I am the lead for a 6 person network operations team. The company for which I
work has gotten Scrum fever and my manager wants to use it to handle our group's
work. I've been through the company-provided ScrumMaster training and I've read
David Anderson's Kanban book. I personally feel Kanban is a better fit to start
off with.
Our workload comes in two flavors: planned and interrupt-driven. Projects and
other scrum team tasks fit into the planned category and the interrupt-driven
tasks are the usual trouble tickets, last-minute drive-bys, break/fix work, and
other requests for our time that tend to come out of the blue. My first goal is
to get a Kanban system established to start getting visibility and metrics
together. Eventually I can see a hybrid Scrum/Kanban system where tasks from
projects/scrums are simply part of the backlog and flow through our system. How
would I set this up on a board? I thought about horizontal swimlanes splitting
planned and interrupt work into separate lanes but as a Kanban noob I am
interested in how group members are (if at all) handling interrupt work vs.
planned work.
Chuck Nixon
I had a similar issue and I chose to add a 3rd horizontal swim lane to our board. We already had an "Expedite" and main lane so we broke the main lane into "tangible" and "intangible" which we took from the Spotify Ops team's presentation here: http://www.infoq.com/articles/kanban-operations-spotify
We debated calling the new lanes "external work" and "internal work" instead, but in the end decided on tangible/intangible with similar rules as the Spotify team.
In your case, you could consider calling one lane the 'planned/scrum lane' and 'interrupt driven' lane.
You might want to set some rules for minimum sizes with the interrupt work. We don't put interrupt-driven work on the board that is less than 1 hour of time. I've heard others use 15 or 30 mins. We did this so that we don't skew our metrics. The cumulative flow diagram is very sensitive to the relative sizing of tasks. We implemented sizing to help with this, but we still set a limit that anything less than an hour won't get a ticket (in most cases.) BTW, track your metrics early on in the process. I didn't stat tracking metrics in a CFD until much later and I regret it now =)
I think Kanban is very compatbile with Scrum. Kanban adds that visualization element that scrum lacks. I've seen plenty of scrum teams walk around in total chaos because no one has any idea what each other is working on. Kanban can help here.
On Fri, Nov 4, 2011 at 1:16 PM, w4trgate <watrgate@...> wrote:
I am the lead for a 6 person network operations team. The company for which I work has gotten Scrum fever and my manager wants to use it to handle our group's work. I've been through the company-provided ScrumMaster training and I've read David Anderson's Kanban book. I personally feel Kanban is a better fit to start off with.
Our workload comes in two flavors: planned and interrupt-driven. Projects and other scrum team tasks fit into the planned category and the interrupt-driven tasks are the usual trouble tickets, last-minute drive-bys, break/fix work, and other requests for our time that tend to come out of the blue. My first goal is to get a Kanban system established to start getting visibility and metrics together. Eventually I can see a hybrid Scrum/Kanban system where tasks from projects/scrums are simply part of the backlog and flow through our system. How would I set this up on a board? I thought about horizontal swimlanes splitting planned and interrupt work into separate lanes but as a Kanban noob I am interested in how group members are (if at all) handling interrupt work vs. planned work.
Can you say something more about the value metrics and particularly CFDs are
giving you? Often people question the value of CFDs after they are limiting WIP
with a kanban system. I'm interested in your story.
David
--- In kanbanops@yahoogroups.com, Joe Miller <joeym@...> wrote:
>
> I had a similar issue and I chose to add a 3rd horizontal swim lane to our
> board. We already had an "Expedite" and main lane so we broke the main
> lane into "tangible" and "intangible" which we took from the Spotify Ops
> team's presentation here:
> http://www.infoq.com/articles/kanban-operations-spotify
>
> We debated calling the new lanes "external work" and "internal work"
> instead, but in the end decided on tangible/intangible with similar rules
> as the Spotify team.
>
> In your case, you could consider calling one lane the 'planned/scrum lane'
> and 'interrupt driven' lane.
>
> You might want to set some rules for minimum sizes with the interrupt work.
> We don't put interrupt-driven work on the board that is less than 1 hour
> of time. I've heard others use 15 or 30 mins. We did this so that we
> don't skew our metrics. The cumulative flow diagram is very sensitive to
> the relative sizing of tasks. We implemented sizing to help with this, but
> we still set a limit that anything less than an hour won't get a ticket (in
> most cases.) BTW, track your metrics early on in the process. I didn't
> stat tracking metrics in a CFD until much later and I regret it now =)
>
> I think Kanban is very compatbile with Scrum. Kanban adds that
> visualization element that scrum lacks. I've seen plenty of scrum teams
> walk around in total chaos because no one has any idea what each other is
> working on. Kanban can help here.
>
> On Fri, Nov 4, 2011 at 1:16 PM, w4trgate <watrgate@...> wrote:
>
> > **
> >
> >
> > I am the lead for a 6 person network operations team. The company for
> > which I work has gotten Scrum fever and my manager wants to use it to
> > handle our group's work. I've been through the company-provided ScrumMaster
> > training and I've read David Anderson's Kanban book. I personally feel
> > Kanban is a better fit to start off with.
