Why do we level out? In many agile teams I have met the introduction of Agile methods have made the teams to take a big leap. But then, after a while, they level out. Why so?

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I will present at the Lean Software & Systems Conference, April 21-13 in Atlanta.

 Looks like a promising event, with speakers like Don Reinertsen and David Anderson.

Ps: There are some new exciting events in Stockholm this spring coming up with David Anderson, stay tuned.

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Doing kanban, there will come a point where you will be faced with holding or breaking the work in progress limit.  Here are fours ways of dealing with that situation:

• Case1: Urgency!
  The new story has higher priority than work on the board.  Accept a temporary violation of WIP, but don't starting more work until WIP is balanced again
  
  
• Case2: Pleasant "no"
  Bring the stakeholder to the board and ask them if they would like you to throw away for  the benefit of their request.
  
  
• Case3: Can't say now for Legal reasons
  Start an overflow section. Whenever WIP risk being broken, compare the priority to what is on the board and if it is less put the work in a overflow section. The policy  being: to put something on the overflow secion requires an email to the sent to the stakeholder saying you can't do it right now but you may do it somewhere in the future (best solution is to find someone else to solve the problem)
  
  
• Case 4: Homework has been made
  Don't violate WIP, instead ask the stakeholder to put it in the right priority in the backlog

Don't forget, the "urgent" story brings information you can learn from. Is it a common or special cause? Is it an undiscovered demand type? Does the stakeholders upstream understand your approach?

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So, you're planning the future. There are is a lot of stuff you are eager to do. But stop and think - are you pushing forward in the right direction?

Make sure there's a balance between:

• Product - what would makes up evolving in the eyes of our customers?
  We are not pushing features for ourselves right?
  
  
• People - what would make this a better place to work in?
  Are we leveraging the skills at our disposal?
  
  
• Process - are we limiting WIP, improving quality, surfacing problems early?
  Done right we should gain time to experiment and fulfilling creative ideas.
  
  
• Purpose - are we contributing to the society around us?

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My slides from Devopsdays'09 in Belgium. It is inspiring to see the number of system administrators looking into Kanban. Myself I discovered Cucumber scripting. Thanks to Patrick who pioneers a great conference for system administrators and developers.

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