10 Years of Kanban
What have we Learned?
It’s great for service
delivery!
Presenter
David J. Anderson
LeanKanban UK
November 2014
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
It’s antifragile too!
2004-2006 Microsoft XIT Sustaining Eng.
Deferred commitment pull
system coupled to probabilistic
understanding of lead time
• Improved productivity
over 200%
• Greatly improved
predictability
• Shortened lead times by
~90%
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
Use of Kanban systems is
minimally intrusive for
engineers. Process
methodologies didn’t change
• PSP/TSP remained in
use throughout
Conclusion
Kanban is good for
service delivery
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
2006 Validating Evidence
Eric Landes at Robert Bosch
copies XIT solution for intranet
maintenance and produces similar
results
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
HP Printer Firmware
Division, Boise, Idaho,
implements a kanban system
as part of a Lean initiative
and attributes 400% of an
800% productivity
improvement to kanban.
Lead times fall from 21
months to 3.5 months
Conclusion
Kanban and its results
are repeatable
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
2007 Kanban Method Emerges
Kanban systems aren’t enough
when there is too much
variability in the workflow and
too much heterogeneity of work
types and trouble matching
worker skills & experience
• Now known as a system
liquidity problem
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
• Visual boards are
introduced
• Kanban limits create
stress & provoke process
improvements
• Multiple classes of service
emerge
2007 Kanban Method Matures
A combination of elements of
Kanban such as system
replenishment, classes of service,
understanding cost of delay,
transparency and metrics start
to change entire company culture
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
Operations review drives BU
wide improvements and
starts to influence other BUs
within the firm
Conclusion
The Kanban Method is a
management system for
cultural change &
improving organizational
maturity
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
2007 First Kanban Software
Digital Whiteboard application
developed by Darren Davis at
Corbis runs on top Microsoft
Team Foundation Server
Workers run Digital Whiteboard
on their desktop but continue to
use physical boards in parallel
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
Conclusion
We need software to get
good metrics easily and
amplify the management
value of Kanban
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
2007 Kanban on Big Projects
$11 million budget project with
up to 55 people, 16 month
schedule, approximately 2400
user story scope
2-tiered kanban boards
emerge to visualize parentchild dependencies in
Introduces
hybrid of dedicated
requirements
teams and floating project
personnel using avatars
• Specialists such as
architects, UX
• Generalists who can help
any team
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
Conclusion
Kanban is useful on large
projects to improve
predictability.
More guidance on
prioritizing backlogs is
required at large scale.
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
Agile 2007 Conference
Kanban presented in the CwaC
open space with 25 attendees.
Online community starts with
Yahoo! group kanbandev
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
Early adopters of Kanban are
teams struggling with Scrum
at Yahoo! coached by Karl
Scotland, Joe Arnold &
Aaron Sanders in UK, India
& San Jose
2008 Personal Kanban Adaptation
If this is so good for our service
delivery shouldn’t we be using it
help us be more organized and get
things done at a personal level?
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
Personal Kanban emerges as
a concept
• At Modus Cooperandi
offices in Seattle
• Elsewhere at firms
such as IPC in London
2008 Scrumban
Corey Ladas coins the term
“Scrumban” to describe
In 2014, most people still
organizations currently using
don’t get this!
Scrum who apply Kanban to evolve
• Scrumban isn’t a
to uniquely tailored process
process. It is a journey
solutions such as those at Yahoo!
(or story) of
organizations embracing
evolutionary change and
evolving away from
canonical Scrum
It’s not Scrum or Kanban
• But, Scrum+Kanban ->
Uniquely tailored
unbranded process
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
2008 Early Adopters Emerge
Media, Internet & SaaS firms
 BBC and IPC Media in London
suffer from acute, self-evident cost
of delay and
‘tyranny
of the
 NBC
Universal
in LA & New York
timebox’ challenges. Kanban
address these
issues forFool
them in Washington DC
 Motley
area
 Constant Contact (Boston) &
Ultimate (Ft. Lauderdale), both
SaaS firms
Media, Internet, SaaS firms
are primary early adopters
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
2008 – Decision Filters for Leaders
 Agile Decision Filter
• Make progress with imperfect
information
• Encourage a high trust culture
• Treat WIP as a liability rather than an
asset
 Lean Decision Filter
• Value trumps flow
• Flow trumps waste elimination
• Eliminate waste to improve efficiency,
do not pursue economies of scale
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
2009
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
2009 Lean Kanban Conference
First community conference held in
Miami. Only 58 attendees.
