project plan and their personal job tracking spreadsheet. They don’t need to walk into their supervisors office and explain why something fell through the cracks. Everyone should see things falling through the cracks and apply preventative measures ( i.e. move deadlines or reassign tasks).
Kanban has proven to be a very effective method for bringing efficiencies to the trading floor. It is also proving to be very effective in helping operations folks manage multiple sets of workloads.”
If you would like to view the original article, please visit: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/use-kanban-commodity-trading-digital-transformation-chris-mcmanaman/
Course Manuals 1-6
Course Manual 1: Visualize Workflow
The power of the human brain to digest graphics 60,000 times faster than text is an amazing statistic. This implies that we digest visual stuff, like photos, far more quickly than text. Using the human brain’s affinity for visual content, Kanban as a visual project management tool enables teams to comprehend and evaluate what actually occurs in their work. You can better see workflow through a Kanban board than you can by reading a written report about how your team is performing. A Kanban board gives you a visual depiction of how your work is progressing, which can help you quickly identify any process gaps.
Knowing how you are completing the work is crucial because Kanban focuses on the process. With each Kanban deployment, visualizing your process comes first and foremost.
Why you need to visualize workflow
For this reason, the first step in implementing Kanban is visualizing your workflow. Each process that wants to be improved must first be thoroughly understood in order to do so. The main input for a Kanban system, in which each step in the process corresponds to a column or lane on your Kanban board, is a graphical workflow.
In Kanban, examining the work flow is referred to as visualizing the workflow. As a result, teams may assess the volume of work entering their Kanban system, gain a better understanding of how they handle it, and eventually optimize their workflow by implementing small changes. Team members are better able to provide continuous delivery and superior results when the process is streamlined.
Oprah Winfrey’s use of vision boards
One of the biggest celebrity proponents of affirmations may be the media mogul, who rose from poverty to become one of the richest women in the world. In addition to routinely sharing success stories of positive thinking on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Oprah talks about making her own vision boards to achieve her goals.
Her commitment started young: As a child watching her grandmother toil away, Winfrey says she’d tell herself over and over again: “My life won’t be like this. My life won’t be like this, it will be better.”
Besides frequently showcasing success stories of positive thinking on The Oprah Winfrey Show — and even discussing creating her own vision boards to realize her dreams — her many words of wisdom to fans include: “Create the highest, grandest vision possible for your life, because you become what you believe.”
How to visualize your workflow
Creating a process map could seem like a difficult undertaking. You can feel so overburdened by the sheer quantity of effort involved in producing your goods or service that you find it challenging to even imagine your workflow.
You may complete your workflow visualization exercise and begin implementing Kanban by following these four easy steps.
Step 1: Identify the scope of the process you want to visualize
The start and finish of your procedure are the start and end of the scope being discussed here. Many connected procedures can be included in business operations. It’s crucial to decide which of these processes your Kanban system should concentrate on first. Although there is no rule prohibiting teams from developing extensive Kanban workflows, it is desirable if the workflow is manageable and is concentrated on a particular team’s work and objectives. Finding out who is doing the process and what they hope to accomplish when they execute the process is an excellent method to define scope.
Consider the process of developing a web application.
There will probably be a process that deals with conceptualizing the product and features, which we can refer to as the product discovery process, and the actual product development, which we can refer to as the product delivery process. These high-level operations can be thought of as discrete workflows in which the result of one process serves as the input for the following one.
Product managers, product owners, UX designers, and possibly some members of the development team are increasingly frequently responsible for conducting product discovery to evaluate technical viability. Choosing which features will be included in the product—or simply deciding what to build—is the aim of this process. User interviews, feature requests from actual clients, and feature concept or idea briefs are typical inputs to this procedure.
The product team engages in a collaborative discovery process where they evaluate whether the notion is desirable, realistic, and doable in order to sort through the sea of ideas that are presented to them. A set of activities that the Product Discovery team can carry out to ascertain these could result in the creation of user story maps, prototypes, personas, user scenarios, epics, and user stories. The development team turns all of these into concrete solutions as part of the Product Delivery process. The Product Delivery team then performs its own set of tasks to turn a user narrative into a real product feature.
With the help of this example, we can design two Kanban systems whose scope is based on the objectives of these two groups: one is responsible for selecting the features that will be included in the product, and the other is in charge of developing the feature itself.
As we can see, we framed the procedure in terms of the people doing the task and their objectives. When determining the scope of the process where you wish to adopt Kanban, you can take a similar method.
Step 2: Enumerate the steps that go into your process
It’s time to analyze your process and explain the steps that go into creating your product or service after you’ve determined the breadth of your process. What steps must be taken for a task to be deemed complete?
You may actually list the steps in your process using the inputs and outputs you specified in the first step of this workflow visualization exercise. Such inputs would typically take some form of the To Do lane in your Kanban workflow. Consider how you would receive a request, handle it, and then distribute it to your clients. The item has successfully completed all required steps in your process and is prepared to be released to the customer if it is in the Done lane. What are the procedures between the To Do and Done lanes that will enable you to confidently declare that your product can be released?
Considering our sample of the Product Discovery process, we can guess that they carry out the following steps:
It is only logical that some features will be excluded from the process as choosing which ones to include is the primary objective of the product discovery process. While the team has determined that a feature won’t be included in the final product, it is nevertheless regarded as “done” in this instance. To let the team know they have already made a decision on the fate of a thought or idea, the Done lane for this particular process can comprise “rejected” concepts and “approved” concepts in the form of epics and user stories.
As an alternative, our sample Product Delivery procedure might resemble this:
The Product Delivery team follows these procedures to add the actual features to the product using the prioritized backlog from the Product Discovery phase.
We can see from our examples that each stage of the process has its own unique inputs and outputs. You can also choose the steps in your process by looking at these inputs and outputs.
It is crucial that you work with your team or at the very least have a representative from each functional team member when listing the phases in your process so that you can model it as accurately as possible.
Step 3: Translate your process steps to lanes in your Kanban board
It’s time to add the parts that make up the question marks in your process flow to your Kanban board now that you are aware of them.
This board serves as our process sample for product discovery:
For our product delivery process, while we have this:
The To Do and Done lanes may also be referred to as Backlog, Ready for To Do, and Finished for Done. Any label that makes sense for your team can be used to indicate which tasks you need to begin working on and when you should finish them.
The types of things you work on can also be grouped using swimlanes. You can also include sub-steps inside of a process step to further specialize your processes. Check out the examples of kanban boards we have to help you picture the possibilities for your own kanban board.
Step 4: Do the work and seek to continuously improve
It’s time to put your workflow to work now that you have your Kanban board prepared! Allow your tasks to find their way to your Kanban board, then review the outcomes. By setting WiP restrictions, for example, your board can help you better manage the flow of work and identify the genuine capacity of your team members within each process step. Also, you will become familiar with your process metrics and apply them to enhance workflow management. When sufficient process metrics and data are available, you may utilize process improvement models to gradually alter and improve your workflow.
Regularly evaluate your procedure and adjust your workflow as necessary. Continuous improvement is the core principle of Kanban, and it should guide your adoption of the system.
Visualizing Success Story: 15 Minutes of Fame
Lisa Nichols, a once-struggling single mother who is now a successful entrepreneur, wrote the phrase “Lisa Reveals Everything On Oprah” on her vision board. She actually did that a few years later. Based on The Secret, a film on the law of attraction in which the main character generates his dream home from a visualization board, Nichols, a motivational speaker, was invited by Oprah to talk about her experience with a visualization board.
On describing her own visualization board procedure, Nichols stated, “It’s as if you were at a restaurant and you ordered something. “You completely anticipate getting it served in that manner. The universe operates in this way. Consciously and unconsciously, you are sending out requests and anticipating a response. As a result, if you declare, “I’m never going to have a good relationship,” you have just placed an order.”
The Science of Kanban Visualization
Although it may seem strange, to-do lists can actually reduce your productivity. See the top five benefits of Kanban visualization.
Does visualizing your work really increase productivity by that much? Yes, according to the science of Kanban visualization.
What is visualization?
You’ve definitely heard of visualization if you’re attempting to be more effective, deliberate, or productive in your professional or personal life. The act of creating a visual representation is known as visualization. We typically use the term to refer to visualizing your work, which is using visual signals to manage your workflow rather than written to-do lists (like in Kanban).
The term “visualization” can also refer to the mindfulness technique of establishing a goal and “imagining” it into existence.
Olympic athletes, Formula 1 drivers, and NBA players all use the power of visualization to mentally prepare themselves for achieving greatness.
Although it might seem a little fanciful, this is supported by science. Science has demonstrated that, for athletes, imagining themselves performing a movement is just as useful as really doing it. This is due to the close relationship between action and imagery, which involves the motor cortex. The motor cortex is immediately activated when we think about our body performing an action, such as raising an arm or moving forward.
A workflow management technique called kanban combines the advantages of visualizing your task with the strength of mindfulness (creating new realities by visualizing them inside your mind). Understanding the theory behind Kanban visualization makes it easier to understand how improving your workflow truly just involves improving your mentality.
5 ways to-do lists limit productivity
Making a to-do list is a common action that is virtually always associated with productivity. To-do lists are highly restrictive when we try to scale them to the team or organizational level, despite the fact that writing down what needs to be done might be a helpful method to clarify our individual tasks.
Let’s talk about how this popular strategy can actually hinder our productivity.
Text vs. visual information
We were designed from birth to process visual data since we are visual beings. In evolutionary terms, reading text is a relatively recent development. Any tool used to organize our work, such as a Kanban board or to-do list, should help us do more.
But processing a lot of text at once is cognitively exhausting.
Because of this, we frequently use visual techniques at school to aid in our understanding of the material presented in our textbooks: Flash cards, graphs, charts, and color-coded systems are all used. This enables us to immediately observe and identify what is crucial.
Similar to this, visual work management techniques like Kanban encourage our eyes to naturally move towards the most crucial information. You need to maintain track of the information if an item is on your written to-do list and its due date is approaching. It will keep track of the deadline for you if it’s on your online Kanban board, moving color from white to yellow and then finally to red to indicate an impending deadline or an unfinished assignment.
Not prioritized
You write down any chores that come to mind and then begin completing them one at a time from your to-do list, which serves as a kind of snapshot in time.
To-do lists usually aren’t a true reflection of what we actually really need to be working on, on a specific day.
They more accurately reflect what we perceive to be urgent or significant. Nevertheless, when you use Kanban visualization to arrange your activities, you can see what you should be working on right now and reorder tasks as necessary. Within the framework of your other job, you might accept additional requests (or not).
No beginning, no end
With to-do lists, it’s simple to let our burden become unmanageable. To your heart’s (dis)content, you can keep adding items to the bottom of the to-do list. The issue with this is that as you add to your list of duties, you’ll be able to do them less quickly since you’ll need to spend more time and energy just keeping track of everything you have going on.
Visual work management techniques (like Kanban) frequently incorporate techniques for actively (and proactively) managing your team’s and individual capacity, assisting you in keeping your workload manageable so it may continue to progress towards “Done.” Read our article, Why We Need WIP Limitations, for additional information on how to manage your workload.
Not synced
While certain team-specific cloud-based to-do list apps exist, most people who regularly use to-do lists keep them on paper or in a notes app on their phone or computer.
The issue with this is that your to-do lists and your coworkers’ lists do not automatically sync. These might not even be compatible with other work management tools you could be using.
Unless you diligently groom your to-do list to keep it organized by priority and due date, your lists probably go “stale” (become inaccurate) quickly.
You probably begin each day with a brand-new to-do list, which means that you are in charge of selecting the items that go on it as there is no context or history of prioritizing one task over another.
Not collaborative
At the individual level, to-do lists don’t naturally give you a means to convey status, priority, or urgency—all necessary details needed for teamwork. Even team-oriented cloud-based to-do list apps aren’t always the best for intense cooperation.
