How to use #Kanban for #UX ?

What Should I Use? Scrum Or kanban?

Which agile software development methodology is better suited for my own situation?
It is import to assess your current context, decide what outcomes you are trying to achieve, and make an informed decision of how you are going to design your initial Agile Operating Model (AOM).

Why Kanban and DevOps are such a good fit?

The Kanban software development methodology is getting a lot of attention as of late, particularly for its ability to enable DevOps. This Kanban board concept is not just for the engineers, it is for everyone to see where work is performed and its status. It holds a powerful ability to analyze processes, find waste and make small enhancements to eliminate or reduce that waste. By slowly and gradually ameliorating elements of the process we are able to achieve significant improvements in the quality, costs and timing of our work.

SEP teamwork - Kanban tool for visual studio

One of the biggest problems with TFS is that it is difficult to visualize work.  SEP TeamWorks is a work item management tool that digitizes kanban.

With SEP TeamWorks you can do it all.. SEP TeamWorks lets you view, edit, and create work items for Team Foundation Server 2008, 2010, and 2012.

Why limit wip - Working better within constraints

“One of Kanban's main principles is to limit the work in progress. A WIP limit is a strategy for preventing bottlenecks  Limiting WIP leads to a virtuous cycle of improvement-  Multi tasking goes down, feedback goes up, errors are easier to catch, work becomes easier to break up into smaller prices, which makes it easier to limit WIP, which mean multi tasking goes down, etc, etc,etc “

Kanban for Customer Support

Kanban is about ensuring that tasks flow steadily and continuously through the system and continuously improving. But what if you’re dealing with customers and with their questions/requests?  How do you keep the flow running with verity of issues? How can you set an SLA? And how do you know you have improved?

Evolving to Multiban - Visualize all levels of work

With Kanban, a board is just one board to which the cards are pinned. With Multiban, a board is a slate of switchable data axes (or lanes), with custom intersections. Multiban, as the visual process management system, is presented by a set of views, reports, controls and boards that comply with any diversity, and any complexity of workflow, or organizational structure. It a visualization evolution.  Here it is: 

Time Management Tips For Students

The time management skills and disciplines that you develop as a student can help you for the rest of your life. Those skills that we as parents help our children to develop as the same thing

Sometimes we get so many tips, as parents and as students, most of them are theory , using  simple task board , agile thinking and scrum framework will take those tips from idea to action.

Here are some tips and practices to help students (in various ages)  develop good time management skills.

Kanban For HR to manage work more efficiently.

As any operation HR can use and benefit from the Kanban techniques to better manage their tasks and flow.

As in one instance HR provides services to the organization which can be easily translated to a common flow of work, visualize and controlled using Kanban. Not only the services, any other HR project may be managed as any other project, so why not use Kanban?

Obviously and very critical remember that Kanban is not enough, but this is a different story for another Roojoom.

Stattys - Write & Slide

Meet Stattys, solves many of the issues we encounter while working with post-its.  Among other things Stattys can be easily used as a task board of any kind, taken to workshops, training, Lectures and team rooms.

Kanban 101

Recommended reading list and references about Kanban i am using when introducing Kanban to new agilists.

'A' is for Agile : Scaled Agile Framework Applied by Mark Richards

"“Now how do I make it work in my special situation?”  Like any good framework, it is designed on a set of principles.   Implementation requires leveraging your understanding of the principles to tailor the detail to your situation.

In this series of posts, Mark will endeavour to illustrate with working examples the fashion in which it has been applied in the group he has been guiding for the past 9 months. "   It is  not yet describing a full enterprise-level SAFe implementation.   It is being actively explored.

Scrum Vs Kanban

Should your group go with Kanban or Scrum?

Scrum and Kanban are compared very often. Basically they both can be beneficial to a project or an organization once understanding their fit. Furthermore, they both can be implemented side by side, or just as a sole solution or as a combinations like Scrumban or as part of SAFe solution.

You choose.

The Lego calendar by Vitamins

The Lego calendar by Vitamins  is another neat way offering to manage a project on schedule and track your time, tasks and appointment. Here it is:
"The Lego calendar is a wall mounted time planner that we invented for our studio. It’s made entirely of Lego, but if you take a photo of it with a smartphone all of the events and timings will be magically synchronised to an online, digital calendar. It makes the most of the tangibility of physical objects, and the ubiquity of digital platforms, and it’s also puts a smile on our faces when we use it!

For more info visit vitaminsdesign.com/projects/lego-calendar/

Code will be shared online soon!"

  

Lego calendar by Vitamins from Vitamins on Vimeo.

Using the Kanban Board and Retrospective Framework to Create Employee Annual Performance Review

First published Dec 2010

How many times did we realize that the end of year performance review is too much too late and not relevant!?

Too much numbers, too many boxes to grade, too many confusing titles, too many meetings to define those measurable issues, too many questions to answer, too much signs...too little visibility and follow-ups and at the end too little employee commitment (that derives from pressure instead of  intent to improve).