Full day, single track of
Sponsored by Ultimate Software
Kanban content includes case
(who will continue to support us
studies from
for the next 6 years)
•
•
•
•
•
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
Motley Fool
SEP
Inkubook / Authorhouse
Phidelis
Yahoo!
2009 Definition of Kanban Method
 that
Principles
Recognizing
kanban systems
were part of a• wider
Start management
with what you do now
system, the whole system is named
Agreesystems
to pursue evolutionary
for the use of •kanban
change
• Initially, respect existing roles,
responsibilities & job titles
 Practices
•
•
•
•
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
Visualize, Limit WIP
Manage Flow, Make Policies Explicit
The Kanban Method is
Implement
Feedback
positioned
as Loops
an approach to
improvement
Improveevolutionary
collaboratively,
evolve
experimentally
2009 “Be Like Water”
http://joecampbell.wordpress.com/2009/05/13/be-like-water/
Joe Campbell’s blog post inspires
step 1 of the Ladder of Escalating
Motivation for Change, and our
primary strategy for resistance to
change which is to avoid it
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
This will lead to the comparison
of Kanban with Bruce Lee’s
journey with Jeet June Do, and
the development of Fitness for
Purpose and the concept of an
adaptive anti-fragile enterprise
2009 Cost of Delay
• Beginning to understand Cost
of Delay as a qualitative
taxonomy
• Introduction of sketches of cost
of delay function shapes at
Posit Science in San Francisco Better understanding of classes
of service emerges, including
archetype set of 4 with names:
Expedite, Fixed Date, Standard,
Intangible
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
2009 More Validating Evidence
First case emerges which
replicates the cultural effects
observed in 2007 at Corbis
• IPC Media, London (Rob
Hathaway, Indigo Blue)
First real evidence that the
Kanban Method is a repeatable
and predictable system of
management
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
2009 Commercial Software
Entrepreneurs introduce
commercial Kanban software
products. Initial products come
from fans who’ve followed the
journey for years
Leankit Kanban from Nashville,
Tenessee
Tools for Agile, Silver Catalyst,
Pune, India
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
2009 Risk Assessment
Qualitative risk assessment
methods introduced to provide
“prioritization” for large projects
and service delivery where cost of
delay isn’t the most significant Generalized definition of classes of
risk factor
service to include multiple risk
dimensions
“A class of service is a set of
policies that describe how an
item should be treated based
on its risk”
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
2009 Where to Start Guidance
 Enterprise scale Kanban
adoption: where do you start?
• Must be highly visible
• Must not be mission critical
• Must be
1) in so much pain, no one cares what
you try,
2) management keen to “go Lean”,
3) management wish to shift risk
up/down value stream
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
2009 Real Options
Deferred commitment with
kanban systems and concepts of
Real Options from Chris Matts,
Olav Maasen and others begin to
converge
• Chris Matts puts some definition
around Staff Liquidity concept
• Staff Liquidity presented at USC
CSSE Research Review
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
2009 “Tyranny of the Timebox”
“Tyranny of the Timebox”
concept emerges at Agile 2009
after Arlo Belshee/Jim Shore
explain the discontinuity from •
discrete processes (timeboxes) to
continuous processes (kanban
systems)
•
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
Simply making timeboxes
smaller to improve agility would
never lead you to adopt Kanban.