Consider the scenario when you and your team have five jobs that are equally urgent and critical. Your team has a list of additional duties, all of which range in importance and urgency. At the list level, the tool you’re using merely shows the task’s name, a due date, and the person to whom it is assigned. How do you inform your team of which tasks should be completed first? What needs to be done by the team in order to acquire the data required to rank these tasks?
With a Kanban tool, you can use visual cues to communicate information such as priority and urgency.
You can design your board to arrange work items in a way that is clear to everyone. To ensure that everyone knows exactly where each activity is in your process, you can illustrate the various processes. If other, more urgent activity must take precedence, you can “block” cards or move them backward in the process.
Visualize a more productive future
By utilizing Kanban and the power of visualization, your team will be able to do more each day since the information they need will be simpler to access, comprehend, and share.
Visualizing Success Story: Olympic Motivation
Ruben Gonzalez, a three-time Olympian, wrote to Sports Illustrated as a young boy to ask where he could take luge lessons. Gonzalez received a picture of a man racing on a luge from the magazine in the mail, and he framed it so he could see it from his bed every morning.
Gonzalez claimed that “The Luge Man” was the first person he saw each morning when she awoke. That image “served as a daily reminder that I was preparing for the Olympics. He prompted me to practice healthy eating, exercise, and surround myself with achievers. The last person I saw was The Luge Man at night before turning out the lights. I had dreams about the luge and the Olympics the entire night”
“The image brought the dream to the forefront of my consciousness during the day. It trained my subconscious mentality to pursue my goal at night.”
Gonzalez now has a website entirely devoted to encouraging others to try visualization boarding for themselves since he is so convinced of the results that it brought to his life.
Course Manual 2: Apply WIP Constraints
Limiting work in progress, sometimes known as WIP limits for short, is a common Agile concept that is simple to comprehend and articulate. Adding numbers to a handful of the columns on your Kanban board and following them seems to be all that is required. If only everything were that easy. Because what often transpires when WIP restrictions are added to your JIRA board? Nothing, to be precise.
There’s a lot of work to do before you add the actual limits. Let’s get started!
Understanding the workload
We must comprehend the team and their task in order to create limitations and comprehend why they function (or do not).
What is the current Work In Progress?
Divide the entire number of work items (features, stories, or other small deliverables) currently in development by the number of team members. You’ll discover that each employee typically has between three and ten work items in process, sometimes even more. Your initial WIP cap will be determined in part by this baseline. The type of work being done and the typical lead time may also be important factors in choosing the proper limit. Later, more on that.
What about the workload balance?
The amount of tasks assigned to the team members frequently varies greatly. It is fairly unusual for one person to have one or two work items in progress and another to have ten. This has to be investigated because it could indicate a lot of different things. Here are just a few typical explanations:
● In your team, you have a hero who is either more knowledgeable than the others or has simply been there the longest. He has become the go-to person for everything these days.
● The team has a high demand for a group of tasks that only one or a small number of people can or will complete. This might be caused by a lack of T-shaped individuals, a small range of ability, or simply an unbalanced workload. You need a team that can work together on projects if you want to keep WIP low. The good news is that applying WIP will aid in your efforts to develop that capacity.
● A team member or team members may be working secretly. On the board, the individual who appears to be the least busy could actually be the busiest in real life. You never know; she might be spending 80% of her time on something that has no effect whatsoever on the board.
● There isn’t a backlog or other single point of entry for your team, either. Demand cannot be balanced because team members take work items directly from multiple sources.
What do people do when their work is blocked?
This is one of the most frequent causes of high WIP, making it one of the most crucial to address. This is another typical criticism of the idea as a whole. So am I expected to just sit there if I’m waiting for someone else? This can’t possibly work!
When your present project is stuck, your natural tendency is to move on to something new. We must combat this. The team has to sit down and talk about this subject in depth. As a team, you must decide how to respond when work is hindered. And generally speaking, you need to concur on the following:
● Instead of giving up on blocked tasks, persist in removing the obstacle. Want something from another person? Instead of emailing someone, pick up the phone. QA environment down once more? Fix the underlying issue.
● Ask for help from teammates or, if required, someone outside the team if you are unable to remove the blocker on your own.
● Do not begin a new work item if you are still unable to finish the one you were working on. Help someone else on the team complete a task that is currently underway. If they are performing a task that you are unfamiliar with, now is the ideal time to pick it up.
● If you must start something new, choose something low on the priority list that you can finish fast. After it becomes unblocked, you want to be able to get back to your original work item as soon as possible. The alternative is that you will already be occupied when you finally receive what you require from whoever was unable to assist you earlier. The project is then further delayed.
Moreover, keep an eye out for handoffs. Is the same person in charge of a work item from the beginning to the end? Work that is stalled or waiting is frequently caused by handovers for testing or acceptance. Limiting WIP is a fantastic approach to make such a setup more difficult!
Visualize all work
Teams frequently perform unseen work, as was previously indicated. You may want to eliminate some people for the following reasons:
● Several tasks, such as taking care of support calls or going to sales meetings, are not monitored. If we knew the general size of this demand, this may be acceptable. We must be aware that if it is variable, this could make us less predictable.
● In addition to their team responsibilities, specific individuals may have special work. This can be as a result of historical factors or a unique skill set that makes them frequently requested for assistance. They might not have tracked it on the board for a variety of reasons. They may be “hiding” it for political reasons, they may not have given it any thought, or they may not even be aware of how much effort goes into it.
● Due to the fact that the team isn’t really operating as a team, some people struggle to picture their task. It’s difficult to see the advantage of envisioning something for others if you complete the entire task on your own without any help. Time seems to be being wasted.
● The improper level of work is visualized. You observe work items that, because they are insufficiently granular, stagnate for weeks on end, concealing the real nature and intricacy of the task behind a single work item.
The power of Visualization: GE
The majority of the time, when people discuss effective data visualization, GE is cited as one of the primary examples. Since 2009, this market leader has embraced data visualization as a means of expanding and improving. In a 2013 interview with Harvard Business Review, they claimed that since the introduction of this strategy, everything has changed, from storytelling to annual reports for investors to even thought leadership. One of the first to really strike a chord with viewers and elevate their data visualization skills was this graphic.
The power of Visualization: Refinery 29
Data visualization from a campaign that would support their corporate values and enable them to forge an emotional connection with their readers in 2018 was valuable to the international media firm that specializes in young women. Refinery 29 discovered that 67% of women in the US were plus size in the midst of the #MeToo movement. The brand concentrated on employing models who reflected this reality to ground their message, and the campaign used that number as its title.
It will take some time and effort to figure this all out. Before you may investigate further if you are stepping in to help from the outside, you must first earn the team’s trust. So you must persevere until you have pictured as much of the task on the board as you can. To realize your true potential as a team, you must at least be aware of anything that was left outside the board.
An obvious red flag is when a task that ought to take three days takes weeks. Where is the extra time going if a person is concentrating on a small number of tasks and everything is listed on the board? When conducting an investigation, be sure to be honest, open-minded, and non-accusatory.
When is it okay to break the limits?
You haven’t come to an agreement on how it is supposed to work, which is a common reason why WIP limitations don’t last. Someone will eventually reach their limit. What happens next? Are they forbidden from breaking it under any circumstances? If so, when is it acceptable? Classes of Service is a useful instrument. One simple way to control how this should operate in practice is to link policies to categories of services or types of work items. An illustration would be to consistently disregard boundaries when there are production issues. This won’t succeed if your team doesn’t initially come to an understanding on these points.
In the future, it’s a good idea to spend some time figuring out why boundaries are broken. This shouldn’t happen frequently if the limitations are appropriate, so why did it occur? Was it due to a unique cause, a sign of a larger issue, or proof that the restrictions are erroneous?
Explain what is happening to your customer(s)
Your team must stop accepting requests when they reach capacity if this is to succeed. This implies that we will add a new word to our team’s lexicon. “No” is the word. When you try to convince most teams of this idea, they are usually not convinced. Even fewer stakeholders are impressed.
It’s possible that you’ll need to walk the team and its stakeholders through the fundamentals of queuing theory. Although it won’t persuade them, at least it will sound credible and make it more difficult for them to object.
Customers take two: Introducing options and consequences
Try this if the above attempt to introduce the notion of “No” fails: Describe how we will now keep the number of tasks we work on concurrently to a minimum. We will only be interested in the most crucial and/or pressing work issues rather than accepting all requests. Our customer should be asked, “What is most important to you right now?” and the response should be their top five priorities, not their top fifty.
It’s okay if they change their minds, but they’ll have to choose something we haven’t begun yet and take it out. By definition, something else must suddenly be less significant if something new is the most important item.
End of part 1
Finally! We’ve put in a lot of grueling work, but believe me, it’s been worthwhile. Once you’ve completed everything above, you have a solid foundation from which to impose reasonable WIP restrictions. Moreover, you will be much more likely to comprehend why the team is unable to adhere to the restrictions (which is almost bound to happen).
Let’s talk about reducing your WIP now.
Limiting WIP
Every Lean / Kanban practise aims to maximize value for the customer while reducing waste, as was previously mentioned. Waste is everything that does not create value for the consumer according to lean thinking.
Work-in-process limits (WIP limits) are fixed constraints that are frequently used on Kanban boards to assist teams in actively reducing waste in their workflows. Teams may improve their workflows for value delivery with the help of WIP restrictions.
This straightforward adage sums up the core concept of WIP limits: Stop starting, start finishing. WIP restrictions urge us to complete work that is currently underway before adding new tasks to the system. Teams find it more challenging to complete work the more tasks they attempt to manage at once.
You will see how WIP restrictions may assist teams in identifying the most frequent sources of process waste, reducing or eliminating those sources so they can more effectively provide value to their customers.
Defining WIP Limits
The number of work items (cards) that can be actively worked on at once is limited by WIP restrictions. Although they can be used to manage capacity on team Kanban boards, they are most frequently employed at the individual, team, and even corporate levels.
WIP limitations can be applied to individual lanes, the full “in process” section of your Kanban board, or both. WIP limitations can be implemented in a variety of ways, but generally speaking, they should be moderately restrictive.
They ought to make us prioritize different tasks based on their importance, urgency, and potential financial cost. If your team never reaches its WIP limit, your WIP limit is definitely too high.
If team-wide work-in-progress (WIP) limits are being implemented, a good starting point is the number of team members plus one. For example, if a board has 10 people working on it, set a WIP limit of 11 as a starting point.
Why We Need WIP Limits: The Common Culprits
WIP restrictions are challenging to apply because they seem counterintuitive: Why work less if you can accomplish more? But, the reality is that if we can develop the discipline to actively manage the amount of work we are doing at any given time, both individually and as a team, we may obtain the attention necessary to complete tasks swiftly and to a high standard. This implies that we can accomplish more by working on fewer things at once.
WIP restrictions can assist us in proactively reducing and eliminating a variety of waste kinds. Here are a few of the most convincing arguments in favor of WIP limitations.
Context switching
Context switching occurs when we divide our attention, time, and mental resources among an excessive number of moving items. By juggling too many projects at once, we waste these limited resources switching between settings rather than improving the quality of our work.
Gloria Mark, a professor of informatics at the University of California—Irvine, conducted a study that found it typically takes people 23 minutes and 15 seconds to regain focus following even a little interruption, such as a “quick question” via Slack or an unwanted discussion by the coffee maker. If we experience interruptions five times each day, context flipping costs us roughly two hours every day. That amounts to more than 10 hours per week, longer than a standard workday. Imagine the effect this has over the course of a year on an entire organization!
Our stress levels can be dramatically impacted by context shift. In the same study, researchers assigned two groups of employees to accomplish a straightforward office task: responding to emails. As the other group got calls and IM messages, one group’s task was uninterrupted. In terms of stress, frustration, mental strain, and workload, the interrupted group scored much higher on the NASA scale.
How WIP limits can help context switching
WIP limitations keep individuals and teams concentrated on completing just a few projects (as few as possible) at a time, which helps teams reduce context switching. Concentration is what makes it possible for us to produce high-quality work from beginning to end. WIP restrictions teach us to concentrate on completing tasks as rapidly as possible, with the least amount of interruptions, holdups, or handoffs.