Why not changing the performance review to be more agile and open? To be more shared with the employee. Well, there is a way, just use the retrospective framework with a simple kanban board visability.

When I say shared I mean also "under employee responsibility”, not as something to grade, but as something to draw action items from, act upon and be accountable for its outcomes as well as for its progress as any other agile activity. After all, we want those goals to be achieved according to business needs and business value (which changes all the time), we want things to get done more then get graded. 

The traditional performance review usually includes few papers with questions. Some of them are heavy documentation and some a bit lighter. But most of them includes some kind of a ranking table or statements, discussed with the manager, with some kind of comments to follow.

Sometimes Goals we have set in the performance review are no longer relevant when we come back to evaluate them.

Usually this process is under manager control and responsibility. Employee is set to get good grades instead of behavioral change and instead of an agile change fits to business changes.

I will never overrule open discussion, positive feedback and communication. I will overrule the heavy process and the waste included. Furthermore, it does not seem to work and does not seem to fit to the agile mindset.

So, my opinion is to stop the heavy process and start leading to a real performance and employee improvement.

This process then should be lead by the employee to take full responsibility over the outcome and his/hers progress.

When working in an agile organization, we anchorage the teams to be self managed. It means that the team selects its own tasks; accountable for those issues to deliver. Managers are few steps back, no longer dividing tasks or controlling the workflow, rather dealing with the team vision, technology future and cross departments processes.

Agile anchorage communication, it encourage openness between team members, retrospective and feedback over performance and processes.

An agile team that follows those practices becomes a more mature and demanding one. Same goes with an employee, and individual which we expect to be accountable for his acts and goals.

We count on them to deliver, why not counting on them to follow and deliver performance as well?.

How do we do this then?

Well, simple, as always.

Use the scrum retrospective approach.

Meet the employee in person, explain the rules:

Openness, brain storm, concentrating in high value delivered issues, communication, the ability to change and finally and most important – employee responsibility to the process, action items, follow-ups and success as a non negotiable issue (!)

·        
Create a brain storm with the employee over his performance.

·         Divide the brain storm to three main issues:

o   Things we want to continue doing, stop doing, and start doing.

·         Let him share his view.

·         As a facilitator/manager come prepared: Collect the information, write it down.

·         Best practice will be to use the Kanban board (I will explain it later).

·         Visualize the goals and actions.

·         Discuss over each issue shortly.

·         Advice to take some of the stuff offline.

o   We can leave some of the issues in the backlog and concentrating over the high value delivered  issues only.

·         Assign action items.

·         Ask the employee to follow those action items.

From time to time, during the personal meetings, employee presents his goals board.

·         Review the way the employee took responsibility over the action items. What was the process he chose? What was the outcome?

·         You can always add action items from the backlog and assigned them as well.

·         Be flexible to change non fit action items/goals or to add new ones.

The entire set of rules of how to collect information regarding employee performance applies here as well.

**Remember – This time the board is personal, its not a public board to share with the entire team. However, the goals and actions should fit the team expected performance and goals.

What do we gain out of all of this? We gain employee accountability, open discussion, employee control and commitment, the ability to change, the ability to follow the progress, relevant goals and actions, performed action, collaborative effort and a lighter process.

Let's see how Kanban can answer all of those and meet the three retrospective characters detailed above:

1.       Visualize your flow

·         create a simple Kanban board flow to fit the retrospective structure

·         It can hold columns of: "What should we stop doing", "Continue doing", "Start doing"; or : "What went well", "Needs improvement".

·         Don’t forget to add an action item and action columns

2.       Ask the employee to take some time and start filling out tasks in each of those columns (do not assign these tasks yet)

3. Create an open discussion over those issues

4. Decide on action items and place them will the assignee on the action items column.

The board should be followed by the employee, he makes sure to move the action items following his actual progress

A more improved and mature process can hold types of tasks, deferent columns, and assignments to areas or improvements, whatever…..…..

Enjoy….

Combining Kanban to Build the Agile Enterprise

How end-to-end business agility looks like and how is it different from team agility? Scrum is fine, But probably not enough. When scaling to the enterprise level  we can use Kanban for better architecture analysis, multi teams synchronization ,portfolio and backlog management. In this RooJoom , I’ll  look at using enterprise Kanban boards to coordinate these issues.

Kanban for Operations - Deliver Business Value

IT Operations work has different challenges from new development. DevOps teams must balance large workloads and emergency tasks with assuring a strong infrastructure. Their tasks tend to be continual, and don't lend themselves well to time boxes. Kanban is widely used to address the needs of IT Operations. (http://www.leankanbanuniversity.com/kanban-it-operationsdevops)

Kanban - Classes of service

Class of Service are used To Optimize Flow, Manage Risk, and Increase Predictability. How? Read more...

What is Kanban? (For beginners)

Kanban - Using queue

What is a kanban system Queue limits and examples.