Kanban was a discontinuous and
non-obvious innovation in the
Agile community
2009 Portfolio Kanban
First Portfolio Kanban example
presented at Agile 2009
• There is no WIP limit at the
portfolio level
• Limit WIP on projects, MMFs or
MVPs doesn’t make sense
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
2010 – Kanban “blue book”
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
2010 Brickell Key Awards
 BBC recognized as first large
scale adopter of Kanban
replicating the viral spread seen
at Corbis but on a much larger
scale
 David Joyce of the BBC
recognized together with
Alisson Vale of Phidelis as first
winners of the Brickell Key Award
 Best Kanban implementations
are in UK & Brazil
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
2010 - STATIK
Recognizing the need to teach
people how to get started with
Kanban, training classes adopt STATIK = the Systems Thinking
the use of the STATIK exercisesApproach To Implementing Kanban
• the method is presented at
conference in 2012
• the acronym will not be
introduced until 2013
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
2010 High Maturity Organizations
Kanban is recognized as a method
Kanban is also recognized as a key
that encourages adoption of
part of accelerated organizational
higher maturity quantitative
maturity improvement
methods
• Published case studies
talking decsribe CMMI
ML1-ML2 in 3 months,
ML2-ML3 in 9 months,
ML3-ML5 in 9 months
• These timescales are “off
the scale” compared to
typical timescales for CMMI
adoption
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
2010 Upstream Kanban
Initially in Belgium and France
Upstream Kanban will evolve into
Discovery Kanban lead by Patrick
Staeyert and his client Nemetschek
Skia. Case study will be published
in 2013
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
2010 Proto-Kanban
First recognized in the Posit
Science case study in 2009, prekanban system implementations
without a full pull system are Richard Turner of the Stevens
recognized as an important part
Institute coins the term “protoof the coaching toolbox
Kanban” to describe these pre-pull
3 Types of Proto-Kanban are
system implementations that
eventually recognized
• Aggregated personal eventually evolve into full Kanban
kanban
• Aggregated team kanban
• Per-person WIP limits
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
2010 IT Operations
 IT Ops people begin appearing in
classes
 They want to design aggregated
personal kanban boards
• Specialist workers often dedicated to
single work-item type
• Refactor to lanes for types, multiskilled workers with avatars
 Demand analysis & capacity
allocation become even more
important
• Especially for unplanned, irrefutable
work (push)
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
2010 Break out from IT Sector
Stories of Kanban in
HR/Recruitment, Sales, and other
Medium-sized owner-managed
functions emerge
firms begin to adopt Kanban
enterprise wide
• e.g. Huddle Group,
Argentina
In 2011 stories of legal firms using
Kanban for case files emerged in
UK and New Zealand
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
2011 Personal Kanban published
Wins a Shingo Prize!
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
2011 Large Scale Enterprise Adoption
Business unit wide
adoption begins to
emerge at firms
such as
• Petrobras
• McKesson
• Vanguard
• Amdocs
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
Appropriateness
An understanding emerges for
appropriate conditions for
adoption, including…
• System dynamics (or
mechanics)
• Cultural, organizational,
social, psychological
factors
• Complexity factors
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
2011 Lean Kanban University established
Accredited Kanban Trainer
program inaugurated with 16
founding member companies and
over 20 AKTs
• Standardized “practitioner”
curriculum published
edu.leankanban.com
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
2012 Data Analysis
Community starts reporting data
analysis on lead time distributions
showing tails that are 5x to 10xFlow efficiency metric comes back
into fashion as it is evident that
greater than the mean
size, complexity or skills/experience
of workers don’t correlate to lead
times
• Increased focus on sources of
delay: queues, blocking issues,
dependencies
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
2012 Optimal Exercise Point
By understanding the cost of
delay and the lead time
If we can’t start at the optimal
distribution we can make a riskbased assessment of the best time
time we can understand whether
to start something
to start an item earlier or later
based on the nature of the cost of
delay, or decide to discard the
option
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
2012 Kanban Kata
Hakan Forss points out similarity
to Kanban feedback loopsand
Rother’s Toyota Kata
Service Delivery Reviews (SDRs)
become a formal part of the
method. These are also known as
System Capability Review but this
name was dropped as being too
internally focused
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
2012 Depth of Kanban Assessment
Hakan Forss challenges the idea
that deep Kanban emerges
linearly from visualization to A multi-dimensional model of
experimental improvement as depth of Kanban assessment
practices are added
emerges in both an absolute
practice-based form and a relative
assessment form. In 2014, it is
updated to take more a valuesbased, observed outcome form
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
2012 Little’s Flaw
Dan Vacanti and Frank Vega’s
work on the origins of Little’s
Dimitar Bakardzhiev helps us
Law in queuing theory and
understanding from Savavge & understand why consistency of
system performance allows us to
Danzinger’s The Flaw of Averages
shows us why it’s an appropriate
use it as a forecasting tool.
tool for understanding flow in
creative work
Understanding consistency of
system performance becomes vital
to reliable Little’s Law based
forecasting & capacity allocation
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
2012 Kanban System Liquidity
Kanban system liquidity can be
measured as the volume of pull
transactions in the system and
System Liquidity meets
the laminar/turbulent nature of
Reinertsen’s criteria for a good
flow understood from its
metric
derivative.