Limiting the amount of work on our plates at any given time gives us the clarity and focus to deliver higher quality work faster while also reducing our stress. While we still need to exercise self-control to avoid other workplace distractions (email, Slack, conversations with coworkers), doing so will also help us focus and deliver our work more effectively.
Excessive meetings
Excessive meetings are a regrettable side effect of too much WIP. Keeping a team on the same page is significantly more challenging when everyone is juggling many projects at once. A popular way to achieve alignment is to hold a status meeting to go over the progress that has been accomplished and what needs to be done next.
If meetings were a rarity on our calendars, we’d probably be better at them: Everyone would be aligned behind an agenda, ready to discuss the essential problems. We would decide with clarity and focus, then return to carrying out the work. Meetings themselves are not the issue.
The issue is that most of our calendars are booked up with status meetings because we have too much work in progress. Many of us don’t even have time throughout the typical workday to prepare for these encounters. As a result, our meetings are frequently lengthier and less productive because it typically takes the first half of the meeting to get everyone on the same page regarding what is being discussed and what has to be agreed in order to move forward.
If you consider the collective salary of everyone involved in a meeting, and what they could do if they instead spent that hour delivering focused, high-quality work, you’ll realize that status meetings come with a hefty price tag.
To calculate meeting costs, the Harvard Business Review published a tool last year. Analyze your own financial data to determine the cost of status meetings for your company.
Of course, scheduling meetings can be quite challenging logistically, which might cause lengthy delays. Work might be put off for weeks if everyone’s schedules are completely filled for weeks in advance and none of the five parties involved could find 30 minutes to meet and make a decision. The expense of postponing this task for several weeks should be taken into account.
How WIP limits can help excessive meetings
Using Kanban alone significantly reduces the requirement for status meetings through the use of visualization. A card’s status should be clear from its placement on a well-designed board. The card can be opened by anybody who wants to see the history, specifics, comments, and attachments to see what progress has been made.
Limits on WIP further lessen our requirement for frequent meetings. A team member’s calendar will appear very different if they are working on two or three projects at once compared to, say, seven projects. Fewer moving things make it simpler to stay focused on work, so we can spend less time and money on expensive, ineffective meetings and can spend our time delivering pieces of value across the finish line.
Elon Musk’s view on meetings
According to a GQ article of the tech entrepreneur, Musk is known for claiming that meetings are what occur when people are not working. He’s still open to quick meetings as long as everyone involved gets a lot done and benefits. Alternatively, Musk suggests hastily leaving.
He advised Tesla staff to leave a meeting or end a call as soon as it was clear they weren’t contributing. “It is impolite to make someone stay and waste their time, not disrespectful to leave.”
Duplicate work
The undesirable side consequences of inadequate communication in teams include redo work and duplicate efforts. They are frequently an indication of two related problems: excessive WIP and improper use of Kanban boards. The first step in team communication improvement is visualization, but communication problems won’t go away on their own if the team doesn’t embrace a systems thinking mentality.
When completed work does not meet business needs, rework is necessary. This could occur for a variety of reasons:
● The information needed to do the work is incorrect or lacking.
● When the work is being done, the business requirements change.
● Before work begins, business requirements are not adequately conveyed.
● External forces make the current work useless and demand that it be redone.
Similar to this, duplication of effort frequently indicates a communication issue. Frequently, this occurs as a result of team members starting a task without first dedicating themselves to it on the Kanban board. It can even occur if a task isn’t even shown visually on the board; in this case, no one is aware that it is being worked on or who is doing it.
The individuals working on the task might not be aware that they want additional information in order to fulfill the business requirements for that activity, which could result in not only a duplication of effort but also the need for a new endeavor.
How WIP limits can help duplicate work
More effective communication, which begins with visualizing work and imposing WIP limitations, could prevent each of these problems. Communicating card assignments is made easier by visualizing the job (and who is assigned to it). When correctly implemented and managed as a team, WIP restrictions make it possible for a systems thinking approach that can assist prevent these kinds of communication breakdowns.
This is how: When WIP limitations are in place, Kanban teams will frequently convene to discuss the work that is on their board. The daily standup is the most typical format for this, which is a brief meeting when the team discusses how to cooperate to move work from “In Progress” to “Done.” WIP limitations force teams to have crucial discussions regarding work that is currently in motion since they limit the amount of work that can be actively worked on at any given time.
Teams will inquire during standups about things like:
● What’s closest to being done? What can we do today to move it off the board?
● Is anyone working on anything that’s not on the board?
● Is anything currently blocked from making progress?
● Is anyone available to help move card X to “Done”?
Teams may prevent costly rework and duplication of effort by using these questions to compel essential discussions about team priorities, chances for collaboration, and more.
Handoff delays
Teams frequently aim to shorten the time it takes to complete each stage in the process while using Kanban to speed up delivery. This is predicated on the (sometimes incorrect) premise that the active work stages are taking the longest amount of time to finish. In truth, work frequently spends a lot more time waiting between active actions than it does actually working on it.
Handoff delays are the time that passes between active work steps. These frequently occur when a team’s and its members’ WIP levels are too high. It is more difficult to coordinate efforts and maintain momentum when everyone is juggling many tasks and contributing to each task at different stages.
How WIP limits can help handoff delays
By restricting how much work the team can have ongoing at any given time, WIP limitations shorten handoff delays. Team members have a greater possibility to maintain momentum on work when there are fewer work items in motion. Also, they have the clarity to improve their process for more efficient, quicker handoffs and are able to communicate with one another more effectively about how to keep work moving.
Further Benefits of WIP Limits
WIP restrictions can be difficult to implement, but the advantages of approaching our job with discipline, focus, and clarity far outweigh the discomfort of change. Four of the several advantages of utilizing WIP limitations to improve our operations are listed below.
1. WIP limits enable us to manage capacity
Every day, each team attempts to optimize customer value with a limited amount of time, effort, and brainpower. Most teams are not particularly good at managing their capacity in an efficient manner. A usual strategy is to try to use everyone on the team to the fullest extent possible so that no one is underutilized.
Before it gets into the hands of the customer, work has no value. The majority of work in most teams requires the effort and knowledge of several team members; relatively little labor is really “solo” work.
If every team member is fully engaged on the duties they have been given, they won’t be able to communicate with one another, answer to inquiries, or assist one another in completing tasks. Hence, in practice, 100% utilization means that everyone is incredibly busy, but nothing gets accomplished.
WIP restrictions allow us to more efficiently use the combined efforts of our team members; as a result, we develop systems where the team works together to complete jobs as rapidly as possible rather than having everyone try to push their duties to the next stage.
This indicates that even while less work is being done at once and even though some team members may be underused at various stages of the process, the client is actually receiving more value.
2. WIP limits encourage us to practice systems thinking
WIP restrictions make us prioritize, plan, finish, and deploy work as a team. Making decisions that benefit the entire team so that our activities contribute to accomplishing team goals is a concept known as systems thinking. Teams that practice systems thinking are better able to utilize their resources as a whole.
WIP limits ensure that teams operate with respect to the system’s overall capacity, in turn ensuring a fluid, consistent flow of value.
Although a team WIP limit of seven wouldn’t do much to increase production if one person was allocated to five of the cards on the board, most teams additionally impose unofficial WIP limitations on individuals.
Many Kanban teams regularly or daily perform standup meetings to evaluate their boards. This is an opportunity to evaluate the team’s workload at the moment and talk about how to remove cards from the board as quickly as feasible. They might inquire as to:
● What’s closest to being done? What can we do today to move it off the board?
● Is anyone working on anything that’s not on the board?
● Is anything currently blocked from making progress?
● Is anyone available to help move card X to “Done”?
The better question to ask is “What should I pull next?” We are compelled to consider “What can I help move off the board before I pull something next” by WIP constraints.
Team members get cards while taking into account the work’s long-term effects when they are unable to contribute to any of the cards that are currently being worked on: A team member may decide to pull a card that doesn’t require design resources if, for instance, the marketing team’s only designer has three cards in process and there are only seven cards that can be in play at once. These choices aid in ensuring a constant, seamless flow of value throughout the team.
3. WIP limits help us identify opportunities for process improvement
We lack the bandwidth to monitor and assess our process when we are overloaded with WIP. Without giving it any thought, we do whatever is necessary to complete the task at hand.
We can better understand our processes and determine whether or not they are effective for us by implementing WIP restrictions. Many teams also find it helpful to establish explicit process policies, hold one another accountable for adhering to the rules set by the team, and apply WIP limitations. They include the following:
● What card details need to be filled out before a card can be prioritized?
● Who assigns team members to cards? Do we self-assign or is it okay to assign someone when we need them?
● How do we define “done” as a team?
● What criteria need to be met before work can leave our “Review” lane?
● What criteria need to be met in order to pull in a card that exceeds our WIP limit?
By adhering to procedure guidelines, you can guarantee that everyone is using the board the same manner. As a result, the group has a baseline from which to examine patterns across time.
Teams might attempt to spot trends in bottlenecks, blocks, handoff delays, and other situations. They can talk about these patterns in their daily standup and periodically do retrospectives to talk about and execute process improvements.
4. WIP limits introduce slack into the system
We previously discovered that occasionally applying WIP limitations results in some team members being underutilized. Underutilized time is known as slack time in the Kanban system, and it is considered to be a sign of a healthy system.
Slack time makes room for us to enhance our working processes. Slack time can be used by team members to carry out CIP initiatives, view educational webinars, or come up with program optimization suggestions. They can arrange their Kanban boards, update dated documents, or perform any other action that is significant, beneficial, and capable of improving their ability to perform their duties.
Slack time is a fantastic opportunity for professional growth while at work and can have a significant impact on job happiness. Slack time wouldn’t exist if WIP constraints didn’t exist. WIP restrictions allow us to work slowly and deliberately enough to make room for growth.
Stop Starting, Start Finishing
The first step in streamlining flow is visualization, but if your team stops there, it isn’t really Kanban practice. As teams start using their board to actively monitor and optimize flow for value delivery, the potential of Kanban becomes apparent. This frequently entails overcoming some deeply ingrained professional behaviors, such as context hopping, holding too many meetings, and hiding work in progress (WIP).
WIP limitations can give us the structure, discipline, and communication opportunities we need to identify and get rid of our most expensive sources of waste. In the end, work has no worth until it is in the hands of the consumer, thus they educate us how to stop starting and start finishing. WIP restrictions may at first seem inconvenient and uncomfortable, but they are essential to bringing out the full potential of our teams and can make us more productive, communicative, and collaborative than before.
Course Manual 3: Make Policies Explicit
As stated in the previous course manual, establishing Work-in-Progress restrictions is one technique to achieve a consistent flow (WiP limits). But in addition to adopting WiP restrictions, there is another Kanban characteristic that aids teams in creating a consistent workflow. To do this, process policies are used.
Process policies provide standards for how a team should carry out its work. These rules provide parameters for the team’s work execution and regulate their working method. Process policies can also be compared to checklists that the team uses to specify how work can be moved from one process lane to another.
Policy example
Why we need Process Policies
To establish a steady flow of work, the Kanban project management approach is used. Stability can only be established when items are applied consistently. When it comes to the execution of processes, rules, procedures, and ultimately policies assist in reaching a level of consistency and standard.
Teams need policies and procedures to guide their execution so that the process can be applied consistently and with order. Teams can function at the level of required quality when policies are enforced. It creates consensus among team members over how they approach tasks that move through their Kanban system.
Why we Need Explicit Process Policies
The rules of the road
Let’s start with a relatable example to better understand the advantages of implementing process policies at work and why they must be both clear and visible: highway traffic management.
Every nation establishes a set of universal guidelines and rules that all users of the road must follow. The principles and typical behaviors of vehicular traffic are described by these “rules of the road,” which also regulate interactions between cars and pedestrians. Examples include intersections, priority or right of way, speed limits, and pedestrian rights. The highway code specifically mentions and captures these rules. To demonstrate that they are aware of and understand the rules, every motorist must pass a test and obtain a license.
