Beyond Kanban: Lean Thinking for Agile Teams

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The growing interest about Kanban in the Agile Community seems to reduce learning about Lean Thinking to one principle only: PULL. This talk was prepared for the Agile PT 2011 conference and provides an overview of the 14 Management Principles for developing a Lean Culture and how IT frameworks such as SCRUM or KANBAN for Software Development apply them. It introduces Lean Leardership and People Development principles as well as fundamental Lean Practices beyond kanban such as Value Stream Mapping, Continuous Flow, Leveling (Heijunka), Stop and Fix (Jidoka), Visual Standards, Visual Controls and A3 Problem Solving. Knowledge about these often overlooked principles and practices will help agile teams to see the whole and better understand the lean concepts behind agile frameworks such as SCRUM and KANBAN. They will be better equipped to create learning and adaptive organizations by solving problems in the implementation of agile frameworks instead of spending time discussing which framework is better. After all, the goal is to "be lean and agile" and not to "do Lean" or "do Agile"

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Lean Thinking for AGILE Teams Beyond Kanban

Ana Valente PereiraAGILE Portugal 2011 - Porto

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The interest in KANBAN is growing in the AGILE Community... is LEAN taking over AGILE? is KANBAN replacing SCRUM?

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LEAN has it's roots in the auto industry

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Reducing LEAN to KANBAN is likedriving just half of your car

KANBAN

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Lean processes have 2 major pillars : Just in Time and Built In Quality Kanban is just a visual tool to implement Just In Time.

Just In Time Built In Quality

KANBAN

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Lean thinking is about understanding the management principles behind both pillars...

Just In Time Built In Quality

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...and also the principles behind people development and problem solving

holding both pillars together.

Just In Time Built In Quality

People and Problem Solving

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Base your management

decisions on a long term philosophy,

even at the expense of short term goals.

Generate Value for the Customer, Society and Economy.

Evaluate every function on the company in terms of its ability to

achieve this.

Principle #1

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Lean Practice: Value Stream Mapping

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Create Continuous Process Flow to

bring problems to surface.

Redesign processes to achieve high-value added, continuous

flow. Create flow to move material and information fast as

well as to link processes and people together.

Principle #2

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Lean Practice: WorkCells

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Use Pull Systems to avoid

overproduction

Minimize WIP and inventory by stocking small amounts and frequently restocking based on what the customer process actually takes away.

Be responsive to shifts in customer demand rather than rely on schedules

Principle #3

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Lean Practice: Kanban

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Level out the workload. Work like the tortoise, not the

hare

Eliminate overburden (MURI) to people and equipment and unevenness (MURA) in the schedule

Eliminating waste (MUDA) is just 1/3 of the Lean equation

Principle #4

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Lean Practice: Heijunka

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Build a culture of stopping to fix problems, to get

quality right the first time

Build into your organization a support system to quickly solve problems and put

in place countermeasures

Principle #5

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Lean Practices:Andon

Jidoka,Poka yoke

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Standard work is the foundation for continuous

improvement and employee empowerment.

Allow creative and individual expression to improve the standard, then incorporate into

new standard

Principle #6

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Lean Practice: Standard Work Sheet

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Use Visual Control so no problems are hidden.

Use simple visual indicators to help people if they are deviating from a standard

condition

Principle #7

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Technology support:

Use only reliable, tested technology that serves your

people and processes.

Often it is best to work out a process manually before adding technology to

support the process

Principle #8

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Lean Practice: Jidoka (Autonomation)

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"Before we build cars, we build people"

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Grow leaders who thoroughly understand the work, life the philosophy and teach it to others

The leader's job is to develop people.

Prin

cipl

e #9

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Develop exceptional People and Teams who follow your company's philosophy.

Make an ongoing effort to teach individuals how to work together as

teams toward common goals. Workgroups are the focal point for solving problems

and control of standardization

Use cross functional teams to improve quality and produtivity and enhance flow

Prin

cipl

e #1

0

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Respect your extended network of Partners and Suppliers by challenging them and helping them to improve

Pr

inci

ple

#11

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Genchi Genbutsu: Go see for yourself to thoroughly understand the situation

Solve problems and improve processes by

going to the source and observing and verifying

data

Prin

cipl

e #1

2

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Lean Practice: Onno Circle

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Make decisions slowly by concensus thoroughly considering all the options; implement decisions rapidly

Namawashi is the process of discussing

problems and potential solutions with all of the affected to collect their ideas and agree on a

path forward.