•
We don’t get it quite right in
•
2012 but watch out for liquidity •
becoming a core metric in
•
forecasting tools in 2015
Simple
Self-generating
Relevant
Leading Indicator
And it is a global metric which
isn’t subject to local optimization
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
2012 Lessons in Agile Management
The heavily under-rated book
that underpins the Kanban
Coaching Masterclass and most
of the theory behind the
Kanban Method
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
2012 Crossing the Chasm Kanban
 Compelling reason to buy
• Senior people
 make promises I can keep
 Improved governance
• Middle managers
 Up-manage with confidence – answer the
hard questions
 Down-manage with confidence – make
the hard decisions
• Individual contributors/Line managers
 Relief from abusive environment (overburdening)
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
2012 Cost of Delay Updates
Still using sketches including
the market payoff function
and understanding its
sensitivity to time
Qualitative Cost of Delay
assessment now has 3 dimensions
• Function shape
• Order of magnitude in size
• Shelf-life
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
2013 Statistics & Simulation
Lead time histograms
observed to be Weibull
distributions
Monte Carlo simulation introduced
as an optional feature in leading
Kanban software products
Troy Magennis wins Brickell Key
Award for this work
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
2013 – Kanban Agendas
 Survivability
• Resilience/anti-fragility
• Evolutionary capability
 Service-orientation
• Fitness criteria metrics
• Workflow
• service level expectations
 Sustainability
• Relief from over-burdening
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
2013 Fitness for Purpose
Service-orientation
allows us to ask what
makes a service “fit for
purpose”
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
Fitness criteria are metrics that
measure things customers value
when selecting a service again &
again
• Delivery time
• Quality
• Predictability
• Safety (or conformance to
regulatory requirements)
2013 Kanban Lens
Learn to view what you do now as a set
of services (that can be improved):
• What to look for…
 Creative work is service-oriented
 Service delivery involves workflow
 Workflow involves a series of
knowledge discovery activities
• What to do…
 Map the knowledge discovery
workflow
 Pay attention to how & why work
arrives
 Track work flowing through the service
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
2013 Kanban Values
Transparency
Balance
Collaboration
Customer
Focus
Flow
Leadership
Understanding
Agreement
Respect
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
2014 Kanban from the Inside
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
2013 Scale-free understanding
Eliminating unbounded queues
• Proto-kanban to full
workflow kanban
• Coupling interdependent
Andy Carmichael’s Smallest Possible
network of kanban
Definition of Kanban
systems
See Flow,
Core practices renamed
Start Here,
“general practices” with specific
With visible work & policies,
practices at different scales
• Personal/team Kanban
validate improvements
• Service Delivery /
Workflow Kanban
• Portfolio Kanban
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
2014 Kanban Litmus Test
1. Have managers changed their
behavior?
2. Has the customer interface
changed?
3. Has the customer contract
changed?
4. Has the service delivery business
model changed?
If you can’t answer yes to at least 2 of
these questions you aren’t doing
Kanban yet!
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
2014 Risk Review
Risk Review is added as
a feedback loop to the
Kanban Method
Klaus Leopold pioneered the
process of harvesting & custering
blocker tickets.
He goes on to experiment with
other ways of visualizing &
harvesting delay data
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
2014 Fitness for Purpose Review
Regular recurring meeting
Reviewwith
customer
stories
front-line
staff
•Review
Do theyFitness
map tocriteria
existing
clusters?
• Do we perceive customers of a
• do
Perhaps
at different
• Or,
wecluster/segment
seeperformed
emerging new
given
are happy
organizational
levels
to
roll-up
clusters?
and consider us “fit for purpose”
information in larger scale
• What services or product features
organizations
or service delivery expectations
have emerged or changed?
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
2014 What we now know!
 Kanban systems are applicable for
almost any creative or knowledge
work service delivery workflow
 The Kanban Method is appropriate
wherever an evolutionary approach
to change is desirable
 Kanban works in low and high
maturity organizations but basic
maturity or converged workflow
steps are required to model and
implement a kanban system
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
2014 What we now know!
 Use of Kanban consistently shows
200-800% productivity gains and
50-90% lead time improvements
where a baseline is available
 Personal Kanban is a “gateway
drug” to introduce Kanban in the
office
 Personal Kanban in the office is
known as Team Kanban and is a
form of Proto-Kanban
 Getting beyond Proto-Kanban is
challenging!!!
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
2014 What we now know!
 Kanban represents about 3% of
the Agile market by revenue.