When everyone abides by the traffic laws, there are no accidents and everyone can get where they are going safely.
Now think about the negative effects of not having any road traffic policies, or even just one driver willfully breaking the rules: interruption, mayhem, and far too frequently, injury.
In manufacturing
Now let’s use this comparison to the workplace. For a variety of reasons, manufacturing teams place a lot of emphasis on properly stated process policies. Another of them is safety. To prevent workers from being wounded when working heavy machinery, shop floors need clear operating instructions posted in prominent locations.
To guarantee that workers construct things in the proper order, detailed instructions are required. For instance, in a car factory, clear policies mandate that steering wheels go on steering columns and wheels go on axles, not to mention the numerous processes involving complex parts and components. While the auto body waits, the production of the parts may resume. The company will lose time and resources as a result of the line interruptions, decreased productivity, and extended time to market.
In this case, it is simple to understand how an unclear process policy or a specified process policy that is hidden could affect how effectively the auto plant as a whole delivers value.
In knowledge work
As knowledge work isn’t as tangible as manufacturing and the procedures aren’t often supervised by an outside authority, the concept of process policies is frequently disregarded (as in traffic rules). But comparable results can happen. Without clear process guidelines, a team runs the danger of losing focus, momentum, and time. Work progresses more slowly. Re-work is converted from completed work. Even as resources are being wasted, time continues to pass.
Think about this instance. The Planview AgilePlace software development team uses continuous delivery. Before, when developers finished working on a feature or problem repair, they would send it to QA for testing before moving on to a new project. The work item returned to the build queue for resolution if an issue was discovered during testing. When the piece was finally ready for production, it would occasionally be sent back and forth a number of times.
The team saw that this back-and-forth handoff between development and QA was slowing down the process after looking at the analytics. The group concluded that in order to increase overall effectiveness, a policy was required. The Director of QA is now needed to “release” a developer from his or her current project before new work may be pulled, according to a protocol that was developed. As a result, problems are resolved considerably more quickly. Even though it adds some spare time for the developers, work is delivered more swiftly because there is no wait time.
Samples of Kanban Process Policies
High-level or step-level definitions of process policies are also possible. While step-level policies apply to particular stages or lanes inside your Kanban, high-level policies apply to the process as a whole.
Consider a software development process and the policies may be relevant to explain this.
Consider scenarios that have an overall impact on the software development process when creating high-level policies, then come up with management strategies for these scenarios. Examples of scenarios and questions to aid in creating high-level policy are provided below:
● Handling the Backlog – The backlog can be expanded by whom? Who will assign the backlog a priority?
● Handling Impediments – How will the team deal with the obstruction when one of its members is blocked? Should someone be contacted about it? Can the team member find new employment while awaiting a decision?
● Handling New “Critical” Requests – The marketing team submits a request for a new feature in an effort to meet or satisfy customer demand. They are crucial from their perspective. How would you respond to these kinds of inquiries? Who will be in charge of engaging with stakeholders and prioritizing these requests?
● Resolution of Issues/Defects – How will the team ensure that feature requests are given equal priority with bugs? Who is in charge of setting priorities? What is your SLA for fixing bugs?
● Handling Scope Creep – A stakeholder sent a request for more details to an item’s initial requirements while it was still being worked on. How would you manage modifications to the specifications for products already being processed?
With regard to step-level policies, the fundamental inquiry you must address is, “What would constitute an item ready for the following step to pull?”
For instance, one of our policies stipulates that code review must be finished before the item may be approved for testing during the coding phase of our development process. A unit test must be present for the item to be considered “done,” another possible phrase. We can establish a rule that the test plan must be written down and reviewed with the team in advance of the testing phase.
Remember that your WiP restrictions serve as policy in and of themselves. In the event that your Kanban defines WiP restrictions for each lane, these can be incorporated into your step-level regulations.
Make your process policies visible
Making your process policies visible and plainly stating them helps the team remember the guidelines that must be followed for a continuous flow of work. With a reduction in decision-making time, this will boost production.
If you’re using a physical Kanban board, arrange step-level policies in their relevant columns and high-level policies on one side of the board. You may quickly define and incorporate your regulations on the board if you’re using a Kanban program.
Teams can scale their use of Kanban more easily if they have process policies. Have a brainstorming session with your staff if no policies have been set. Everyone involved should agree on the rules and the activity should be a team effort. By doing this, the policies will be simpler to implement without raising any issues.
Keep in mind that these procedure guidelines are intended to be flexible. Review your process policies as you improve and change your process to make it more efficient.
Policing what matters, in a visible way
The regulations must match the priorities of your business. Your rules should clearly state what is vital to the organization in a manner that is easily recognizable, much to how the Golden Gate Bridge appears to be sturdy while also being visually appealing. When a team member notices a problem area, they should consider whether improved working practices can be implemented and how the board may be changed to reflect those changes. The policies and procedures should outline which jobs the organization is willing to put on hold in order to concentrate more on the important ones, as well as under what conditions it is willing to accept speed or quality trade-offs.
The team’s mental space is liberated by precisely stating policies and processes. Work can become virtually effortless when we can enter a state of flow. Individuals who continually need to remind themselves how to operate and who don’t have a simple means to obtain this information will never achieve flow. The team’s performance could be improved by removing a lot of frustration and fatigue by making specific policies available to them.
Everyone has a plan until they are struck in the face, according to Mike Tyson, which means that when people face a serious crisis, even the best-laid plans may be rapidly forgotten. By outlining your policies in detail, you might stop the wheels from coming off when something goes wrong. Make sure that the entire team has access to the instructions on how to proceed in typical workflow circumstances.
But, exercise caution when attempting to police too much at once; an improperly timed introduction of a policy could in and of itself result in an obstacle. One general rule might be to refrain from implementing more than one new policy at once, to wait until its results have been assessed before enforcing additional regulations, and, of course, to avoid implementing policies that the affected employees have no way of monitoring or even managing.
For instance, a software development team cannot expect a testing team with restricted access to the staging server to be able to evaluate all of the code if some of the code is sent to the production site and some to a pre-production environment. Items that can be tested in pre-production should be clearly separated from those that cannot during the process. The wait time to learn that a specific item could not have been tested on the staging server, where the testers were looking for it, will be shortened as a result.
Here are some ideas for process policies and procedures:
● Do your team members understand how the work is done, from where an item begins to where it ends?
● Does the team understand each stage’s definition of “done” and the quality-checking procedures?
● What does it mean for the team and the process if the team needs to expedite something that has become urgent?
● Does the team have a plan for handling unforeseen work and incorporating it into their workflow?
● How should team members handle errors discovered during production? Should they stop what they are doing and fix the error, or should they re-queue the error-prone item from the beginning?
Practice can make perfect!
Your explicit process policies should be based on flow measurement data that identifies the primary cause of the majority of issues. There is a chance for the procedure to be enhanced each time a feedback loop closes. The team can feel empowered by learning what makes them successful after a few successful feedback loops. They will be aware of which actions to emphasize and which routines to give up, and through this process of continual learning and development, the Kaizen concept can be fulfilled.
The main reason why concentrating on having good, explicit process policies in place matters so much in your Kanban practice, aside from a process that runs smoothly, may be this evolutionary improvement opportunity.
Any process can be made more effective; all you need to do is identify the precise policies and behaviors that underpin it and try to change them.
Course Manual 4: Manage Flow
The definition of flow according to the dictionary is to move continuously and smoothly. The term “flow” is typically used to describe how goods or people move through a stream or system. Do they move fluidly? Do any obstacles exist that prevent things from moving forward?
The flow of things, information, or people through corporate systems and procedures is referred to in the context of work. Organizations work to ensure that business operations run as smoothly as possible, even if it is to be expected that things won’t always go as planned. This is so that firms can fulfill their obligations to their clients quickly and satisfactorily. Teams must be able to visualize their present state processes in order to accomplish this. They do this so they may become aware of delays or bottlenecks in their processes and determine whether they are working at their best.
Here, Kanban enters the picture.
What does ‘Manage Flow’ in Kanban even mean?
“Manage Flow” refers to controlling your flow by monitoring it and making necessary adjustments to reduce waste and increase throughput. Yet, like with anything that involves “management,” it appears straightforward but is actually quite complex. In this instance, it suggests that while deciding what to do is difficult, actually implementing it is simple.
You manage your flow through a number of actions:
● Changing your WIP limits to optimize throughput
● Identifying bottlenecks and removing them
● Changing the steps in your flow to increase transparency and flow
Predictability is one of this’s objectives. While aiming for predictability when putting up your Kanban system is a huge problem, we haven’t discussed it up to this point. But producing a system with predictable output is the whole objective of minimizing waste, increasing throughput, fostering transparency, and limiting WIP! You’re interested in learning how long it will take for something to move through your system. This enables you to carry out a variety of intriguing tasks, such as creating sophisticated measurements and insights and communicating expectations to stakeholders.
Wait, did you say predictability?
We did. But the one lesson we take away from discussing Scrum and Agile software development is that it’s hard to forecast when a task will be completed.
Yet, there are numerous subtleties. We are unable to foresee that we will complete Product Backlog Item X on December 27 in the upcoming six months. We cannot, however, make any firm commitments since we know that the world will change too much in the meantime; we can only forecast (on a shorter timeline). Similar to forecasting the weather once more. We are quite excellent at that in the short term, but we are limited to saying things like “there’s a decent possibility it might rain in November” when it comes to the long term.
But this time, we’re considering a new scale. We often talk about weeks and months when estimating the completion dates of items from your backlog. Hours or days are what we’re talking about when we talk about how long anything takes to move through your Kanban system.
Empirical measurements are another factor that is related to predictability. You can measure a tonne of things with Kanban (like cycle time and throughput). These measurements give you empirical evidence to support your forecasts, especially when they are gathered over time, making them far more precise.
It still isn’t useful for making predictions about the future, say six months out. However if you’re using Scrum, it does provide you a lot more to work with in the short term, like for Sprints.
Returning to regulating your flow, let’s now.
Managing your flow
Changing WIP limits to optimize throughput
The first and simplest step in managing flow is to adjust your WIP limits. You must gain experience to determine what your ideal WIP limit is. Nonetheless, when adjusting WIP limits, remember these fundamental guidelines:
● Your WIP limitations should not be determined by just one aspect, such as the size of your team or how many objects you regularly pick up. When changing WIP limits, you must take the whole system into account. Whatever adjustments you make should promote a more fluid or predictable throughput because flow is the intended outcome.
● Make minor adjustments, examine, and adapt. Do not revise all of your WIP restrictions at once. A new WIP limit should be observed and measured to determine its impact. You probably won’t be able to notice the effects of a single WIP limit modification until you make several changes at once.
● Collaboratively alter it. The system belongs to everyone engaged, however we will focus on that later. You should consult the team in making adjustments to the WIP limit because they may have effects on people besides you (or just a portion of the team).
● Avoid doing it too frequently or randomly. Every adjustment you make has an impact, so creating the ideal flow requires time and care. If something functions, it functions. If it fails, make adjustments, but not too frequently. You don’t want to overly disturb the system.
Identifying bottlenecks and removing them
Where your bottlenecks are will become apparent over time, especially when tracking how long work items spend in various states or stages. Bottlenecks are delays, steps that take longer than you would like them to, or situations in which goods are simply blocked (for example, when waiting on a third party). Therefore, your aim is to reduce or perhaps eliminate these bottlenecks. We want flow once more.
Do not be alarmed if there are bottlenecks in your flow; this is precisely what Kanban is designed to do—make bottlenecks obvious. To help you surface them and eliminate these bottlenecks, Kanban is available.
Try to concentrate on the activities and actions that must be completed to deliver value when detecting bottlenecks. Although it can be tempting to point to certain individuals or groups as the bottleneck, the real problem is that some necessary actions are not being carried out. Attempt to determine why these things are not happening and come up with a fix for them.
