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The invasion of Lego robots
As a part of this weeks Kanban Applied course, the teams had to solve problems using Lego robots. It was good fun. So fun teams almost forgot about Kanban :) Programming the bot: Read more...Tags : kanban
Video from Introducing Kanban in operations
A video of my presentation at Devopsdays'09 in Belgium is now available. I didn't wear a microphone so you might need to pop up the the volume :) ...
Pair program your roadmap
Doing a road map can be a tricky thing. There are plenty of constraints and dependencies to consider: how to we balance long and short term improvements? how do we rat...
The book is out!
My and Henrik's book on is out. Get a downloadable version, or buy the full copy at InfoQ. The book includes: Foreword by Mary Poppendieck and David Anderson ...
Manage the normal - treat exception as exceptional
Ever had this thrown at you? "This production bug is unacceptable, it must never happen again!" And that event, outside your systems control, formed a policy that affected all your every day life. Failure to distinguish between uncertainty ...
Personal Kanban
Feeling busy? Not ready when the deadline approaches? Many things in action? Maybe you should consider a personal kanban. Now, I will admit the first to admit I heard about the concept I thought "but isn't slight over administration? What about j...
West vs. Japan
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? Read more...Tags : kaizen
Speaker at Lean Conference, Atlanta 2010
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 ...
Four strategies for dealing with breaking WIP limits
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. Ac...
The Manager Sanity Check
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 c...
Devopsdays'09
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. ...
Know your continuous improvement
Continuous improvement ( "kaizen") is a core process within Kanban and/or Scrum. But what does it mean? Here is an A3 I use to explain the conceptRead more...Tags : kanban continuousimprovemen...
The responsibility model
At the Lean Software conference in London Portia Tung tipped me off about Christopher Avery's responsibility model. I need to show it to you. Denial - ‘Problem? What problem? There’s no problem. Blame – ‘I do...
The problem solving algorithm
I have been watching several discussions over the years between brilliant people where clear perception of the problem prevented them from solving it. It is so easy to marry ourselves with our suggestions of action (how) that we loose focus about wha...
Why cycle time can tell you more than velocity
Take a look at this chart and tell us how we are doing? Team velocity of a the Starship team. Number are weeks, the colors represents different categories of work. It is quite hard... There are too many variables distorting our data. Do we having ...
Stop runaway meetings with the timeout sign
Sometimes it is hard to stop a running meeting. You might have someone so fond of talking he doesn't realize time is up. Or the daily stand up has gone haywire. How do you break in, politely? Teach everyone the timeout sign. "hey, let me get ba...
Your Scrum is running fine, right?
Your team is coding along, sprints are passing by, your somewhere around sprint 15.. life is ok.. ..or? As a famous test leader once said: "Team are happily completing sprints but nothing gets's done" Here are a couple of things to look out...
What to refactor?
It is not uncommon I run into a team coding a system in desperate need of refactoring, at the same with huge pressured to move things out of the door. When trying to refactor we face the bad news of doing nothing but refactoring.. So we need to be a b...
Learn Kanban from the source - Kanban Jedi training class
On September 24-25:th in Stockholm, there is a chance to learn Kanban directly from the source! Kanban is framework to help improve efficiency and continuous learning, but with a very light weight footprint. It works both in- and outside software env...
It is not the process, it's the improvements
For those of you who wonder "why would anybody convert a Scrum team to Kanban" (see earlier blog) - it is important that you understand the true intent. (..yes there is one! :) What expected output do you have from a process framework? Thi...

Recent Responses

Sverker the Reindeer...
Yes - He is back! :) ( Nice to see you Johan :)
Sverker the Reindeer...
...found a scrum paper on the developer's notice board at work, with the name "Mattias Skarin" written on it.
Re: The book is out!
Great book, good work Mattias! ;o)
Re: West vs. Japan
There are many ways of doing improvements. My point is, the attitude we have towards doing improvements, is one of the first blockers. Here we have much to learn.
Re: West vs. Japan
In scrum you usually have demo+retrospective one day and next sprint planning the day after/next week. Have you tried to have the demo one day. And retrospective + sprintplanning the next day?
Re: Four strategies for dealing with breaking WIP limits
Cool! of course interested in where you went to from there :) (at some later stage)
Re: Four strategies for dealing with breaking WIP limits
Nice post Mattias; we're starting to use Kanban for our software maintenance. We basically use the overflow concept for work that meets the criteria of an "emergency". We allw that work to overtake what was originaly a work in progress. Once that is d...
Re: Speaker at Lean Conference, Atlanta 2010
Rock 'n roll! I'll miss the conference unfortunately. My wife and I have a release that I don't want to miss, after a 9 month iteration :o)
Re: Why cycle time can tell you more than velocity
Cool!
Re: Why cycle time can tell you more than velocity
Hello Mattias, tour post is very interesting. So I've translated it in french: Pourquoi le temps de cycle peut-il en dire plus que la vélocité ? Regards, Fabrice
Re: Your Scrum is running fine, right?
Very good post, highly interesting!
Re: Scrum team converts to Kanban
The team does estimation and daily standup pretty much Scrum like. So it is kind of a Hybrid right now. What is changed is: - limit work in progress continuously instead of sprint commitment - burndown is towards release not sprint - weekly Kaizen (co...
Re: Scrum team converts to Kanban
I think they aren't solving their problems :) Unfortunately, Scrum doesn't help you with that. And this can be hard. You need a place to start. That is where Kanban provided use, it helped the team, Product Owner and Manager to agree on what issue to ...
Re: Scrum team converts to Kanban
Mattias, without knowing more about the team I would argue that a team whose burndown looks that that for three consecutive sprints are not doing Scrum in the first place?
Re: Scrum team converts to Kanban
Which changes has the second team made to their process to consider this a conversion from SCRUM to Kanban? If they still have sprints and burn-down charts, why is it Kanban? Thanks!
Re: Scrum team converts to Kanban
I guess a blog post follow up to explain the changes made. They weren't many, just better flow and WiP visibility to the team. What I found striking was that team ended up in this new situation without any active coaching. They just watched another te...
Re: Scrum team converts to Kanban
Not excluded of course :) After all, this was just one sampling, so not scientifically reliable data yet.
Re: Scrum team converts to Kanban
I (believe) it is because they got better WiP transparency.
Re: Scrum team converts to Kanban
> I don't get it. Why was the burn down different when the team converted to Kanban? Small WIP effect I think.
Re: Scrum team converts to Kanban
Same here? What else did you do? Just because you changed the name of the process it does not make it better? I'm intressted in how you used the burndown chart for Kanban? i love the BC but I haven't found a good way to use it properly in my Kanban teams.

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