> >
> > Our workload comes in two flavors: planned and interrupt-driven. Projects
> > and other scrum team tasks fit into the planned category and the
> > interrupt-driven tasks are the usual trouble tickets, last-minute
> > drive-bys, break/fix work, and other requests for our time that tend to
> > come out of the blue. My first goal is to get a Kanban system established
> > to start getting visibility and metrics together. Eventually I can see a
> > hybrid Scrum/Kanban system where tasks from projects/scrums are simply part
> > of the backlog and flow through our system. How would I set this up on a
> > board? I thought about horizontal swimlanes splitting planned and interrupt
> > work into separate lanes but as a Kanban noob I am interested in how group
> > members are (if at all) handling interrupt work vs. planned work.
> >
> > Chuck Nixon
> >
> >
> >
>
It's just that - it's actually placing an emphasis on why we should be working harder to limit WIP. I would say we weren't doing kanban 'right'. We were not focusing on single-item flow, limited WIP, etc. We would routinely overflow the WIP and context-switch rapidly between tasks. CFD has helped put an emphasis on why we should be diligent on limiting WIP by visualizing what the consequences were of not limiting WIP - we weren't getting as much done, although we were very busy. Now that we are passed that hurdle, it is entirely possible the CFD will lose value for us.
I should mention that we only have about 3 months of data in the CFD now, and only 1 month since I realized that the diverse sizes of our stories was making the data almost useless. At that point, we reset the CFD over and assigned S/M/L(1/2/3) sizes to our tasks.
A possible but not yet validated benefit from the CFD is in communicating impact to the business. We track our 'expedite' swim lane on the CFD as well. I suspect that may come in handy as a tool to engage in better prioritization conversations in the future. Eg: if the business is bypassing the normal process and stuffing the Expedite channel, I would like to be able to show the impact that is having on the rest of the team's responsibilities. I think the CFD may be helpful here.
We are also metrics junkies. Not quite on the level of the Etsy folks, but we try to track a lot of data from our apps and infrastructure in Graphite. So, the metrics from our kanban board scratchs our metrics itch.
On Fri, Nov 4, 2011 at 10:30 PM, David Anderson <dja@...> wrote:
Can you say something more about the value metrics and particularly CFDs are giving you? Often people question the value of CFDs after they are limiting WIP with a kanban system. I'm interested in your story.
David
--- In kanbanops@yahoogroups.com, Joe Miller <joeym@...> wrote:
>
> I had a similar issue and I chose to add a 3rd horizontal swim lane to our
> board. We already had an "Expedite" and main lane so we broke the main
> lane into "tangible" and "intangible" which we took from the Spotify Ops
> team's presentation here:
> http://www.infoq.com/articles/kanban-operations-spotify
>
> We debated calling the new lanes "external work" and "internal work"
> instead, but in the end decided on tangible/intangible with similar rules
> as the Spotify team.
>
> In your case, you could consider calling one lane the 'planned/scrum lane'
> and 'interrupt driven' lane.
>
> You might want to set some rules for minimum sizes with the interrupt work.
> We don't put interrupt-driven work on the board that is less than 1 hour
> of time. I've heard others use 15 or 30 mins. We did this so that we
> don't skew our metrics. The cumulative flow diagram is very sensitive to
> the relative sizing of tasks. We implemented sizing to help with this, but
> we still set a limit that anything less than an hour won't get a ticket (in
> most cases.) BTW, track your metrics early on in the process. I didn't
> stat tracking metrics in a CFD until much later and I regret it now =)
>
> I think Kanban is very compatbile with Scrum. Kanban adds that
> visualization element that scrum lacks. I've seen plenty of scrum teams
> walk around in total chaos because no one has any idea what each other is
> working on. Kanban can help here.
>
> On Fri, Nov 4, 2011 at 1:16 PM, w4trgate <watrgate@...> wrote:
>
> > **
> >
> >
> > I am the lead for a 6 person network operations team. The company for
> > which I work has gotten Scrum fever and my manager wants to use it to
> > handle our group's work. I've been through the company-provided ScrumMaster
> > training and I've read David Anderson's Kanban book. I personally feel
> > Kanban is a better fit to start off with.
> >
> > Our workload comes in two flavors: planned and interrupt-driven. Projects
> > and other scrum team tasks fit into the planned category and the
> > interrupt-driven tasks are the usual trouble tickets, last-minute
> > drive-bys, break/fix work, and other requests for our time that tend to
> > come out of the blue. My first goal is to get a Kanban system established
> > to start getting visibility and metrics together. Eventually I can see a
> > hybrid Scrum/Kanban system where tasks from projects/scrums are simply part
> > of the backlog and flow through our system. How would I set this up on a
> > board? I thought about horizontal swimlanes splitting planned and interrupt
> > work into separate lanes but as a Kanban noob I am interested in how group
> > members are (if at all) handling interrupt work vs. planned work.