If you frequently interact with outside parties, attempt to work together to determine how you can both reach your ideal flow. They can’t plan their work with that in mind if they aren’t aware of your workflow or what is expected of them. The same holds true for the reverse. It’s challenging to tailor a certain step or WIP limit in your flow if you don’t understand their workflow.
Changing the steps in your flow to increase transparency and flow
Last but not least, you can alter the steps in your flow. You might find that one activity requires a large number of others, giving the impression that there is a bottleneck even though there isn’t one. Steps being divided up would be a good idea.
On the other hand, you might have made your instructions excessively precise. In that circumstance, further actions offer little benefit on their own and produce no practical, observable results. In that situation, merging steps can be an option.
Avoid often changing the steps of your flow, just like with WIP restrictions. This might be disruptive, and you won’t be able to gauge how your modifications are working.
It requires practice and patience to control flow. It may take weeks or even months to find your ideal flow, depending on the type of job you do.
Another unfinished task is managing your flow. You need to keep thinking about it repeatedly.
Measure Your Flow with Kanban Metrics
As was mentioned, teams can more easily visualize their work and evaluate their flow when using a Kanban system. Teams can see how work moves through their value stream more clearly with the help of a Kanban board. Nevertheless, for a Kanban technique to be successful, it is not enough to visualize your workflow. Teams must be able to evaluate how well their procedures are doing for them.
Why measure your flow?
As you are now aware, there are metrics in Kanban that act as information radiators for the team to gauge how well their existing system is functioning. Teams can evaluate their progress towards providing their clients with improved value by using these Kanban metrics to measure their performance.
For instance, a team might want to provide its products more quickly. How would they be able to demonstrate that their delivery time has decreased if they were unable to determine how long it now takes them to achieve this? They won’t be able to describe how far they’ve gone in terms of process improvement if they don’t understand where they’re coming from.
The management of your flow also requires accurate flow measurement. Teams can decide on process adjustments and improvement actions when metrics and data are accessible. Teams can carry out experiments to improve their processes and offer valid improvement recommendations thanks to data. Teams are more confident in undertaking process improvement initiatives because they have evidence to support their solutions rather than constantly relying on intuition.
Teams can monitor their performance and assess how well they respond to consumer requests by measuring flow. Your ability to produce more, at a faster rate, will increase both employee and customer satisfaction.
Kanban Metrics
Let’s learn how to gauge kanban performance and what Kanban metrics teams can employ in their work:
Lead Time and Cycle Time
Although these two Kanban measures are frequently used interchangeably, they are in fact two distinct concepts. Lead Time is the time between when a consumer requests a product and when they actually receive it. From the perspective of the customer, lead time is viewed. Contrarily, Cycle Time in the kanban control chart refers to the time it takes for a client request to enter your process and successfully exit it, ready to be shipped to your customer. Teams’ Lead Time gets better as their Cycle Time gets better.
Only when a card enters the In Process states on your Kanban Board will you start your Cycle Time clock, and it will stop once the card is moved to the Done states. Your Cycle Time is typically tracked by built-in reports on virtual Kanban boards. You can, for instance, create Cycle Time reports that let you see how long it takes each month for your teams to process cards. Your Cycle Time report will display a graphical picture of your performance over time if you have more than a month’s worth of work. If your Cycle Time has increased or decreased, you will then be able to tell.
Also, the Cycle Time report will display the typical Cycle Time for each sort of job you perform. Depending on how you categorize your card and the labels you apply, this will happen.
Take a Kanban board for software development as an illustration. A development team organizes its cards into several categories based on the sort of work being done. By Feature Request, Production Problem, Regression Bug, or UI Change, they would categorize cards. In addition to the average Cycle Time for ALL cards, the report will also include the average Cycle Time for processing Feature Requests, Production Problems, Regression Bugs, and UI Change cards. This enables teams to focus their improvement efforts even further. The team would concentrate on finding ways to address Production Problems more quickly or, even better, they would seek to really prevent Production Issues from occurring in the first place if the report indicates that resolving Production Issues takes the majority of the time.
As the reports are included in the product, tracking these when using a virtual Kanban board is simple. But, you must make an effort to manually measure these data if you’re utilizing a real Kanban board.
Throughput
The throughput is the quantity of tasks finished in a given amount of time. Throughput in a software development process, for instance, refers to how many feature items a development team produces per week. On the other side, throughput in a customer help desk procedure can be the quantity of customer support tickets resolved per day. The team’s selected tracking period and the type of work they do will determine the throughput.
Throughput can then be a trustworthy statistic to use when assessing a team’s capacity to deliver in a certain period of time if you’re working on uniform items with the same level of effort for each item. For tangible items, if the item is described together with the precise procedures and steps to make them, this would be true.
Nonetheless, the tasks involved in knowledge labor, such as software development projects, are frequently varied and difficult. A particular feature might take more time and work to create than others. When decisions are made that could have an impact on long-term operations or future initiatives, throughput may then become less dependable. Then, teams must work to reduce the size of their jobs so that they need almost similar amounts of effort from one task to the next. Teams are advised to mix throughput with other Kanban measures like cycle time in their research if this seems challenging in order to make the data more uniform.
Virtual Kanban boards frequently include features that allow you to track how quickly a team completes tasks. You may quickly create a throughput report and evaluate your performance with your team using a virtual Kanban board.
Source: Kanban Zone
Teams should take into account the context in which they estimate throughput, as was mentioned in the preceding example. The report can indicate that they were able to produce fewer things this month than they did the month before. The team should consider why this occurred rather than drawing hasty assumptions and making changes immediately away. It can be a result of the addition of new members or the complexity of the criteria. Teams will be able to make better decisions for their process if data is combined with the appropriate context.
Kanban Cumulative Flow Diagram
Teams can better understand their flow by using a Cumulative Flow Diagram (CFD), which is an effective tool. Online Kanban solutions have CFD reports built in that teams can easily produce. The team’s efforts as they go along the value stream are depicted graphically in the CFD. The graph is separated into bands of various colors, each of which stands for a different stage of the operation.
The bottom band represents the Done state, while the top band represents the To Do state, or the stage you use to denote issues that have not been worked on by your team. Your In Progress stages are located between these bands. The team can determine how many things have migrated from one state to another in a specific amount of time using the CFD. Teams can at any time be aware of their Lead Time, Cycle Time, and Work in Progress (WiP) items.
Source: Kanban Zone
Teams should look out for the following when analyzing their CFD:
● Narrowing bands – They show a decline in the number of work-in-progress items, which suggests that work is progressing more quickly than it is arriving. This may indicate that there is more capacity than is required in this state. The team can likely determine whether resources can be reassigned to even out the flow.
● Widening bands – they show an increase in WiP items, which suggests that more objects are entering this stage than are leaving it. The team must investigate why the things are being held up in this condition as it indicates a bottleneck in the process.
● To Do band is wider than your Done band – This indicates that you are producing work at a rate that is more than what your team can handle. You must examine your In Progress stages and determine what is preventing your team from moving forward with these tasks much more quickly.
● Slope going down – Data should not be deleted or lost since the Cumulative Flow Diagram is a historical graph of the collected things that the team worked on over time. The slope needs to be rising at all times. As a result, if your graph has a decreasing slope, something is incorrect.
Reviewing Kanban Metrics Regularly
The discussed Kanban metrics should be used to assess and routinely evaluate the performance of teams to ensure that they are managing their flow consistently. Teams can easily accomplish this when using virtual Kanban boards because data is monitored and kept within the platform, and built-in reports make it simple for teams to generate statistics with just a few clicks.
Yet simply producing these facts is insufficient. Teams must work together to discuss what the data is showing them. Teams should come to an agreement on the actions they will follow before making any choices about changing processes, adding capacity, or introducing any form of change through process improvement. The team will have much more extensive conversations after reviewing the data.
Resolving bad practices
Imagine receiving a memo from the CEO’s office requesting that a certain step in the process be sped up since it is a crucial request from a significant client and that it must be completed as soon as possible and at any cost. The issue is that the cost that this activity will incur for the organization is frequently not quantified. The impact of such a procedure will be highlighted and the ripple effects will be displayed by measuring flow. When time is diverted to concentrate on the CEO’s pet project, leaders and the team will be able to see how other tasks are delayed and how much longer they will take to finish. Having this information available could help the CEO avoid “expediting difficulties” in the future.
In general, flow management will increase your chances of improving the overall process rather than putting out fires at the expense of distorting the entire operation. It will also increase the predictability of your process. Also, it will mature your approach and assist you in realizing that whether a project is completed on time and according to plan is not as crucial as other factors. The fact that the entire system can be calculated, allowing you to accurately anticipate project completion for the clients, and that it operates as intended with little loss is more important. This should free you up to concentrate on running a flexible, Agile business with clear goals, one that constantly develops, and one where workers enjoy their jobs.
A case study of Volvo IT: Managing Bottlenecks
Source: Volvo Case Study
Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to investigate and analyze the implementation process of KANBAN, a lean technique, into a section of Volvo IT (i.e. BEAT). The KANBAN implementation into BEAT when ‘resistance for change’ and ‘forces for change’ arise is also analyzed. This implementation of KANBAN is equivalent to change taking place in the Volvo IT’s operational process. The thesis follows theories and literature on change management and lean principles in order to support the research investigation.
Research Question: How has KANBAN, with respect to change management, been implemented into an IT organization for its service production? How has KANBAN changed the operational process of the organization?
Method: The research conducted in the thesis is based on qualitative case study. Focused and in-depth interviews, combined with observations, are carried out to obtain the primary data for the case study. The collected primary and secondary data stems from the literature reviewed, which covers the lean principles, KANBAN, and change management. Moreover, the thesis adopts an abductive approach that goes back-and-forth between the theory and the empirical findings in order to develop a model.
Conclusion: Due to various factors already existing in the BEAT, minimal resistance to change implementation was found to be present in Volvo IT. This finding indicates that change initiatives found a way to implementation because the predominance of the ‘forces for change’, as compared to, the ‘resistance to change’ is higher in BEAT. The KANBAN implementation into the IT service production is identified to be aligned with Volvo IT’s change implementation objectives. The visualization of the ‘intangible service’ workflow on the Kanban board contributes to identify the source of bottlenecks, which has been removed through effective communication in the BEAT team and better linkages between tasks. The KANBAN effectively deals with change implementation by modifying the way team members work.
Course Manual 5: Implement Feedback Loops
“Just make sure to keep me in the loop, alright?”
How frequently has this phrase been used in your company? What happens if you find yourself “out of the loop” for a crucial update relating to the thing or undertaking you’re working on?
Being in such an uncomfortable position can be unpleasant.
We all operate in organizations with complicated settings, and in order for us to all perform well, we must create a well-planned network of feedback loops to keep one another informed.
We must highlight that feedback is a key component of the Agile mindset because it has been gaining popularity rapidly. By including feedback loops into your agile project workflow, you can be sure to get quick and regular customer feedback and improve your ability to adjust to new developments.
Because generating frequent feedback loops is one of the key ideas that makes the methodology so successful, we also need to discuss the role of feedback in Kanban. In reality, your organization holds a number of meetings to foster effective communication at all levels. In this course manual, we will discuss the advantages of these sessions, which are referred to as Kanban Cadences.
But first, let’s define what feedback loops are for the purposes of this course manual.
What Are Feedback Loops? Definition
By the use of feedback loops, an individual’s performance, a project’s teamwork, or a process can become more productive. Feedback loops in Agile assist us in routinely identifying areas that need improvement. We can then keep track of and handle the major issues we encounter in relation to our product and procedures when we convert these prospective changes into actionable work items.
Feedback loops assist teams in producing outputs that are better coordinated, collaborative, and committed. They can also promote more team initiative and shared ownership, better team performance, and agility.
In general, the first three steps of a feedback loop should be present. The input, or the data we use every day to operate, is captured and stored during the first stage. We actually do an analysis of the input obtained in stage one during the second. Lastly, at the final step, we must make choices based on the second stage’s learnings.
