Notes & Thoughts

I have come up with a bunch of frequent raised myths around Kanban and debunked them. Once you key in your email id, you will receive an email which contains the link to the PDF. If you have further questions/comments/thoughts comment away below. Happy Reading !

I’ve spoken earlier about “what we practice at small scale, eventually sets the tone for the entire system” earlier.

Resilience isn’t some ppt/e-learning module that you see once and are ready to go. Resilience can be built. Resilience can be “installed” however you are bound to face issues. The best way you can let “Resilience” flourish is to let it grow/bloom from within.

I loved Jason Fried’s announcement to his staff. Reproducing it below from his Twitter feed.

I love the fact that he emphasises on the following :

Whatever works for you, works for us.

You are in charge of your time.

Everyone will be paid their full salary.

Basecamp’s business is solid.

Nobody has to worry that their job is at risk.

…our margin of safety is wide.

We’re in good shape.

It takes an enormous amount of confidence and courage to draft something to that effect. It tells the team that “No matter what happens – we got your back” and the fact that “we are financially sound, so don’t worry about your jobs”.

This sort of confidence does not “arrive” with a “Series C” or a “Series D” investment. This comes with years of running an organization frugally and with discipline. Involves putting in a great amount of trust in your employees/co-workers. Needs enormous amount of courage and conviction when making “critical business decisions”. Best part about it is that once the employees see that you are serious about it, they make it their mission as well.

End of the day, that’s what one wants right ? Someone to look up to, A north-star that guides you.

Last weekend (14th March 2020) I had the good fortune to facilitate a meet-up that was sponsored by LeanPitch and AgilityThinking.

I had earlier wanted to talk about “Jobs to be done” and to have a discussion with the group on its implications. However, I had this nagging thought that the meet-up ought to be something that people can relate to, something tangible. I realized that the GetKanban game was something I could utilize to engage a diverse group, without a ppt.

Participant were from diverse backgrounds and I was pleasantly surprised to see that we had folks from manufacturing and HR backgrounds participating as well ! It made complete sense because Kanban is inherently “business-agility” embedded.

We had a quick ice-breaker at 6 PM along with the tea/coffee and got started. The game setup and pre-brief took nearly 45 mins followed by some “hand-holding” for days 9 and 10. After that I was merely an observer and had a lot of fun watching the “team” take decisions.

What I truly loved about the outcome was that, the first 30 mins participants (rather – the developers, testers, analysts) were all talking about “getting their piece of work done” , how “we need to pull in more work”, “why is work piling up” – and when they saw the impact on the “outcomes” (in this case subscribers and the $ earned) – the perspective changed completely.

Since we were bound by time (had to wrap up by 9 PM), we ran the simulation upto Day 15 and decided to proceed to post-game briefing.

We briefly touched upon, Little’s Law, WIP limits and how it affects “flow”, Reading CFD diagrams, interpreting Run charts. Not much time to discuss “Work-item types” or Lead time calculations and their impact on the charts.

Overall, it was good #learningwithfun and #learningbydoing.

All pictures are from participants at the meet-up.

You can read more about the Kanban System Design program (KMP1) here. KMP2 is a slightly advanced program for Kanban practitioners who’d like to build a Kanban system of systems.

Comment / put in your queries in the comment section below, or use the “Contact us” form and I’ll get back to you at the earliest.