> >
> > Chuck Nixon
> >
> >
> >
>
I also took inspiration from the Spotify presentation (and they're really intelligent and nice guys:),
One thing you can add is having what they call a goalie (we call it daily third line). One person each week is responsible for taking all the interrupt driven tasks, whether they over IM, phone or someone strolling in and talking to us, either do them or size them and put them on the board. This frees up the others to do planned work without being interrupted, we will visualise this by having a flag or something similar on the goalies desk. The only thing that is "all hands on deck" is production incidents.Â
On 4 November 2011 21:16, w4trgate <watrgate@...> wrote:
Â
I am the lead for a 6 person network operations team. The company for which I work has gotten Scrum fever and my manager wants to use it to handle our group's work. I've been through the company-provided ScrumMaster training and I've read David Anderson's Kanban book. I personally feel Kanban is a better fit to start off with.
Our workload comes in two flavors: planned and interrupt-driven. Projects and other scrum team tasks fit into the planned category and the interrupt-driven tasks are the usual trouble tickets, last-minute drive-bys, break/fix work, and other requests for our time that tend to come out of the blue. My first goal is to get a Kanban system established to start getting visibility and metrics together. Eventually I can see a hybrid Scrum/Kanban system where tasks from projects/scrums are simply part of the backlog and flow through our system. How would I set this up on a board? I thought about horizontal swimlanes splitting planned and interrupt work into separate lanes but as a Kanban noob I am interested in how group members are (if at all) handling interrupt work vs. planned work.
Folks,
Our 2012 conference is announced. http://lssc12.leanssc.org/
Registration is open. Details of the CfP for ignite/lightning talks are
announced.
Other details...
Conf Chair: David J. Anderson (me)
Program Chair: Hillel Glazer
Lean Management Summit: Alan Shalloway
Lean Camp: Jim Benson
Track Chairs:
Kanban: David Joyce, Russell Healy, Benjamin Mitchell
Risk: Bob Charette
Leadership & Management: Jeff Anderson
Systems Engineering: Jim Sutton & Richard Turner
Lean Camp will be available as a 1-day registration for Sunday May 13th
Lean Management Summit is a separate registration and numbers are strictly
limited to 50 attendees on Wednesday May 16th
Post conference tutorials will be available May 17th and 18th.
Please repost this wherever you feel is appropriate. Thanks
David
Great job on putting this together. I run the DBA team, how do you handle small
jobs like Permission requests, daily DBA maitenance tasks like checking backups,
jobs, etc...
--- In kanbanops@yahoogroups.com, Ian Carroll <cazano7@...> wrote:
>
> Hi All,
>
> I've published a small case study following a recent engagement of introducing
Kanban to an IT Operations team of approx. 60 people:
>
> http://itopskanban.wordpress.com
>
> Any feedback would be appreciated and I'm happy to elaborate on any aspects
that I've not covered on the site. I've been limited on time available to write
this up so it's pretty rough and ready!
>
> Cheers,
>
> Ian.
>
>
> Ian Carroll
> Agile & Lean Coach
> 07968 399947
> ian@...
> www.iancarroll.com
> http://about.me/ian.carroll
>
For daily tasks (that can't be automated) we have a box in the corner of our kanban board labeled 'Daily checklist' with checkboxes for Mon - Fri.
There's a corresponding 'Daily Checklist tasks' page in the wiki with a simple 2-column table. Left column has simple task name/description, and right column has more details including a link to another wiki page describing the details for that particular task.
Responsibility for the daily checklist rotates to the primary on-call person for the week. He/she is responsible for executing the checklist and marking the board when it's done.
On Tue, Nov 8, 2011 at 2:29 PM, danymorales17 <danymorales17@...> wrote:
Great job on putting this together. I run the DBA team, how do you handle small jobs like Permission requests, daily DBA maitenance tasks like checking backups, jobs, etc...
--- In kanbanops@yahoogroups.com, Ian Carroll <cazano7@...> wrote:
>
> Hi All,
>
> I've published a small case study following a recent engagement of introducing Kanban to an IT Operations team of approx. 60 people:
>
> http://itopskanban.wordpress.com
>
> Any feedback would be appreciated and I'm happy to elaborate on any aspects that I've not covered on the site. I've been limited on time available to write this up so it's pretty rough and ready!
>
> Cheers,
>
> Ian.
>
>
> Ian Carroll
> Agile & Lean Coach
> 07968 399947
> ian@...
> www.iancarroll.com
> http://about.me/ian.carroll
>
I currently been using VersionOne as a big storyboard with 5 vertical lanes
(Ready, WIP, Testing, Block, and Done) but recently the new V1 upgrade you can
now add Horizontal lanes, which I am not sure what I can use them for.
I was just wondering if other members use VersionOne and how do you currently
use it.
P.S I been using Kanban for 6 months now and I will post my team's experience
later this month.
Thanks
-Dany
ok, we kind of do that, we have a Backlog item with all the different daily
tasks but often times the person doing the daily tasks is also the one
responsble for the small DBA tasks like permission requests, sql deployments,
other tasks that take 30 mins or less. Once these requsts start coming in, the
focus is lost on the daily tasks.