The fourth stage of the feedback loop often involves putting our proposed modifications into practice. And so it goes on, with one feedback loop followed by another and another. And this is how any organization can effectively foster continuous improvement.
Okay, so now that we’ve briefly touched on this subject by outlining what feedback loops are, let’s go on and examine how they’re used in practice using examples from actual industries.
Cargill: Making Feedback in the Workplace an Everyday Occurrence
Although having been in business for more than 150 years, this Minneapolis-based food producer and distributor was having trouble properly motivating their 160,000 employees all over the world.
The business, however, made a breakthrough when it adopted a “Everyday Performance Management” method, which deftly combines incentive, feedback, and encouragement into regular, in-person dialogues between managers and staff members.
Cargill discovered it could have a roughly 40% influence on performance by shifting its emphasis from annual evaluations to ongoing interactions, and feedback from a retrospective to a forward-looking strategy. About 70% of Cargill staff members said they feel appreciated and have had helpful input from managers.
How to Implement Feedback Loops the Kanban Way?
Feedback loops should be an essential component of any system aiming for high production and efficiency, as we have already said above.
We may create several feedback loops thanks to the Kanban approach, including review phases in our workflow, reports and metrics, and a wide range of visual indicators that give us ongoing feedback on our work in progress.
The Agile adage “Fail fast, fail often!” alludes to the need of receiving feedback as soon as possible. It is crucial to provide the right product or service as soon as possible, especially when we are working in the wrong direction. For that, feedback loops are created.
Now, let’s examine how feedback loops might be added to a Kanban board in order to make this topic more understandable. We’ll give you an example and go into further detail about the result.
Implementing Feedback Loops on a Kanban Board
Here is an example of an IT Operations board:
Source: Kanbanize
This Kanban board’s three stages—Requested (to-do), In Process, and Done—can be easily distinguished. The workflow begins with the “Ready to Start” column. Once there is enough space, a new card will be drawn and placed in the Working column (in-progress stage). The rationale of the feedback loop on this circuit is very clearly illustrated.
Let’s shift the card “PC 19 – virus check” to the next column, Working, from the “Critical” swimlane. Viruses must not exist on PC 19 at all times. That might be a security lapse. Let’s assume that we bypass the Review phase and add the card directly to our done column because we are prepared.
Imagine, however, that you made a mistake while testing the PC for viruses, and since the card wasn’t inspected, the PC was genuinely infected and sensitive data was stolen. Ouch.
Will you omit the Review stage once more? Most likely not, as it will result in massive time waste and additional labor in the future. This is precisely what feedback loops aim to prevent. You would have eliminated the danger and prevented a significant security issue if you had gone through the review stage.
Achieve Fast Feedback Loops through Kanban Cadences
Why therefore do short loops? Because short loops enable us to quickly collect user input on our product or service from customers, and even quicker from staff.
Kanban has a distinct tempo for its meetings when implementing feedback loops. You can argue that establishing seven new meetings goes against what Kanban and Lean teach us about meetings, which is that having too many of them is a waste of time.
Hence, if it’s possible, try to include these cadences into your already-existing meetings. At first, this may seem impossible, but when two meetings are about the same team, it’s actually rather simple to combine them into one.
Okay, now let’s clarify which of these seven cadences they are and how to employ them:
Amazon and Apple: Efficient Meetings
Are you aware that Jeff Bezos has a rule known as the “2 Pizza rule”? Groupthink is one of his pet peeves, thus he always makes sure that gatherings are kept small enough for everyone to participate. Do more individuals exist than two pizzas can accommodate? That’s a lot.
Steve Jobs approached meetings at Apple with a similar attitude. He was known to ask attendees to leave if he wasn’t sure why they were there and would try to keep meetings to the absolute minimum number of participants. Insanely Simple: The Passion That Drives Apple’s Success, written by Ken Segall, provides more information:
The only thing in the room that didn’t seem right caught his attention. He asked Lorrie, “Who are you?” while pointing. Being called out like that shocked Lorrie a little, but she stated coolly that she had been requested to come because she was engaged in some of the marketing projects we would be talking about. The Simple Stick was then used to strike her. “Lorrie, I don’t believe we need you in this meeting. Thank you, he replied. He continued with his report after that interruption as if it had never happened and as if Lorrie had never existed.
1) Daily Meeting (Standup Meeting)
The most frequent meeting is the daily one, which covers topics like who is working on what, whether any tasks are blocked, who needs support, and how we can help. The daily meeting serves as the team’s internal feedback loop and benefits stakeholders who want to know how the project is progressing and how they can assist.
2) Replenishment & Commitment Meeting
We employ a pull approach in Kanban, and in order to avoid “starving” the input queue, this system requires tasks in the queue. We decide what these tasks should be during the replenishment and commitment meeting.
We must determine which jobs are the most crucial to add to our input queue and ensure that our team can commit to completing them. This meeting occurs at various times. It might be carried out once a week, twice a week, or as necessary, depending on the situation.
3) Delivery Planning Meeting
At this discussion, we meticulously arrange delivery based on the requirements of the client. We don’t want to make sporadic deliveries to the final consumer. Our customers frequently value the ability to choose how, when, and what will be delivered.
4) Service Delivery Review
In this meeting, we check the team’s performance in relation to commitments, service level agreements (SLAs), quality, KPIs that are focused on the needs of the client, lead times, etc.
5) Operations Review
The operations review provides a higher-level perspective on how the various teams, departments, and divisions work together as a whole. It prioritizes global flow assurance over local optimizations (enhancing a single component of a system without taking into account the other components) and customer fit.
6) Risk Review
Any level of the company may hold a risk review meeting, which may follow a different schedule depending on the level.
It is a chance to anticipate hazards and take precautions to reduce them, such as designating a new service class or careful scheduling.
7) Strategy Review
The highest level meeting, the strategy review, is held to make sure we are heading in the proper path in light of our company’s strategic objectives and shifting market conditions. The meeting gives us the chance to assess if we are still taking the necessary efforts to ensure that our organizational structure and method of operation are appropriate for our business goal.
Flow of Information and Change
Every Kanban Cadence is connected to every other Kanban Cadence by two separate arrows, as seen in the following diagram. These arrows signify the flow of knowledge or the flow of change.
● Flow of information: Information delivered from one feedback mechanism to another. The information is considered for possible decisions.
● Flow of change: Actions and Decisions made at one meeting that will have a direct effect on data reviewed, capability observed and discussions held in other meetings.
Does it Mean More Meetings?
The seven cadences are not equivalent to scheduling seven additional meetings for an organization. In order to achieve their objectives, the reviews and meetings should initially be included into already-existing meetings. On a lesser scale, multiple cadences may be covered in a single meeting.
In fact, integrating Kanban across services and the seven feedback loops, in our experience, significantly lowers the overall number of meetings held at the business, particularly those required to request information, updates, or future speculation.
Typical Activities in a Kanban Cadence Meeting
See the typical activities that occur during a Kanban Cadence meeting:
● Let’s say each kanban system has collected data and other input.
– Watch for signs that the system needs to be adjusted.
– You aren’t completing the assignment when you said you would.
– Your consumer has made a new complaint or request.
● Think of the situation as it is now and determine how to proceed.
– Which job is prepared for delivery?
– What ought to be taken out next?
– How can we deal with a brand-new rival product?
● Discuss and choose what to do
– Policy alterations
– Use strategies to alter capacity or influence demand
● Make decisions known
Replenishment Meeting
The Kanban Cadence is used to move items past the commitment threshold and monitor the creation of choices for future choosing. It may occur on demand or at regular intervals.
● Purpose: To commit to the next task, choose what to pick from the available possibilities, and restock the Kanban system’s input buffer
● Cadence: Every week or as needed
● Duration: 20 to 30 minutes
● Participants: The service delivery manager or the person in charge of leading the delivery planning meeting, together with service delivery staff who may evaluate technical risk and dependency risk and provide guidance on item scheduling, sequencing, and batching
● Inputs: Changes in behavior at Replenishment Meetings may be the consequence of observations from Kanban Meetings and Service Delivery Reviews. decisions resulting from the strategy review, such as portfolio and policy adjustments.
● Outputs: Decisions regarding what to pull next plus system changes sent to the Daily Kanban Meeting.
Activities
● Since the last meeting, what has changed?
● Examine fresh submissions to the “ready for delivery” buffer or the option/idea pool.
● Verify that requested service classes are appropriate and that the goods that are available for selection have the proper risk classification. Fix any errors.
● How many and what kind/class of kanban slots are available? Which Kanban signals exist?
● To create a preliminary list of candidates for selection, sort the available pool of alternatives according to category, class, and timetable slot.
● To choose a small list of candidates based on initial filtering, ask stakeholders.
● Is it possible to agree on the most crucial factors for selection given the estimated lead time?
Kanban Meeting
Teams look at the Kanban board’s status and establish their daily plans during this daily planning meeting.
Because it differs greatly from the Daily Scrum, this is one meeting where Scrum newcomers truly struggle. The flow is the main topic of the Kanban Meeting. In order to transfer items out of the system as quickly as possible, we start by reading the board from right to left, pausing at blocked items, and making sure everyone is working to do so.
When we reach the board’s leftmost side, we look to see if there are any openings for adding further work.
Who did what and what they have planned to accomplish is unimportant to us. The focus is on the tasks that are currently being completed and what might be done to hasten their development.
● Purpose: To keep tabs on the progress of the project (not the workers). To watch how labor is done.
● Cadence: Daily Length: 10 to 20 minutes Participants: The team or group performing the immediate service (4-50 people). Service delivery manager facilitating
● Inputs: Decisions from the Delivery Planning Meeting and the Replenishment Meeting. new projects and decisions resulting from the strategy review.
● Outputs: A delivery planning meeting and a service delivery review were updated on the progress.
Activities
● The status of the job will be displayed on the board, including whether it is being actively worked on, is in a queue, is blocked, or is waiting for another reason.
● The Service Delivery Manager will “walk the board,” going from right to left and iterating across the tickets.
● Items that are delayed or blocked receive attention. The team will briefly go over who is handling a problem and when it will be fixed. There will also be a call for anyone who needs assistance to speak out and for any other blocking concerns that are not listed on the board.
● Only banned items may be discussed by mature teams; all other tickets may not be discussed.
● Resolution of blocking issues is the duty of the Service Delivery Manager. They will inquire as to who is in charge of handling it and when it will be finished.
● Escalation paths and policies that are precisely specified are crucial for unresolved conflicts.
It is common for certain team members to need to address anything after because flow is the main focus. But, since it always takes place after the meeting, we shouldn’t combine in-depth conversations with the daily Kanban Meeting’s regular procedure.
Delivery Planning Meeting
Planning downstream delivery and producing a delivery manifest are the goals of this Kanban Cadence, which is held in accordance with the delivery cadence. We must plan appropriately because, unless the service is end-to-end, someone normally handles the work after delivery.
● Purpose: To create a delivery manifest and organize downstream delivery. Depending on delivery cadence, the cadence varies.
● Duration: 1-2 hours
● Participants: Facilitated by the person playing the role of Service Delivery Manager. Everyone else who might be interested in the matter, including those who take deliveries and those involved in the logistics of doing so, should be invited. Because of their technical expertise and capacity for risk assessment, specialists are present. The presence of managers enables decision-making.
● Inputs: Details on the goods that may be available for delivery from the daily kanban meeting. risk factors from the risk review that may influence delivery choices.
● Outputs: To the Daily Kanban Meeting, decisions regarding which things to deliver are communicated. Information regarding delivery problems is forwarded to Risk Review.
Discussions
● What products are or will be available for purchase?
● What is needed to put anything into production?
● What testing will be necessary after the release to confirm the production system’s integrity?
● What dangers exist during release? What mitigation measures are taken?
● What backup preparations are necessary?
● Who should be a part of the release?
● How long will it take for the release?
● What other logistics will be involved?
