Henrik Kniberg

Here the the slides from my presentation "Kanban and Scrum – a practical guide" from QCon in San Francisco today. The presentation is mostly pictures. If you are curious about what I was saying, check out the free online book “Kanban and Scrum – making the most of both”. Great feedback! 77 green notes, 7

Here is a detailed example of a fairly typical 2-tier Kanban board, for teams that know the basics of Kanban and are taking their first steps towards implementing it in practice. It is sort of like a code example, or a condensed Kanban patterns repository. Print it out and use it as a source of

Here are the slides from my "What is Agile" keynote at Agile Tour 2009 in Grenoble. Sample slide: Take-away points: Agile is a set of values & principles that help you succeed with software development Agile is not binary Agile is not about specific methods or practices Agile is not a goal Agile is not

Here’s a new article for you: Cause-effect diagrams: a pragmatic way of doing root-cause analysis Cause-effect diagrams are a simple and pragmatic way of doing root cause analysis. I’ve been using these diagrams for years to help organizations understand and solve all kinds of problems – technical as well as organizational. The purpose of the

For those of you interested in Lean problem solving techniques, Tom Poppendieck and I have created an A3 problem solving example and template. Feel free to use as you please.

If you’re interested in Kanban I can recommend this course in Stockholm, there are still a few spots left. If you don’t know what Kanban is you might take a look at: http://www.limitedwipsociety.org/resources/ … or my article Kanban vs Scrum or (if you only have a minute) my cartoon One day in Kanban Land. My

Check out Scrum Checklist version 2.0!

Here are the slides for my 90 minute session "Introduction to Scrum" at Agile 2009 in Chicago in a couple of weeks. The slide deck is mostly pictures and intended primarily for presentation use, not reading. So this stuff will probably make most sense if you attend the session.

I was recently invited to run for the board of directors of the Agile Alliance. After some initial hesitation I decided to go for it! The election will be held at the Agile 2009 conference on Tuesday, August 25 at 6:00 p.m. at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Chicago. Voting can be done online as

Here’s a really short and simple kanban intro: Translations: Brazilian Portuguese Chinese Czech French German Japanese Korean Turkish

Here are the slides from my keynote at Integrating Agile 2009, Amsterdam. First three slides are below, the rest are in the PDF document. Take-away points: Know your goal Agile is a tool, not a goal Tools don’t fail or succeed. People do. There is no such thing as a good or bad tool. Only

Here are the slides for my presentation Kanban vs Scrum. I’m glad people enjoyed it! The participants were asked to rate how valuable the presentation was on a scale 1-3. The average rating was 3.0 at Deep Lean and 2.9 at Future of Agile :o) This presentation is based on my Kanban vs Scrum article,

At our last Crisp conference we were discussing different types consulting engagements, and someone (Olle Hallin I think) came up with a useful metaphor – Seals and Albatrosses! Recently we added Ducks and Anglerfishes as well! Seal consulting Some of us are Seal consultants. A Seal is faithful and dedicated to one single client pretty

Are you interested in Lean software development and how this relates to Agile methods such as Scrum and XP? Would you like to meet Mary Poppendieck (leading pioneer of Lean Software Development) and Jeff Sutherland (creator of Scrum)? Deep Lean on May 18-19 is your chance to go beyond the basics, to meet and interact

As I mentioned in a previous post, I am right now in Japan with 4 colleagues from Crisp, a few consultants from BestBrains in Denmark, Mary & Tom Poppendieck, Gabrielle Benefield, and some other Lean & Agile enthusiasts. We are visiting Toyota and other interesting companies. It is especially interesting to look behind the scenes

One of the recurring themes on Jerry Weinberg’s PSL course (Problem Solving Leadership) was "There are no hard problems, just hard solutions". Often a problem seems hard only because we make it hard, by attempting a hard solution. When we instead open our minds and find the simple solution, the problem suddenly proves to be

Next week I’m going on a "Lean Study Tour" together with a few consultants from BestBrains, some colleagues from Crisp, Tom and Mary Poppendieck, and some other lean enthusiasts. We’re going to visit Toyota and some other interesting companies.