I must of missed it but what is the minimum task that you put on the board, 30
mins, 1 hour, 5 mins?
-Dany
--- In kanbanops@yahoogroups.com, Joe Miller <joeym@...> wrote:
>
> For daily tasks (that can't be automated) we have a box in the corner of
> our kanban board labeled 'Daily checklist' with checkboxes for Mon - Fri.
>
> There's a corresponding 'Daily Checklist tasks' page in the wiki with a
> simple 2-column table. Left column has simple task name/description, and
> right column has more details including a link to another wiki page
> describing the details for that particular task.
>
> Responsibility for the daily checklist rotates to the primary on-call
> person for the week. He/she is responsible for executing the checklist and
> marking the board when it's done.
>
> On Tue, Nov 8, 2011 at 2:29 PM, danymorales17 <danymorales17@...>wrote:
>
> > **
> >
> >
> > Great job on putting this together. I run the DBA team, how do you handle
> > small jobs like Permission requests, daily DBA maitenance tasks like
> > checking backups, jobs, etc...
> >
> > --- In kanbanops@yahoogroups.com, Ian Carroll <cazano7@> wrote:
> > >
> > > Hi All,
> > >
> > > I've published a small case study following a recent engagement of
> > introducing Kanban to an IT Operations team of approx. 60 people:
> > >
> > > http://itopskanban.wordpress.com
> > >
> > > Any feedback would be appreciated and I'm happy to elaborate on any
> > aspects that I've not covered on the site. I've been limited on time
> > available to write this up so it's pretty rough and ready!
> > >
> > > Cheers,
> > >
> > > Ian.
> > >
> > >
> > > Ian Carroll
> > > Agile & Lean Coach
> > > 07968 399947
> > > ian@
> > > www.iancarroll.com
> > > http://about.me/ian.carroll
> > >
> >
> >
> >
>
our rule of thumb is >1 hour goes on the board, less can just be done by the admin at his discretion. He/she can choose to cut a ticket and stick it on the board instead though, which would usually occur if it can't be done immediately.
The daily tasks have to be done, if they weren't I would assume you guys wouldn't bother to track and do them, so I would try to find a way to give that DBA the breathing room he needs to focus and complete the dailies. Or maybe assign to someone else who has the capacity to focus on the dailies until their done, if the interrupt-driven DBA really must respond to the other requests first.
On Tue, Nov 8, 2011 at 3:03 PM, danymorales17 <danymorales17@...> wrote:
ok, we kind of do that, we have a Backlog item with all the different daily tasks but often times the person doing the daily tasks is also the one responsble for the small DBA tasks like permission requests, sql deployments, other tasks that take 30 mins or less. Once these requsts start coming in, the focus is lost on the daily tasks.
I must of missed it but what is the minimum task that you put on the board, 30 mins, 1 hour, 5 mins?
-Dany
--- In kanbanops@yahoogroups.com, Joe Miller <joeym@...> wrote:
>
> For daily tasks (that can't be automated) we have a box in the corner of
> our kanban board labeled 'Daily checklist' with checkboxes for Mon - Fri.
>
> There's a corresponding 'Daily Checklist tasks' page in the wiki with a
> simple 2-column table. Left column has simple task name/description, and
> right column has more details including a link to another wiki page
> describing the details for that particular task.
>
> Responsibility for the daily checklist rotates to the primary on-call
> person for the week. He/she is responsible for executing the checklist and
> marking the board when it's done.
>
> On Tue, Nov 8, 2011 at 2:29 PM, danymorales17 <danymorales17@...>wrote:
>
> > **
> >
> >
> > Great job on putting this together. I run the DBA team, how do you handle
> > small jobs like Permission requests, daily DBA maitenance tasks like
> > checking backups, jobs, etc...
> >
> > --- In kanbanops@yahoogroups.com, Ian Carroll <cazano7@> wrote:
> > >
> > > Hi All,
> > >
> > > I've published a small case study following a recent engagement of
> > introducing Kanban to an IT Operations team of approx. 60 people:
> > >
> > > http://itopskanban.wordpress.com
> > >
> > > Any feedback would be appreciated and I'm happy to elaborate on any
> > aspects that I've not covered on the site. I've been limited on time
> > available to write this up so it's pretty rough and ready!
> > >
> > > Cheers,
> > >
> > > Ian.