Service Delivery Review
In a biweekly Kanban feedback loop, we assess if we are meeting customer expectations for delivery. We take a single Kanban System into consideration, compare present capabilities to fitness criteria measurements, and attempt to strike a balance between demand and capacity while effectively managing risks.
● Inputs:
● System functionality
● Data and developments from the Kanban meeting
● Operations review decisions and risk review actions.
● Outputs:
● Results discussed at the operations review.
● Agenda:
● Ability to deliver for each service class
● Periodic cycle distribution
● Request frequency, variation, promptness, and expectations
● Efficiency of flow Quality
● Risks of delay (from blockers): Likelihood and Effect
● Performing on time
● Determine if the existing set is still valid for the class of service separation and whether more classes are required.
Activities
● A discussion of system capabilities that is specific
● Review using the fitness metrics
● Compare deficiencies to client expectations. Investigate the cause
● Examine solutions for risk reduction and mitigation or system design modifications to enhance current performance relative to expectations.
● What services are offered by us at the moment? Which categories of service requests and work items do we accept?
● What are the service level requirements for each type of work item?
Discussions
● What form of delivery can we currently deliver?
● Time distribution for leads
● Delivery Rate System Liquidity Level Volume, volatility, and speed of transactions
● Efficiency of flow
● Risk Quality Delay (from blockers)
● Service level objectives and on-time delivery
● Concerns about process improvement What progress has your team made since the last meeting?
● What do you need the management or the supervisor’s assistance with? Do things need to be escalated?
Operations Review
Each Kanban System in the company undergoes a monthly evaluation of demand and capabilities with a specific emphasis on dependencies. As everyone presents updated performance information and dependency information from their Service Delivery Review sessions, it provides a systematic overview.
● Inputs:
● Results of Service Delivery Reviews for all Kanban Systems, including data on business success from Strategy Reviews.
● ongoing initiatives for improvement resulting from system-wide modifications.
● Outputs:
● A list of enhancements, choices, deeds, ideas, or necessary adjustments to plan given to Service Delivery Review and Strategy Review with designated owners.
● Agenda:
● Examine the interdependencies between Kanban Systems, comprehend them, and highlight the effects related to them.
● Kaizen activities that attendees propose
● Assigned possibilities for improvement
Activity/Discussion
● Examine the dependencies, performance, and capacity of various kanban systems.
● Dependencies recognized Kaizen activities proposed by participants
● Improvement opportunities assigned
Risk Review
The goal of this Kanban cadence is to review the risk management guidelines as well as the issues that endanger our delivery capabilities. Aside from the Operations Review, we review the classes of service, blockers, risk management procedures, and demand shaping procedures throughout this monthly cadence.
● Inputs: kanban system network issues from the Ops Review and kanban system individual issues from the Service Delivery Review. A delivery planning meeting’s decisions.
● Outputs: Delivery Planning is informed by the results of the Risk Evaluation since we shouldn’t guarantee that a product will be ready for delivery on a particular date if there is a tail risk that cannot be eliminated.
Discussions
● What level of danger do we want to accept?
● Do we have the right framework for risk assessment?
● Have the proper risk dimensions been determined?
● Do our risk dimensions give us information that we can use? Do they require modification? Which dangers are we trying to control?
● Review the different service classes.
– Do they still fit the bill? Do they have a purpose? Has anything been exempted? Does a fresh pattern exist here? Need for a new class of service?
● Review blockers
– Based on blocker cluster analysis, prioritize mitigation and reduction measures.
– Examine risk management procedures
– Examine whether capacity allocation is still acceptable and whether the most recent recorded demand is consistent with historical trends.
● Review demand shaping policies
– Should we alter the policies that split up demand for shared and dependent services?
Strategy Review
This Kanban Cadence is held on a quarterly basis to review and assess:
● OKRs
● capabilities
● alignment of strategy & capability
● current markets
● strategic position
● go-to-market strategies
Senior executives, product gurus, salespeople, marketers, risk managers, service providers, and customer service representatives were there.
This Kanban cycle would correspond to the quarterly Hoshin Kanri or OKRs meetings. We merely need to make sure that this occurs and that we use it appropriately; nothing else needs to change.
● Purpose: Are we both engaged in the line of work we wish to be and capable of engaging in that line of work? Are our objectives feasible?
● Cadence: Quarterly
● Duration: ½ day
● Participants: Senior leaders, customer-facing employees, product and portfolio managers
● Input: Information on current capabilities from service delivery and operations reviews. Input from personnel who interact with customers as well as information from meetings about replenishment, capacity planning, demand shaping policy, and other sources.
● Output: Operations Review and Service Delivery Review were updated with new information and conclusions.
Example #1 of Strategy Review Content
● Existing strategy: wants chances that are seasonal, fleeting, and have set delivery dates
● Current capability: Lead times are too protracted and unpredictable. Several opportunities are as a result partially or totally lost.
Until capability is increased to conform to plan, it should be decided to rearrange the portfolio of projects’ allocation for more medium- and long-term prospects better matched to present capability.
Example #2 of Strategy Review Content
The team who interacts with clients provides information on the causes of orders. Group the narratives together and evaluate them against current market segmentation. If new client segments have emerged, make changes.
Summary
These are often the meetings we hold to integrate feedback loops in a Kanban-style manner. Start small if you’re just starting to implement Agile and feedback loops in your company. Do your daily meeting first, then gauge the mood of your staff.
Speaking your mind in front of others can be unsettling at times, but doing so is essential if you want your team to be more proactive, perform better, and produce deliverables that are completely coordinated and collaborative.
Course Manual 6: Improve Collaboratively, Evolve Experimentally
How can Kanban boards help improve team collaboration and customer service?
Kanban boards have the ability to enhance team collaboration and communication, which is one of their advantages. Its development extends beyond only teamwork. Also, it can foster better customer-business relationships.
The implementation of the Kanban board has produced great results for customer support teams that offer their services to their consumers via emails.
The connection between the Kanban process and email outreach
It can be difficult for customer care representatives to keep up with all of the emails they need to send, and they frequently forget to react to them. These employees can easily track their work by following the Kanban board, which allows them to keep track of every email they send.
Also, by using email tools in their operations, they may make the process of giving each email a due date easier. For instance, Mailbutler provides its users with the email contacts feature, allowing them to enhance email communication and never lose track of the history of email exchanges with their clients. Customer care representatives can set deadlines to reach out to their clients in accordance with these using this functionality and the Kanban approach.
Project managers should think about using a Kanban technique to interact efficiently so they don’t lose sight of who to contact and please customers and collaborators with a company’s email services.
How can the Kanban methodology increase team efficiency?
As was already said, the primary objective of the Kanban approach is to give project managers complete control over the team’s “work in progress” and “done” tasks.
Teams have been able to streamline their operations and boost efficiency by utilizing this team and project management software.
This lessens the worry of forgetting to accomplish anything because people will be able to clearly see what they need to complete throughout a period. As a result, team members will not feel as pressured by their tasks and obligations.
Yet, this management software mandates that work be divided into many smaller jobs. This method enables people to complete tasks without missing a beat and, in the long term, achieve continual improvement in the team’s workflow.
Management can keep track of how each team member is doing with their duties thanks to a Kanban board. By using this approach, supervisors will be able to tell whether a worker is behind schedule, requires assistance with a task, or is completing all tasks on time and qualifies for a promotion.
Steve Jobs: “Technology alone is not enough”
Soon after being ejected from Apple in 1986, Steve Jobs acquired a small computer manufacturer called (drum roll) Pixar.
He moved the business to a closed Del Monte canning facility in 2000. Three buildings were originally planned, each housing offices for computer scientists, animators, and Pixar executives. Jobs promptly discarded it. Instead of three buildings, there would be one sizable area with an atrium in the middle.
“The philosophy behind this design is that it’s good to put the most important function at the heart of the building. Well, what’s our most important function? It’s the interaction of our employees. That’s why Steve put a big empty space there. He wanted to create an open area for people to always be talking to each other.” – Ed Catmull, the president of Pixar.
Yet for Jobs, making a space wasn’t enough; he also needed to compel others to use it. He believed that getting Pixar’s various cultures to cooperate and work together was the company’s main problem.
Pixar’s chief creative officer, John Lasseter, explains the relationship in these words: “Technology inspires art, and art pushes technology.”
Separated offices were viewed by Jobs as a design flaw. The mailboxes were first moved to the atrium by him. Then he shifted the cafeteria, coffee shop, meeting rooms, and gift shop to the middle of the structure.
The Incredibles and Ratatouille director Brad Bird stated, “The atrium can initially look like a waste of space. But Steve understood that things happen when people cross paths after making eye contact.
Steve Jobs has always placed a strong priority on consilience, even if it meant sacrificing convenience. Jobs stressed that, particularly in an era of intellectual fragmentation, the best innovations took place when people from different fields were connected.
The Latin crest of Pixar University says it all: Alienus Non-Diutius. Alone no longer.
Improve collaboratively, evolve experimentally
As long as there is agreement and clarity on how to approach work and issues, collaboration and experimentation are natural parts of the Kanban process.
In his book, David J. Anderson discusses the importance of teams having a common understanding of issues and advises using a model to be able to foresee the effects of change. They consist of:
● The Theory of Constraints
● The Theory of Profound Knowledge
It is simpler to measure outcomes, including the modifications that led to them, when a tested model is used. This preserves clarity and reduces hazards.
Let’s talk about each model below in brief:
The Theory of Constraints
Finding the “system constraint” or bottleneck is crucial, according to the Theory of Constraints, a process improvement methodology. By taking advantage of this restriction, businesses can meet their financial objectives while providing consumers with on-time, full deliveries (OTIF), preventing stockouts in the supply chain, cutting lead times, etc.
Some typical advantages of applying the Theory of Constraints include improved operational control, less inventory, fewer disagreements among team members, and significantly less firefighting. Without additional investment in capital or hire of personnel, increased capacity frequently becomes exposed.
The Fundamental Concept: Every system is bound by some kind of restriction. The quickest and most efficient strategy to increase profitability is typically to concentrate development efforts to better utilize this restriction.
The System of Profound Knowledge
The foundation of Edwards Deming’s “System of Profound Knowledge” is the idea that every organization is made up of interconnected individuals and systems that must be successfully managed for the system to succeed. He postulated that in order to increase a business’s effectiveness, one must comprehend the following four factors:
● Appreciation of the system (understanding the various processes of the business)
● Knowledge of variation (understanding how and why quality may vary within the business)
● Theory of knowledge (understanding how your workers act and think based on what they believe to be true)
● Psychology (understanding the concept of human nature that instructs your workers’ beliefs and motivations)
5 Kanban Principles that Encourage High-Value Team Collaboration
1. Share responsibility for your team’s workflow.
You have the option to design your own workflow with Kanban, in contrast to prescriptive work approaches. For this, the team must first discuss its workflow, come to an understanding on how the job is completed, and then map that workflow onto a Kanban board.
With immense freedom entails a great deal of responsibility. Everyone in the team is accountable for creating the board, using the board, and regularly updating the board in Kanban. This is very dissimilar from conventional workflow management techniques, which often entrust leaders with the task of allocating and prioritizing work.
Teams are compelled to communicate more purposefully about the process of doing work by the Kanban principle of sharing responsibility for the team board. It starts important conversations that not only disclose the intricate details of your work but also the individual working and thinking styles of each team member. The team can freely discuss how work flows and where it gets stuck once you’ve established your process to assist you determine ways to enhance workflow, cycle time, and throughput (we have briefly covered these metrics, but we will discuss these in more detail in the next workshop).
Teams who actively and consistently use Kanban to manage their workflows may perform handoffs more easily, collaborate more deeply, and work with a greater grasp of how each person’s job fits into the bigger picture.
2. Communicate consistently using the board.
You’ll see that almost every one of these Kanban principles has to do with communication because that is, at its core, what Kanban is all about. Kanban practice is a great way to promote deeper communication than most teams have ever experienced. Communication is essential for Kanban practice.
Kanban boards and cards represent a shared visual language that team members and stakeholders can use to quickly communicate high-value information in a way that is frictionless and transparent.
