Copyright © 2016 Curt Hill Kanban Software Development Paradigm The revenge of Toyota.

Kanban An agile software process Inspired by Toyota’s Just In Time manufacturing process It is a process and a management system –Visualization is important in the process –Does not prescribe roles Some of the leaders of this movement include Dave Anderson, Corey Ladas and others Copyright © 2016 Curt Hill

Toyota Organized their manufacturing on the supermarket model –Keep your stock and demand as matched as possible A team that had excess capacity would deliver a card (Kanban) to signal this –This would provoke a “pull” – transfer of material to the team with more capacity Copyright © 2016 Curt Hill

Visualization Copyright © 2016 Curt Hill The software development process is a pipeline One of the goals of Kanban is to visualize that pipeline Once the pipeline is visualized it is easier to eliminate the bottlenecks –Bottlenecks restrict flow and reduce quality

Bottlenecks and Quality A bottleneck reduces the flow of tasks through the system They also reduce quality –The person working on the task feels pressure to finish –This makes it easier for them to do a quick job rather than a good job Copyright © 2016 Curt Hill

General Principles Kanban is about change management Start with existing process –No prescription as to what it should be Pursue incremental improvements Respect the current process, roles, responsibilities and titles Leadership at all levels Acts of leadership at all levels in the organization are encouraged Copyright © 2016 Curt Hill

Start with existing process No prescription on roles or process Continuous, incremental and evolutionary changes to the system This is a change management method The goal is to make this process more efficient Copyright © 2016 Curt Hill

Pursue Incremental change The team must agree that continuous, incremental and evolutionary change is the way to make system improvements Sweeping changes may seem more effective but have a higher failure rate due to resistance and fear in the organization Copyright © 2016 Curt Hill

Respect the current system It is likely that the organization currently has some elements that work acceptably and are worth preserving Kanban seeks to drive out fear in order to facilitate future change It attempts to eliminate initial fears by agreeing to respect current roles, responsibilities and job titles with the goal of gaining broader support Copyright © 2016 Curt Hill

Leadership at all levels Acts of leadership at all levels in the organization, from individual contributors to senior management, are encouraged The responsibility of making the system better rests with all Copyright © 2016 Curt Hill

Core Developer Values Visualize work Limit work in progress Focus on flow Continuous improvement –This has two aspects –Improve the process of development –Improve the product – the code Copyright © 2016 Curt Hill

Suppose a system We have three groups that form our pipeline: –Analysts –Developers –Testers Each has a limit on works in progress The manager prioritizes small tasks before they enter the pipeline We also keep a whiteboard that contains our progress Copyright © 2016 Curt Hill

Visual Monitor Copyright © 2016 Curt Hill

Observation The visual monitor allows every member to see the progress As bottlenecks become obvious people may be shifted from one stage of the pipeline to another This will help restore task flow to previous and better level Copyright © 2016 Curt Hill

Terminology of Kanban Bottleneck – a stage that is not clearing the work and slowing other stages Blocker – internal or external factor that limits completion –Usually an unfinished dependency, missing skill set or defect Pull – work is requested from a queue Push – work is assigned to system –Not the Kanban way WIP – Work in Process Copyright © 2016 Curt Hill

Terminology of Kanban Hidden WIP – a WIP not on the board Process – Those steps needed to be completed to be considered done Process Map – a visual representation of the steps needed to complete a process Task switching – changing from one task to another –Limiting helps WIP Limit – constraint on the number of tasks in any stage of the pipeline Copyright © 2016 Curt Hill

Finally The Kanban approach may start with any existing system with the intent to improve –We could start with Scrum and apply Kanban principles Emphasizes visual metrics to show bottlenecks Gaining in popularity Copyright © 2016 Curt Hill