Prin

cipl

e #1

3

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Lean Practice: A3 Report

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Become a Learning Organization through reflection (Hansei) and continuous improvement (Kaizen)

View errors as

opportunities for leaning. Rather than

blaming individuals, take corrective actions and distribute knowledge

about each experience

Prin

cipl

e #1

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Practical Problem Solving

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"we don't build cars, we build software"Lean Principles for Software Development

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Lean Principles in SCRUM

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Principle#1 Long Term Philosophy: Value for the Customer

SCRUM promotes Value Driven Development and the Product Owner optimizes ROI (Value/cost) .. The process is optimized so that teams don't waste much time in non value added activities such as meetings ... but nobody is focused in removing waste from the process..

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#2 Continuous Process Flow.

SCRUM is designed to flow the work in small batches. The team organized like a work cell and the Scrum Master helps to remove impediments to Flow during the Sprint

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#3 Use Pull Systems to avoid overproduction.

SCRUM limits WIP by allowing teams to pull from the Product Backlog the items to be worked during the Sprint. Once they start working on them, the previous process should strive to have the next batch of PBIs groomed.

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#4 Level out the workload.

SCRUM fits customer demand into leveled schedules (sprints) aligning it to team capacity and promoting a sustainable pace of work

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#6 Standard Work:

SCRUM relies in empirical process control so standard tasks and times have no application but the Definition of Done defines the standard by which Product Backlog items are evaluated when “Done”. The team is empowered to improve this standard in Sprint Retrospectives

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#7 Visual Controls:

SCRUM makes problems visible in burndown charts ... Some teams use task boards to visualize task progress and impediments

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#9 Grow Leaders #10 Develop Teams #11 Respect Partners

The team is challenged to self-organize and decide how to achieve the sprint goals. The Scrum Master provides support for the team and Leads by mentoring and teaching. The PO manages relation with upstream processes

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#12 GoSee:

Scrum meetings provide an observation point for the process

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#13 Concensus #14 Reflection and Continuous Improvement

Sprint Planning is about gathering consensus on what to build in the next Sprint. Sprint Retrospectives provide points for reflection and continuous improvement of the process. Unfortunately knowledge is not shared beyond the project

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Lean Principles & KANBAN

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Principle#1 Long Term Philosophy: Value for the Customer

Using a Kanban System for Software, Value is Optimized with Classes of Service (SLAs). Work is scheduled by Cost of Delay

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#2 Continuous Process Flow..

Visualise Workflow: Map the Value stream as it exists and draw the card wall. Limit WIP to reduce lead times. Define, as well, limits for queues and buffer bottlenecks. Adjust empirically.

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#3 Use Pull Systems to avoid overproduction.

Pull work from the system only when there is capacity to do so.

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#4 Level out the workload.

Balance Demand against throughput. Make a study of the demand and allocate capacity by Work Item Type or Class of Service

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#6 Standard Work:

Make process policies explicit.

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#7 Visual Controls:

Cumulative Flow diagram shows work in progress at each stage in the system. Teams track also Lead Time , Due Date Performance and Defect Rates.

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We saw how LEAN management principles are broad enough to be applied in agile software development frameworks

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Agile frameworks leverage Lean to implement Just in Time processes and make problems visible...

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... But why don't we leverage Lean to solve thecauses of the problems as well ????

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#5 Stop and Fix, #8Technology support

Agile teams should focus on technology that automates software integration and testing... Stop to fix problems should be our mindset. We developed a continuous integration tool that shows teams their

technical debt: http://www.peakplatform.net/56

#13 Concensus #14 Reflection and Continuous Improvement

Improve retrospectives with Root Cause Analysis and A3 Thinking to get visibility of Process Improvement (PDCA for the process and not only for the

product,...)

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LEAN is about developing People to solve Problems(if we were truly agile we should start here....

People over Processes...right???)

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Ana Valente PereiraThank You

apereira@whatever.pt, twitter/apvpereira

Pictures (the good ones...not my drawings): © Ben Heine @ Flickr

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