> > >
> > >
> > > Ian Carroll
> > > Agile & Lean Coach
> > > 07968 399947
> > > ian@
They use a daily time-box of 1hr 30 mins. The team use an electronic ticketing system called Infra in conjunction with the physical board. Each day they stick a physical card in the input column called "Infra Tickets". Each day at 1pm the team pull the card into WIP and hit the Infra queues for the types of tasks you mention below. For each task completed they keep a gated tally on the "Infra Tickets" card. Each of the jobs completed from Infra counts towards the throughput stats. As I state on the case study, there are a few problems with the system and this is potentially one of them. The risks of using this approach could drive bad behaviours when stakeholders figure out how to game the system:
1) the potential to bypass the prioritisation mechanism
2) hidden work in an electronic system not being visible
3) team members cherry picking work instead of working on the most valuable work
4) the team are back into making prioritisation calls and taking responsibility for this
5) potentially creating a route for stakeholders to sneak work past the prioritisation mechanism
BUT, the reality is none of these behaviours have manifested as yet. As the team are more productive their queues are lower. As they're lower the team have a much more holistic view of the landscape around them. A better view means they are acutely aware of the points above and why its important to avoid these issues from taking hold. Basically, more thinking space. The team also have a rule that if any single ticket in Infra can't be completed within the daily time-box then a physical card is created and put in the backlog for prioritisation.
So, why bother creating a physical card for the daily time-box? Because it's highly visible and a great way to represent the daily capacity that is reserved for these small, but important tasks, that otherwise would be too much of an overhead to create a card for. In a way its a class of service.
Cheers,
Ian.
On 8 Nov 2011, at 21:29, danymorales17 wrote:
Great job on putting this together. I run the DBA team, how do you handle small jobs like Permission requests, daily DBA maitenance tasks like checking backups, jobs, etc...
--- In kanbanops@yahoogroups.com, Ian Carroll <cazano7@...> wrote:
>
> Hi All,
>
> I've published a small case study following a recent engagement of introducing Kanban to an IT Operations team of approx. 60 people:
>
> http://itopskanban.wordpress.com
>
> Any feedback would be appreciated and I'm happy to elaborate on any aspects that I've not covered on the site. I've been limited on time available to write this up so it's pretty rough and ready!
>
> Cheers,
>
> Ian.
>
>
> Ian Carroll
> Agile & Lean Coach
> 07968 399947
> ian@...
> www.iancarroll.com
> http://about.me/ian.carroll
>
We don't use VersionOne but we do use horizontal swim lanes. We started with 2: 'expedite' and 'other'. We recently added split the 'other' into 'tangible' / 'intangible' for almost identical reasons outlined by the Spotify ops team in this article: http://www.infoq.com/articles/kanban-operations-spotify
On Tue, Nov 8, 2011 at 2:50 PM, danymorales17 <danymorales17@...> wrote:
I currently been using VersionOne as a big storyboard with 5 vertical lanes (Ready, WIP, Testing, Block, and Done) but recently the new V1 upgrade you can now add Horizontal lanes, which I am not sure what I can use them for.
I was just wondering if other members use VersionOne and how do you currently use it.
P.S I been using Kanban for 6 months now and I will post my team's experience later this month.
Each week we have an on-call person who could act as the goalie. This person
takes tickets and responds to service outages so it wouldn't be much of a
change.
Thanks for the Spotify lead. I will go read up on that.
--- In kanbanops@yahoogroups.com, Lowe Schmidt <lowe.schmidt@...> wrote:
>
> I also took inspiration from the Spotify presentation (and they're really
> intelligent and nice guys:),
>
> One thing you can add is having what they call a goalie (we call it daily
> third line). One person each week is responsible for taking all the
> interrupt driven tasks, whether they over IM, phone or someone strolling in
> and talking to us, either do them or size them and put them on the board.
> This frees up the others to do planned work without being interrupted, we
> will visualise this by having a flag or something similar on the goalies
> desk. The only thing that is "all hands on deck" is production incidents.
>
> On 4 November 2011 21:16, w4trgate <watrgate@...> wrote:
>
> > **
> >
> >
> > I am the lead for a 6 person network operations team. The company for
> > which I work has gotten Scrum fever and my manager wants to use it to
> > handle our group's work. I've been through the company-provided ScrumMaster
> > training and I've read David Anderson's Kanban book. I personally feel
> > Kanban is a better fit to start off with.
> >
> > Our workload comes in two flavors: planned and interrupt-driven. Projects
> > and other scrum team tasks fit into the planned category and the
> > interrupt-driven tasks are the usual trouble tickets, last-minute
> > drive-bys, break/fix work, and other requests for our time that tend to
> > come out of the blue. My first goal is to get a Kanban system established
> > to start getting visibility and metrics together. Eventually I can see a
> > hybrid Scrum/Kanban system where tasks from projects/scrums are simply part
> > of the backlog and flow through our system. How would I set this up on a
> > board? I thought about horizontal swimlanes splitting planned and interrupt
> > work into separate lanes but as a Kanban noob I am interested in how group
> > members are (if at all) handling interrupt work vs. planned work.