 Shallow/Proto-Kanban is widely
adopted but represents no
market value
• Physical boards
• Little or no training or consulting
 Kanban is more readily adopted
by non-IT people who have no
“methodology baggage”
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
Modern Management Framework
All of this knowledge is more
than just kanban systems or
what we ever dreamed of as Hence, we packaged it all up as the
Kanban
Modern Management Framework
• Emphasize that Kanban is a
management system and not
a process
• A framework because it is
continually extending as we
learn more
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
Modern Management Framework
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
Modern Management Framework
The Modern Management
Framework is applicable to
all creative services and
knowledge worker service
industries
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
To be flippant…
• “Kanban should be bigger
than Agile!”
• Not measured as part of the
Agile market at all
We need tools!
 Existing Kanban software products
largely seek to replicate the
function of a physical board
 They don’t actually help with real
management problems
 Most of the Modern Management
Framework is easy to understand
but laborious to implement
• No one build a Gantt chart manually!
 Without proper tooling adoption will
be slow
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
A vision from 2003
In 2003, I described my
work with Feature-driven
Development (FDD) & Agile
Management as “like MRP
for Knowledge Work”
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
Instead Don Reinertsen said, “you
have all the pieces in place to adopt
the use of kanban systems”
Kanban to MRP
 1947 Kanban in manufacturing –
Taiichi Ohno
• Term “kanban” not adopted until
1964
 1964 Manufacturing
Requirements Planning – Joseph
Orlicky
• Book published in 1975
 Kanban to MRP 17 years
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
A vision for 2015
We now have all the pieces in place to
start managing modern business where
employees “think for a living” and make
decisions – knowledge worker businesses
– and managing them with the rigor,
anticipation and risk
awareness
I future
I now
callthat
this
envisaged in 2003
vision
Enterprise Services Planning (ESP)
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
Kanban to ESP
 2004 Kanban in knowledge work
(IT services) introduction at
Microsoft, Dragos Dumitriu & David
J. Anderson
• Book published in 2010
 2015 Enterprise Services Planning
• A new class of software tools which
implement the Modern Management
Framework
• Book published ????
 Kanban to ESP 11 years?
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
Observed
Capability
Looking downstream, you want the
system to help you anticipate and
manage
dependencies
Combine
the two,
and across
Looking
upstream,
youthe
want the
Observed
organization
youhelp
smooth
flow
system to
you Capability
anticipate
and
end-to-end manage
and helpdemand
keep
demand in balance with
overall system capability
Demand
Demand
ESP – Anticipating Demand, Allocating
Capacity
Demand
Observed
Capability
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
Enterprise Services Planning
“The Future of Kanban”
 “Fit for Purpose” service delivery
• Fitness criteria metrics & classes of service
tuned to market segments / source of
customer demand
 Anticipate Demand
• Comprehend WIP limits, staffing levels and
required liquidity levels
 Shape Demand
• Allocate capacity based on risk strategy
and market or business objectives
 Intelligent Human Capital
Development
• Determine real ROI for skills & experience
investment
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
Thank you!
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
About
David Anderson is an innovator in
the management of 21st Century
businesses that employ creative
people who “think for a living” . He
leads a training, consulting,
publishing and event planning
business dedicated to developing,
promoting and implementing new
management thinking & methods…
He has 30 years experience in the high technology industry
starting with computer games in the early 1980’s. He has led
software organizations delivering superior productivity and
quality using innovative methods at large companies such as
Sprint and Motorola.
David defined the Modern Management Framework and
originated the Kanban Method an adaptive approach to
improved service delivery. His latest book, published in 2012,
is, Lessons in Agile Management – On the Road to Kanban.
David is MD of David J. Anderson & Associates Ltd., a
consulting and training firm operating globally offering
management training solutions for 21st Century businesses
whose employees make performance defining decisions daily.
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
Acknowledgements
Kanban has been a community effort from scores of people some of
whom are mentioned explicitly in this presentation others too
numerous to mention here have been given credit along the way.
However, none of this would have been possible were it not for the
dedication, passion and energy of Janice Linden-Reed who has worked
tirelessly to build the community since 2009. She is a founder of the
Limited WIP Society and recipient of the Honorary Brickell Key Award
for community contribution.
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
David J Anderson
& Associates, Ltd.
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
I can’t believe he
didn’t mention
Cynefin!
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja
Told you!
Antifragile!
dja@djaa.com, @djaa_dja