A couple of weeks earlier I was at QCon Beijing and QCon Tokyo, so I’ve had a week of vacation in between. I’ve spent a few of those days with my family at Tokyo Disney Resort (= Disneyland + Disney Sea), really fun! In fact, Disney Sea in particular is now on my PlacesYouMustVisitBeforeYouDieOrYourLifeHasBeenInVain list, together with Rome and the Grand Canyon.

Anyway to the point…

Being an Agile & Lean coach, I can’t help but notice how things are organized – and I’m impressed! Tokyo Disney Resort is Lean!

There’s a lot of buzz on Kanban right now in the agile software development community. Since Scrum has become quite mainstream now, a common question is “so what is Kanban, and how does it compare to Scrum?” Where do they complement each other? Are there any potential conflicts? Here’s an attempt to clear up some

A German translation of my book Scrum and XP from the Trenches is now available. Thanks Robert Sösemann & Andreas Schliep! Russian, French, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, and Portuguese translations are also available. Korean, Italian, and Slovak translations are underway. I never cease to be impressed by the agile community! So far, every time I’ve blogged

David Barnholdt and I recently attended a 1-week PSL workshop (Problem Solving Leadership) with Jerry Weinberg, Esther Derby, and Johanna Rothman, one of the best courses I’ve ever attended. After that course we’ve been thinking about ways to make our own training courses more interactive. David was first out and invented a brilliant exercise demonstrating

Cross-functional team doesn’t mean everybody has to know everything – this seems to be a common misinterpretation though. Cross-functional just means that the team as a whole has all skills needed to build the product, and that each team member is willing to do more than just their own thing. Are you unsure if your

Here’s a great list of agile tools on Mike Cohn’s User Stories site! Primarily for product backlog and user story management. Only problem is that there are way too few reviews so far. Are you using an agile tool? Go submit a review now and spread the link to your friends! Let’s help build this

(sorry, this article is in Swedish, because it is a response to a Swedish article. I won’t make this a habit.)

I en artikel i Computer Sweden den 3 feb står det ”siffror visar att nio av tio Scrumprojekt misslyckas”. Men de angivna siffrorna handlar i själva verket om något helt annat – att 9 av 10 personer som säger att de kör Scrum inte implementerar Scrum fullt ut. Detta säger ingenting om huruvida själva projektet lyckades eller inte (eftersom Scrum inte är ett självandamål). Denna typ av sensationsjournalistik gynnar ingen – utom möjligen tidningen som vill öka sina tittarsiffror, men på bekostnad av trovärdighet.

Låt oss därför titta på lite mer relevanta siffror istället….

A Russian translation of my book Scrum and XP from the Trenches is now available. Thanks Aleksey Solntsev for initiating this project, and thanks to all of the 17 people who contributed (listed on the first page in the book). French, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, and Portuguese translations are also available. Korean, German, Italian, and Slovak

1-2 days every week I schedule “slack” days, where I try to catch up on emails, do some admin, prepare for future engagements, and such. During the past year I’ve been using the Pomodoro technique more and more consistently and, the more I use it, the more I find that it really works well! It

A French translation of my book Scrum and XP from the Trenches is now available. Big thanks to Guillaume Mathias, Bruno Orsier, Emmanuel Etasse, and Christophe Bunn. Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, and Portuguese translations are also available. Korean, German, and Slovak translations are underway. I never cease to be impressed by the agile community! All translations

A Portuguese translation of my book Scrum and XP from the Trenches is now up on the Brazilian InfoQ site. Big thanks to Renato Willi for initiating and coordinating this effort, and thanks to all the other 30 contributors as well who made this happen (listed at the end of the book)! Spanish, Japanese, and

Here are the slides from my session "Multi-team sprint planning" from Scrum Gathering 2008 in Stockholm. Here is all the other material from the Scrum Gathering. Interesting stuff!

Here are the slides from my session "Bootstrapping Scrum – Lessons learned helping companies get started" from Scrum Gathering 2008 in Stockholm. I used the same slides at the Scan-Agile conference in Helsinki Oct 29. Here is all the other material from the Scrum Gathering. Interesting stuff!

Yesterday I was at the "Agile i Sverige" conference in Stockholm and did a keynote called "Lita på mig – löften och lögner i agila project". In English that would be "Trust me – promises and lies in agile projects". Here are the slides. The slides are in Swedish (although I ended up doing the