> >
> > Chuck Nixon
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Lowe Schmidt
> +46763382827
>
Thanks for the all the feedback. I think the best thing to do is prioritize
time for the daily tasks as well as our small tasks that come in throughout the
day. Just like you said, there will be times where the end user will scream if
his/her request is not handle immediately. I will just have to work with them.
thanks
-Dany
--- In kanbanops@yahoogroups.com, Ian Carroll <cazano7@...> wrote:
>
> They use a daily time-box of 1hr 30 mins. The team use an electronic ticketing
system called Infra in conjunction with the physical board. Each day they stick
a physical card in the input column called "Infra Tickets". Each day at 1pm the
team pull the card into WIP and hit the Infra queues for the types of tasks you
mention below. For each task completed they keep a gated tally on the "Infra
Tickets" card. Each of the jobs completed from Infra counts towards the
throughput stats. As I state on the case study, there are a few problems with
the system and this is potentially one of them. The risks of using this approach
could drive bad behaviours when stakeholders figure out how to game the system:
>
> 1) the potential to bypass the prioritisation mechanism
> 2) hidden work in an electronic system not being visible
> 3) team members cherry picking work instead of working on the most valuable
work
> 4) the team are back into making prioritisation calls and taking
responsibility for this
> 5) potentially creating a route for stakeholders to sneak work past the
prioritisation mechanism
>
> BUT, the reality is none of these behaviours have manifested as yet. As the
team are more productive their queues are lower. As they're lower the team have
a much more holistic view of the landscape around them. A better view means they
are acutely aware of the points above and why its important to avoid these
issues from taking hold. Basically, more thinking space. The team also have a
rule that if any single ticket in Infra can't be completed within the daily
time-box then a physical card is created and put in the backlog for
prioritisation.
>
> So, why bother creating a physical card for the daily time-box? Because it's
highly visible and a great way to represent the daily capacity that is reserved
for these small, but important tasks, that otherwise would be too much of an
overhead to create a card for. In a way its a class of service.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Ian.
>
>
>
> On 8 Nov 2011, at 21:29, danymorales17 wrote:
>
> > Great job on putting this together. I run the DBA team, how do you handle
small jobs like Permission requests, daily DBA maitenance tasks like checking
backups, jobs, etc...
> >
> > --- In kanbanops@yahoogroups.com, Ian Carroll <cazano7@> wrote:
> > >
> > > Hi All,
> > >
> > > I've published a small case study following a recent engagement of
introducing Kanban to an IT Operations team of approx. 60 people:
> > >
> > > http://itopskanban.wordpress.com
> > >
> > > Any feedback would be appreciated and I'm happy to elaborate on any
aspects that I've not covered on the site. I've been limited on time available
to write this up so it's pretty rough and ready!
> > >
> > > Cheers,
> > >
> > > Ian.
> > >
> > >
> > > Ian Carroll
> > > Agile & Lean Coach
> > > 07968 399947
> > > ian@
> > > www.iancarroll.com
> > > http://about.me/ian.carroll
> > >
> >
> >
>
One of our dev teams is looking to replace their physical board with an electronic board to better integrate a remote team, and we're looking for some feedback on the plethora of options.
I have seen http://leankitkanban.com/ get a lot of mentions lately and it seems pretty good. However, the cost is a bit steep. Any other hosted solutions that people are liking?
We already use JIRA, but we were not happy w/ previous versions of Greenhopper's "board". It looks like perhaps Atlassian heard the feedback from the kanban crowd and there is a new "Rapid Board" feature in Greenhopper 5.8. Has anyone tried Rapid Board and could provide some feedback on their experience?
We just switched to the Rapid Board and so far feedback is positive. (About a week in.)
It's got this very cool quick toggle feature where you can 'mask' what shows up on the board by writing things in JQL, the SQL-like query syntax for filtering issues. It's a little weird of a feature for "traditional Kanban" but it lets you do things like hide tasks that may be blocked on a vendor that you're not counting against WIP.
Having the most common charts (Control/CFD) built in is handy, too.
It also has some nice keyboard shortcuts, and a "projector mode", if you have a shared team display in the room.
On Wed, Nov 16, 2011 at 3:33 AM, Joe Miller <joeym@...> wrote:
One of our dev teams is looking to replace their physical board with an electronic board to better integrate a remote team, and we're looking for some feedback on the plethora of options.
I have seen http://leankitkanban.com/ get a lot of mentions lately and it seems pretty good. However, the cost is a bit steep. Any other hosted solutions that people are liking?
We already use JIRA, but we were not happy w/ previous versions of Greenhopper's "board". It looks like perhaps Atlassian heard the feedback from the kanban crowd and there is a new "Rapid Board" feature in Greenhopper 5.8. Has anyone tried Rapid Board and could provide some feedback on their experience?
I'm trying to piece together a kind of field guide for Lean and Kanban for IT
Operations and one of the first things I'm trying to describe are the triggers
that would lead one to take this path in the first place.
http://jchyip.blogspot.com/2011/11/lean-and-kanban-for-it-operations-what.html
I would like to provide more examples than just from my experience so I'm
interested if people could share what their triggers were.
What triggered you to setup Kanban for IT Operations? What was the event? What
was the problem? What was the context?
For us, the Operations workload tends to be heavy on the emergent side which makes it difficult to focus on projects. Because of this we split the team into two teams: one for emergent work which uses kanban, and the other is focused on projects which uses scrum. It seems to be working well and we've been in this formation for approximately nine months now in varying forms.
