I just returned from the Lean Software and Systems conference in Boston. There was a definite common thread around learning cultures and a focus on treating our industry as a set of scientific experiments. The heavy influence from the Lean Startup movement was prevalent. Here are some of my takeaways for those that were not able to attend.
Steven Spear
- Greatness is achieved by increasing the pace of learning
David Anderson
- Kanban Principles
- Start with what you do now
- Agree to pursue incremental evolutionary change
- Initially respect current roles responsibilities and job titles
- Encourage acts of leadership at all levels from individual contributor to senior management
- Implement feedback mechanisms added
- Steps for converting to Kanban
- Understand sources of dissatisfaction
- From viewpoint of internal and external
- Source of variability that cause dissatisfaction
- Demand and capability analysis
- By work item type and class of service
- Model workflow
- Understand the knowledge discovery process by type
- Kanban system design
- Visualization
- Roll out plan
Steven Denning
- Dude’s Law – David Hussman
- Value – Why/How
- Focus on the Outcome
- The only valid purpose of a firm is to create a customer
- Not create shareholder value
- Switch your focus from Outputs to Outcomes
- Customer Delight = Providing a continuous stream of value to customers and delivering it sooner
- The goal is to delight the customer. Everything else is a means to getting there
- Less is more. Aim for the simplest thing.
- Costs will come down because you will only focus on things that delight your customer
- Commands kill conversation
- Money kills inspiration
Dominica DeGrandis – Kanban for IT Operations
- Need to get visibility to dependencies because they carry risk
- Design your SLA’s into your board. Create timeline like tick marks across your in progress column and move items each day.
- Problems with board where there are names for swimlanes
- Standups are focused on individuals
- Perception of poor performance
- Limits Collaboration
- Focus on utilization
- Pigeon hole folks
- Bring visibility to skill levels of different skills required on team
- Make interrupts visible
- Institute the Goalie.
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- Handles small interrupts
- Rotates Weekly
- Expands Knowledge base
- Gain flexibility in team
- Make a policy on when the team should create a ticket for something (i.e. takes more than 4 hours)
Jeff Patton
- Focus on Value
- Don’t focus on maximizing the output, focus on maximizing the impact of the outcomes
- Think beyond the edges of the Kanban board
Arne Roock and Markus Andrezak
- “Projects” are like waterfall containers that have planning, time constraints, focus, budget and purpose
- Replace projects with epics that align to strategic goal/ outcomes. Let the team work to achieve those outcomes
Don Reinertsen
- Compared Software to Firefighting, “You don’t just say this is a complex adaptive problem so we can’t create a plan”
Jim Benson
- Change happens in evolutionary leaps
- Kaizen is a status quo monster
Misc
- Can run simulations through board http://www.focusedobjective.com/
- “Standard” is just the status quo written down
