Kanban Experience

Evolutionary software development - by Mattia Battiston -

Tales of...

Welcome to P-Lab!

● IT consulting agency (custom software for companies + support)

● about 8 devs + 3 managers ● one big bank client

● Joined in October 2011 (until september 2013) ● found total chaos! ● Waterfall, command & control, micro management,

continuous interruptions, etc. etc. etc. ● Demotivated people, low quality products, fire fighting, long

hours

Nothing was ever improving!

Mattia

new big project: CFI

WE’RE GOING ON AN ADVENTURE!

Rewrite a COBOL app

But can’t talk to users

QA at the end

600 days; will 400 do?

discovering Kanban...

MANAGE FLOW

EVOLVE EXPERIMENTALLY

FEEDBACK LOOPS

EXPLICIT POLICIES

LEADERSHIP AT ALL LEVELS

INCREMENTAL, EVOLUTIONARY CHANGES

START WITH WHAT YOU DO

RESPECT CURRENT ROLES

VISUALIZE

LIMIT WIP

values

practices

Visualize

Step 1: value stream mapping

Visualize

Step 2: first board

Step 3: evolve to keep aligned with reality

Visualize

Visualize: lesson learnt

Reflect reality Be creative & use different levels

Visualize: NIM

From this...

Visualize: NIM

...value stream mapping...

Visualize: NIM

...to this!

NIM: The horizon

Limit WIP

WIP Limits in action

TODO DEV (2) DEPLOY INT. (2)

TEST INT. (2) DONE

A

B

C

D

E

F

One day in Kanban-land

WIP Limits in action

TODO DEV (2) DEPLOY INT. (2)

TEST INT. (2) DONE

A

B

C

D

E

F

MAMMA MIA, THE DEPLOY IS BROKEN!

One day in Kanban-land

WIP Limits in action

TODO DEV (2) DEPLOY INT. (2)

TEST INT. (2) DONE

A

B

C

D

E

F

YEAH, C IS FINISHED! HANG ON, I CAN’T MOVE IT FORWARD!

One day in Kanban-land

WIP Limits in action

TODO DEV (2) DEPLOY INT. (2)

TEST INT. (2) DONE

A

B

C

D

E

F

LET’S WORK TOGETHER AND FIX THE DEPLOY

One day in Kanban-land

WIP Limits in action

TODO DEV (2) DEPLOY INT. (2)

TEST INT. (2) DONE

A

B

C

D

E

F

I COULD START D, BUT...I BETTER FINISH A FIRST AND THEN CONCENTRATE ON D

One day in Kanban-land

WIP Limits in action

TODO DEV (2) DEPLOY INT. (2)

TEST INT. (2) DONE

A

B

C D

E

F

One day in Kanban-land

Limit WIP: lesson learnt

● Avoid local optimization, always look at the whole process ● Made problems emerge

○ where things got stuck it meant we had a problem, the process had to improve ● Forced us to solve the problems

○ when something was stuck we had to unblock it ● Forced us to finish stories rather than starting new ones

○ when choosing what to do we always preferred to work on something on the right to get it done

● Forced us to concentrate just on what we were doing ○ reduced context switch -> work faster ○ higher quality

● Forced us to have slack (or “extra capacity”) ○ when the limit was full we’d help others, discuss improvements, refactor, etc. ○ great for dealing with interruptions

● Start generous and keep tightening ● Play games to gain hindsights

WIP LIMITS ARE COUNTERINTUITIVE

PEOPLE ARE WATCHING YOU, AND MIGHT NOT UNDERSTAND

Limit WIP: NIM

Manage Flow: standup

Standup: from zombies...

I WORKED ON A STORY

I WORKED ON A STORY

RELEASE TESTING

I CAN’T REMEMBER

Manage Flow: standup

… to FLOW

2 questions: ● what can be pulled to DONE today? ● what’s stopping each card from flowing

to DONE?

read from right to left

Manage Flow: iteration

Monday morning checkpoint: “iteration planning” ● week review: what have we done last week? ● on the fly informal retrospective: what has slowed us down? what would make us go

faster? ● bigger view: where are we in the project? how much is left to do? will we make it at

this pace? ● this week: what should we work on?

Manage Flow: story size

● features broken into very small tasks e.g.: draw simple page using dummy service; implement one happy path in the service; implement another happy path; handle errors; make list paginated on the page; etc.

● each task flowed through the board ● benefits: easy to know when task is done; easy to test; sense of accomplishment;

often parallelizable; reactive to interruptions; can decide to stop at any point;

SMALL TASKS AND WIP LIMIT MADE US REALLY FAST!

Manage Flow: metrics

PROJECT BURNUP CHART CUMULATIVE FLOW DIAGRAM

VELOCITY

TRACKING TASKS AT PROJECT LEVEL PROVED TOO FINE GRAINED

AT THE TIME WE WERE DOING IT WRONG. NOW I KNOW IT’S VERY USEFUL

CONFIRMED OUR FEELINGS, GREAT FOR FORECASTING

Manage Flow: lesson learnt

● small tasks with WIP limit made us go very fast ● focus on what you can finish instead of what you can start ● difficult to get metrics right: collect data instead and wait until you’re sure ● visualize at different levels: portfolio, project, iteration

NIM: CFD

WIP

LEAD TIME

Feedback loops

● ● team culture: don’t blame people, blame the process => ● celebrate problems! it’s the process telling you loud and clear where you can improve

SOFT ON PEOPLE, HARD ON PROCESS

“95% of the performance of an organization is attributable to the system and 5% is attributable to the people” - E. Deming

Moral: Kanban values

● start with what you do now & respect current roles ○ we didn’t and resulted in fights with management

● agree to pursue incremental, evolutionary change ○ visualize, limit wip, manage flow, feedback loops ○ improve everyday, don’t wait for a retro ○ your board, your charts, your metrics, your people, are trying to tell you

something: listen!

● encourage act of leadership at all levels ○ don’t let politics stop you from improving

Books + references