-- -- Chris __ . __
============================ "I have failed as much as I have succeeded. But I love my life. I love my wife. And I wish you my kind of success." - Dickey Fox (From Jerry Maguire)
Lean Software and Systems Conference 2012 Keynote Speakers Announced
Seattle, WA (PRWEB) November 17, 2011
The Lean Software and Systems Consortium (LeanSSC) formally announced
the keynote speakers today for the upcoming Lean Software & Systems
Conference 2012 (LSSC12) May 13-18, 2012, in Boston, MA. The chosen keynote speakers are all internationally-recognized authors and experts in their respective industries.
The LSSC12 keynote presentations will be by:
Steven Spear
Steven J. Spear is a Senior Lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management and is a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. Spear is an internally-recognized expert about leadership, innovation, and operational excellence, and he is an authority on how select companies generate unmatchable performance by converting improvement and innovation from the rare kiss of inspiration to repeatable, broad-based, skill-based disciplines. His book, The High Velocity Edge, has won numerous awards including the Philip Crosby Medal
from the American Society for Quality (ASQ) in 2011.
Gregory Howell
Gregory A. Howell is co-founder and managing director of the Lean Construction Institute (LCI), a non-profit organization devoted to production management research in design and construction. Howell brings
35 years of construction industry project management, consulting and university-level teaching experience to LCI. He co-authored Productivity
Improvement in Construction with Clark Oglesby and Henry Parker.
Yochai Benkler
Yochai Benkler is the Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard, and faculty co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Since the 1990s he has played a part in characterizing the role of information commons and decentralized collaboration to innovation, information production, and freedom in the networked economy and society. His books include The Wealth of Networks:
How social production transforms markets and freedom, which won academic awards from the American Political Science Association, the American Sociological Association, and the McGannon award for social and
ethical relevance in communications.
David J. Anderson, conference chair and Vice President of the LeanSSC
said, "In every Lean Software and Systems conference, we have tried to present speakers who would expand and challenge the worldview of the attendees. We want to inform, engage, and inspire this community in the spirit of the lean ideology of continuous improvement. Steven Spear, Yochai Benkler, and Gregory Howell will bring these new perspectives. Their involvement in our community will challenge our thinking and spark
a new wave of innovation and learning."
More details about these speakers and LSSC12 are available on the conference website at http://lssc12.leanssc.org .
About the Lean Software & Systems Conference
The Lean Software and Systems Conference emphasizes Lean concepts representing the next wave of ideas in methods, process and organization
for software and systems engineering. It brings together an international community of practitioners, consultants, thought leaders and authors to cross-pollinate ideas and foster a sense of community for
those promoting better economic and sociological outcomes in their workplace.
The Lean Software and Systems Conference focuses on Lean, Pull Systems and the Kanban Method and how each can be used to improve predictability, frequency of delivery, risk management and quality. Kanban is a term used to describe a type of pull system and is originally found in lean manufacturing. In Kanban for knowledge work, development processes are streamlined by better coordination driven primarily by improved visibility and greater focus on highest value work. Knowledge work environments such as software development have special challenges since inefficiencies are harder to pinpoint due to the absence of physical inventory and the constant variation in the work
produced.
Conference chairman David J. Anderson is an expert on business agility and author of "Kanban: Successful Evolutionary Change for your Technology Business".
About the Lean Software and Systems Consortium
The Lean Software and Systems Consortium (LeanSSC) is a non-profit organization of corporate members, academic institutions, and industry leaders who share the belief that the science of lean offers benefits to
software intensive industries. LeanSSC's mission is to promote professionalism and create awareness of lean science and associated competencies through community, communication and education. The LeanSSC
is based in Washington, USA.
Contact:
Kelly M. Wilson
Software Engineering Professionals
Four Center Green – Suite 400, Carmel, IN 46032
317.843.1640 Ext. 2050
kelly (at) sep (dot) com
In just a few hours, at 12 pm EST, lssc12 key note speaker Steven Spear will be giving a free webinar!
Topic of the webinar: Creactive Experimentation: developing a skill critical for managing complex operating systems. Join him!
On Steven Spear: Steven
J. Spear is a Senior Lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management and
is a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. His book, The High Velocity Edge, has won numerous awards including the Philip Crosby Medal from the American Society for Quality (ASQ) in 2011.
Go to the lssc12 website to read more on Steven Spear and the other (key note) speakers!
Presumably an all-remote team would be using an electronic board already?
As far as the "people talking" part, we've been doing quite a few meetings with Google+ Hangouts, to great effect.
If you haven't used them, they automatically zoom in on the video screen of the person who is currently speaking; it ends up feeling really natural, and scales nicely to at least 8. (The most I've tried.)
They've also added features so you can dial in from a "real phone", which can be extra handy if someone is away from the computer at the moment of the standup. It's not ideal, but it's a useful degraded mode.
Josh
On Tue, Jan 10, 2012 at 1:47 PM, Dominica DeGrandis <d.degrandis@...> wrote:
Hi All, Posting a question from twitter via @cmheisel:
Does anyone have tips for doing all-remote standups?