As problems develop, you can involve those who are contributing to the issue while leaving the rest of your team to do their work. Teams may engage the appropriate people in the right conversations at the right time by finding the proper mix between targeted and mass communication.
Using visual signs like blockages or various colors for cards that are “stale” or past due, card details can be utilized to swiftly communicate card assignments, due dates, card size, and other information regarding the work itself, as well as status.
Most Kanban applications allow you to add information inside the card itself in addition to the information on the card’s front. This extra card information may consist of:
● Any feedback from individuals who have completed the task
● History of cards (who moved the card when, when were details added or changed)
● Documents or links to deliverables connected to the assignment, such as attachments or links
● Also, the time spent looking for progress reports or attending status update meetings is reduced because all of these details are in one location.
Therefore, teams can:
● Spend less time in meetings that aren’t important.
● Educate team members on how to gather knowledge without constantly involving others.
● Make sure that when the team does get together (for example, during daily standups), the discussion is pertinent and fruitful.
3. Empower team members to talk about flow and address problems as they’re happening.
In many organizational models, management is given the primary responsibility for problem identification and communication. The empowerment of team members to identify problems and bottlenecks on their own is one of the fundamental tenets of Kanban.
This frequently enables rich discussions about how the work flows to take place between management and team members:
● What is shifting?
● Why is anything not moving?
● What needs to happen for the job to resume moving?
● What trends are we noticing in our workflow?
● Any team members getting used too little or too much? What steps can be taken to fix this?
This assists the team in staying on task and highlights important concerns like blocked or delayed work so that everyone can see them.
Standing meetings, or standups, are frequently utilized by teams using Kanban to bring everyone on board with the work. They also hold sessions called retrospectives where they talk about previous work and how the team’s procedures could have been improved.
Standups and retrospectives are helpful tools for teams that want to be transparent and collaborate freely. The team as a whole can be empowered to recognize, confront, and evolve past issues by using kanban boards to help focus talks in a more meaningful way.
4. Operate as a pull system to facilitate the prioritization of work and work-in-process (WIP) limits.
The concept of running a system as a pull, where team members pull work into the system depending on their ability, is one of the most ignored and underutilized Kanban principles. This differs from a push method, where team members move work from one phase to the next without taking capacity into account.
The more actively the team must engage in systems thinking, the harder it is to operate as a pull system. Nonetheless, it’s worthwhile because a push system requires labor from team members and slows down operations if too much work is put into the system (and often makes for poor work quality, too).
Based on capacity, the amount of work is restricted to ensure that it is completed as quickly as possible and with the greatest level of efficiency. The risk of work that needs to be redone later is decreased by a pull system since it encourages team members to communicate proactively before work on any assignment begins.
In a pull system, work can be prioritized in the backlog and then pulled according to priority.
Teams prioritize the work that needs to be done in collaboration with managers, and they work to pull work into “doing” depending on its actual capacity.
Pulling new work and having WIP limitations encourage you to consider the effect that new work will have on the rest of the team if you change your attitude to think as a system rather than an individual contributor.
This inevitably necessitates further discussion. Before starting any new work, the person who wishes to add it to the board should speak with every team member so they can all agree to finish it.
Even while it may seem like an extra or needless step, doing this now will actually save you a tonne of time and effort in the long run. Individuals within a team frequently start working on a task without fully grasping its context or without verifying that the assignment’s requirements are valid.
Before any task is finished, the team should discuss the work item in order to verify that everyone is entirely in agreement regarding its specifics and priorities.
5. Use the board to fuel continuous improvement efforts.
The Kanban notion of continual improvement is perhaps the best-known. Kanban emphasizes development over revolution. Teams can assess workflow and operate levers to enhance their procedures and effectiveness by using a Kanban system to manage their workload.
Teams that may not have previously spent much time talking about processes may benefit greatly from simply taking the necessary steps to map out their workflow and start moving their work through a defined procedure.
When set up correctly, the Kanban board can develop into a priceless resource for performance data that can be utilized to motivate efforts at continuous improvement.
Evolve experimentally
Kanban systems should develop rather than undergo drastic alterations. Kanban systems are effective because they build on what you already have. That indicates that it was founded on empirical data and will remain so as it develops.
Experimentation is the source of evolution. Only through trial and error, inspection, and adaptation can you learn what functions best in a Kanban system. The proper operation of the Kanban system is essential to an organization’s survival, just as value delivery is. An organization faces a serious dilemma if value delivery stops. As a result, you should experiment continuously and make modest modifications at a time to evaluate what works best. This will guarantee that any modifications are a) appropriate and b) not overly disruptive.
An experiment can be as simple as altering your flow’s step size or WIP restrictions. But typically, once these modifications are implemented, they become the new norm. Experimental evolution differs in this respect. Every change you make begins as an experiment, which you then assess at a specific future time. You can then check to see if the adjustment actually has the desired effect. If it did, keep the adjustment. If not, go back and try again. Everything is an experiment until you declare it’s “permanent,” and that last statement is key. This is an attitude. Sometimes something immediately progresses from experiment to “permanent,” and other times it does so naturally.
Using an experiment, let’s say we want to change the WIP limit for our “Approval” column from four to two. When I do this, I discuss it with my team and provide an explanation of why. The justification might be that since approvals take a while, limiting WIP should make the bottleneck more obvious. That will compel us to address the bottleneck, which will increase flow. Once my team and I concur that it’s a good concept, we decide when to evaluate. Let’s say six weeks have passed. This gives us enough time to determine if the change is effective or not. Nonetheless, it is brief enough to not have a detrimental long-term effect.
A final note: sometimes you have to make a bigger shift, for the correct reasons. Try an alternative flow, for instance, based on what you’ve learned in the past. If you do this, you should surely involve the entire team and minimize the feedback loop to avoid risk. You should be extremely aware of this since you are putting value delivery on the line in theory.
Closing
One of the finest things to do is to evolve your Kanban system, but this is not something you should do every day. Kanban is designed to be nimble, lightweight, and unobtrusive. It ought to enable you to produce value at a reasonable and consistent rate. This means that the value delivery process itself should take up the vast majority of your time.
Kabbage: You Must Evolve to Thrive
Kabbage was an innovator when it was launched in 2009 simply because it existed in the nascent fintech business. Kabbage launched one of the first platforms that offered a fully automated funding decision by analyzing a company’s real-time data rather than an antiquated paperwork process to make it simpler for small business owners to acquire capital. In less than 15 minutes, Kabbage users may apply, get accepted, and receive a line of credit up to $250,000 by integrating data sources like bank accounts, bookkeeping software, and more. For any owner of a small business, that is important.
After ten years, Kabbage is still active. 2018 saw Kabbage collaborate with Alibaba.com on a Pay Later program as the Chinese e-commerce behemoth started to formulate its U.S. market strategy. Alibaba customers can therefore acquire credit worth up to $150,000.
In this instance, a cooperation was the key to developing and maintaining relevance in the cutthroat finance sector.
Workshop Exercises
Implementing Kanban Exercises
01. Visualize Workflow : Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
02. Limit Work in Progress (WIP): Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
03. Make Policies Explicit: Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
04. Manage Flow: Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
05. Implement Feedback Loops: Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
06. Improve Collaboratively, Evolve Experimentally: Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
SWOT & MOST Analysis Exercises
01. Undertake a detailed SWOT Analysis in order to identify your department’s internal strengths and weaknesses and external opportunities and threats in relation to each of the 12 Implementing Kanban processes featured above. Undertake this task together with your department’s stakeholders in order to encourage collaborative evaluation.
02. Develop a detailed MOST Analysis in order to establish your department’s: Mission; Objectives; Strategies and Tasks in relation to Implementing Kanban . Undertake this task together with all of your department’s stakeholders in order to encourage collaborative evaluation.
Project Studies
Project Study (Part 1) – Customer Service
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Implementing Kanban process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 6 parts:
01. Visualize Workflow
02. Limit Work in Progress (WIP)
03. Make Policies Explicit
04. Manage Flow
05. Implement Feedback Loops
06. Improve Collaboratively, Evolve Experimentally
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 2) – E-Business
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Implementing Kanban process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 6 parts:
01. Visualize Workflow
02. Limit Work in Progress (WIP)
03. Make Policies Explicit
04. Manage Flow
05. Implement Feedback Loops
06. Improve Collaboratively, Evolve Experimentally
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 3) – Finance
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Implementing Kanban process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 6 parts:
01. Visualize Workflow
02. Limit Work in Progress (WIP)
03. Make Policies Explicit
04. Manage Flow
05. Implement Feedback Loops
06. Improve Collaboratively, Evolve Experimentally
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 4) – Globalization
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Implementing Kanban process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 6 parts:
01. Visualize Workflow
02. Limit Work in Progress (WIP)
03. Make Policies Explicit
04. Manage Flow
05. Implement Feedback Loops
06. Improve Collaboratively, Evolve Experimentally
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 5) – Human Resources
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Implementing Kanban process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 6 parts:
01. Visualize Workflow
02. Limit Work in Progress (WIP)
03. Make Policies Explicit
04. Manage Flow
05. Implement Feedback Loops
06. Improve Collaboratively, Evolve Experimentally
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 6) – Information Technology
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Implementing Kanban process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 6 parts:
01. Visualize Workflow
02. Limit Work in Progress (WIP)
03. Make Policies Explicit
04. Manage Flow
05. Implement Feedback Loops
06. Improve Collaboratively, Evolve Experimentally
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 7) – Legal
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Implementing Kanban process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 6 parts:
01. Visualize Workflow
02. Limit Work in Progress (WIP)
03. Make Policies Explicit
04. Manage Flow
05. Implement Feedback Loops
06. Improve Collaboratively, Evolve Experimentally
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 8) – Management
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Implementing Kanban process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 6 parts:
01. Visualize Workflow
02. Limit Work in Progress (WIP)
03. Make Policies Explicit
04. Manage Flow
05. Implement Feedback Loops
06. Improve Collaboratively, Evolve Experimentally
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 9) – Marketing
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Implementing Kanban process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 6 parts:
01. Visualize Workflow
02. Limit Work in Progress (WIP)
03. Make Policies Explicit
04. Manage Flow
05. Implement Feedback Loops
06. Improve Collaboratively, Evolve Experimentally
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 10) – Production
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Implementing Kanban process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 6 parts:
01. Visualize Workflow
02. Limit Work in Progress (WIP)
03. Make Policies Explicit
04. Manage Flow
05. Implement Feedback Loops
06. Improve Collaboratively, Evolve Experimentally
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 11) – Logistics
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Implementing Kanban process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 6 parts:
01. Visualize Workflow
02. Limit Work in Progress (WIP)
03. Make Policies Explicit
04. Manage Flow
05. Implement Feedback Loops
06. Improve Collaboratively, Evolve Experimentally
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 12) – Education
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Implementing Kanban process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 6 parts:
01. Visualize Workflow
02. Limit Work in Progress (WIP)
03. Make Policies Explicit
04. Manage Flow
05. Implement Feedback Loops
06. Improve Collaboratively, Evolve Experimentally
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Program Benefits
Information Technology
- Agile IT processes
- Improved value delivery
- Decreased defects
- Continuous improvement
- Modernized infrastructure
- Re-tooled staff
- Increased morale
- IT Business partnership
- Meaningful metrics
- Effective sourcing
Management
- Decreased costs
- Aligned strategies
- Servant leadership
- Clarified priorities
- Improved effectiveness
- Improved transparency
- Reduced risk
- Measurable results
- Satisfied customers
- Vendor partnerships
Human Resources
- Empowered teams
- Servant leaders
- Re-tooled staff
- Improved teamwork
- Enhanced collaboration
- Improved performance
- Reduced turnover
- Improved loyalty
- Leadership development
- Employee development
Client Telephone Conference (CTC)
If you have any questions or if you would like to arrange a Client Telephone Conference (CTC) to discuss this particular Unique Consulting Service Proposition (UCSP) in more detail, please CLICK HERE.