* Joshua Barratt [2012-01-11]:
> As far as the "people talking" part, we've been doing quite a few
> meetings with Google+ Hangouts, to great effect.
+1 to that. We have a daily Hangout with 6 people and use screen sharing
to go over our leankitkanban board. I don't feel much missing from the
in-person meeting we had at my previous job.
cheers,
Nikolay
--
"It's all part of my Can't-Do approach to life." Wally
i) Settle on an agreed order (e.g. right to left on the Kanban board) ii) Know how & when to review items that are blocked or expedited, or those that are (or are becoming) time critical
iii) Know when to stop (e.g. having the discipline not to go into the backlog if everyone has enough work to do, deferring detailed discussion to after the full meeting)
To make it work remotely you must make the order predictable and easy to follow so that the meeting can flow without a lot of prompting. An online report shared to everyone just ahead of the meeting can work really well.
2) A shared chat window can add some valuable bandwidth, especially for those post standup followups. Links to bug reports, screenshots, etc can be shared in real time. Useful also for getting everyone together on time.
Hi Dany,
Do you still plan on posting your teams experience using VersionOne?
Would love to hear about it.
Thanks,
Dominica
--- In kanbanops@yahoogroups.com, "danymorales17" <danymorales17@...> wrote:
>
> I currently been using VersionOne as a big storyboard with 5 vertical lanes
(Ready, WIP, Testing, Block, and Done) but recently the new V1 upgrade you can
now add Horizontal lanes, which I am not sure what I can use them for.
>
> I was just wondering if other members use VersionOne and how do you currently
use it.
>
> P.S I been using Kanban for 6 months now and I will post my team's experience
later this month.
>
> Thanks
>
> -Dany
>
Folks,
On Saturday February 18, that's just over a week from now, the early bird period
for the Lean Software and Systems Conference 2012 (LSSC12) will end. Not only
will you get the lowest ticket price during this period, you get the $300 value
Lean Camp 1-day unconference for free. So be sure to get your ticket soon!
We have been working very hard on LSSC12 for the past few months. I am very
proud to be able to present a conference with such an amazing program filled
with outstanding speakers. Even more great speakers will be added through the
Call for Participation. Last week the Brickell Key Award nominees were chosen
and the group of nominees clearly shows that we have a healthy and thriving
community. We'll also have some great special events surrounding the conference
like Lean Camp, Lean Action Kitchen, some great tutorials and the exclusive
Executive Summit.
Remember #lssc12 in Boston 13-18 May is _the_ and your Kanban conference in
North America in 2012. We do this for you, for our community and for the growth
of a Kanban as a solution to the complex challenges in managing knowledge work.
Don't miss out! Get the best deal available before it ends.
Take a look at our website for more information: http://lssc12.leanssc.org, and
follow @leanssc on Twitter to get updates on LSSC12.
Best wishes,
David
Conference Chair
Lean Software & Systems 2012
Hi All,
For some time now, I've been using a "Waiting For" column or area on the Kanban
board to identify tickets waiting on something - usually a dependency external
to the team. The "Waiting For" column though doesn't usually contain tickets
that are considered at risk or urgent. I keep those tickets in their respective
working column and attach a "Dependency" ticket on it indicating the dependent
info and mark it as "Blocked" once the SLA is past due.
I'm curious if others are using this approach.
Or perhaps a variant of it?
Or perhaps an entirely different approach?
I'd love to hear how you handle dependencies with external teams.
Thank you!
Dominica
We had an interesting discussion recently in a retrospective on the definition of 'blocked'. We boiled it down to internal & external blockers as follows:
Internal - A team or department within the organisation blocking the work item are represented on the board with a blocking sticker (magenta) but work item remains 'in flow' and all mgmt efforts are focused on unblocking.
External - Usually a 3rd party supplier where by all contractual leverage has been exhausted in getting the work item unblocked. We move these work items to a separate area of the board where mgmt can focus on negotiating the unblocking of the work with the 3rd party.
You can see a photo of the board here: http://itopskanban.wordpress.com/business-apps-board/
The blocked area is at the bottom of the board and work is ordered Medium Term Blocked (MTB) at the top and Long Term Blocked (LTB) at the bottom.
Hope this helps?
Ian.
To: kanbanops@yahoogroups.com From: d.degrandis@... Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2012 08:19:26 +0000 Subject: [kanbanops] How do you handle dependencies with external groups?
Hi All,
For some time now, I've been using a "Waiting For" column or area on the Kanban board to identify tickets waiting on something - usually a dependency external to the team. The "Waiting For" column though doesn't usually contain tickets that are considered at risk or urgent. I keep those tickets in their respective working column and attach a "Dependency" ticket on it indicating the dependent info and mark it as "Blocked" once the SLA is past due.
I'm curious if others are using this approach.
Or perhaps a variant of it?
Or perhaps an entirely different approach?
I'd love to hear how you handle dependencies with external teams.
Thank you!
Dominica
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