Here is the Russian translation of my book Kanban and Scrum – making the most of both. Thanks Mariia Yevgrashyna, Tanya Kobzar, Sergiy Movchan, Artjom Serdyuk, Borys Lebeda, Aleksey Solntsev, Alina Marusyk, Alexander Zhovnuvaty, Aleksey Goncharenko, Lina Shishkina, Roman Kononov, Tim Yevgrashyn, Yaroslav Gnatyuk, and Andrey Bibichev. If anyone else wants to make translations feel

Here are the slides from my seminar "Vad är ett agilt projekt" (What is an agile project) at PMI in Stockholm. I was happy to see so many participants, and impressed that you managed to stay awake & engaged despite the fact that it was an evening seminar with very comfortable chairs :o) "Vad är

We got some really cool workshops coming up during the next couple of months together with some of the "founding fathers" of Lean and Agile software development :o) David Anderson is the pioneer of Kanban in software development and author of the book Kanban – Successful evolutionary change for your technology business. Nov 8 –

Here are the slides from my keynote “The Essence of Agile” from AgileEE 2010 in Kiev. Thanks for a great conference! Tbe Essence of Agile – PDF format The Essence of Agile – PPTX format Here’s a nice summary transcript of the session (thx Alexander Beletsky). Here is a video recording (minus the first 10

We have three interesting events coming up:

Kanban Training with David Anderson, Nov 8-9
– Learn how to introduce Kanban in your organisation from the source: David Anderson.

Kanban Coach Camp with David Anderson & Mattias Skarin, Nov 10-11
– As a kanban practitioner, evolve your skill in incremental improvement

Second generation Lean product development – as if economics matter, Don Reinertsen, Dec 2-3
– As a CEO or business owner, learn the principles and economics driving product development

We are especially pleased to welcome Don Reinertsen to Stockholm, he has been on our "people that we really have to bring to Stockholm" list for a long time! Don is author of one of our favorite books "Managing the Design Factory", and his teachings have been a key source of inspiration to other thought leaders such as Mary Poppendieck and David Anderson.

Don is keen on making us differentiate between Lean for manufacturing and Product development, and points out that understanding the economics involved helps us improve way beyond charters and improve our decision making. Be aware, you will not leave untouched.

  …or "how we learned the right process needed to solve our problems".

I presented at Lean & Kanban Europe yesterday. It was great to meet people from so many disciplines, Here are my slides.

Here are the slides from my keynote "The Thinking Tool Called Agile" from the Lean/Agile/Scrum conference in Zurich. The Thinking Tool Called Agile – PDF The Thinking Tool Called Agile – Powerpoint The slides from the value stream workshop with Mary Poppendieck and myself will be up on the LAS site soon.

Here are the slides from my deep-dive workshop at the Scrum Gathering, Cape Town: Kanban for Scrum practitioners, PDF format Kanban for Scrum practitioners, Powerpoint format Thanks for attending! Lots of interesting questions and insights came up during the workshop. Sample slide:

On Sep 16-17 Tom & Mary Poppendieck will once again come to Stockholm and teach a lean course with me. "Leading Lean Software Development" is aimed at leaders in organisations that are serious about succeeding with Lean software development. The course also includes an evening seminar on Sep 15. Save SEK 2000 by registering this

Here are the slides for my session Kanban and Scrum – making the most of both at Agile 2010, Orlando. Thanks for participating! Slides in PDF format – if you don’t have powerpoint Slides in Powerpoint format – if you want the animations  Translations: Japanese slides in Powerpoint format (thx Kiro Harada) For those who

  At the NDC 2010 conference I ran a workshop demonstrating the  principles behind Kanban (showing there is more too it than a visual workspace..) . My approach was to do it using a set of games.

Anyway, here are the slides

Ps:  A great conference for an old MSoft geek 🙂

Here are the slides from my Kanban & Value Stream Mapping workshop at Agile Spain 2010 in Madrid. Thanks for participating!

Here are the slides from my keynote "The Essence of Agile" at Agile Spain 2010, Madrid. Basically a whole week’s course compressed into a one hour lecture, worked out even better than I had hoped :o) Impressed by the turnup, 300 people is good for being the first agile conference in Spain!

The next Limited WIP Society meeting (Stockholm, Sweden) will be focused on experiences from the trenches. Six speakers testing Kanban will do 10min lightning talks, sharing their top 3 experiences.

When: Monday May 31:st 18.00 – 20.00
Where: Avega’s office, Stockholm

How do I join? mattias.skarin( at )crisp.se

My book "Kanban and Scrum – making the most of both" is now available in Japanese. Good work Hiroki Kondo & Midori Daida!

This other day, I stumbled upon an article by John Seddon  – "Rethinking Lean Service" which had been laying around in my disk space for a while.

It struck me how these principles can be deployed using a Kanban system:

• design against customer demand : create the kanban board starting with the demand
• focus on value creation over cost elimination: set highest priority in completing work before accepting new. Use WIP limits to ensure that is happening.
• know the actual time it takes to complete the transaction as "one stop" : learn the cycle time of flow and use this to plan resources rather than spent time

Maybe Kanban is well suited for services?

Me and Henrik’s book have now been translated to french.

Through the admirable effort of Claude Aubry, Frédéric Faure, Antoine Vernois and Fabrice Aimetti, you can read it here:

http://henrik-kniberg.developpez.com/mattias-skarin/livre/scrum-kanban/

How do you go about converting a development team from Scrum to Kanban? Can we benefit from incremental improvements in projects under high pressure?

Here is a case study of a team who transformed from Scrum to Kanban and managed to save a derailing project. I hope it can inspire others to experiment and improve.

Some of the things I learned:

• Incremental improvement  works, even under high pressure
• Key problems are typically cross functional. The better you are in building a cross functional momentum – the faster you’ll overcome them
• Kanban works as a tool for incremental improvement
• Quality over speed – always more important than the tool

(… and I have a far way to go until I can order a proper cup of tea and a croissant 🙂

Anyway, here’s the link:

Converting a Scrum team to Kanban

Join me in this exclusive 3-day workshop where experienced Agile/Kanban practitioners, coaches & project managers share knowledge. The workshop is led by David Anderson and limited to 8 participants. Click here for more info & registration. Only 2 seats left!

My paper about Agile Support has been translated to French.

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:

I was interviewed by Mitch Pronschinske on Agile Zone, this turned into two articles: Kanban isn’t better than Scrum, it’s just smaller Scrum and XP are new – their principles are not I think Mitch did a good job of turning the interview into coherent articles (not an easy job). 

Here’s a video recording of my 10 minute lightning talk "Kanban vs Scrum, a practical guide" at Agila Sverige June 8, 2009. It is basically a 10 minute summary of my book "Kanban and Scrum – making the most of both". NOTE – the recording is in Swedish.

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 A comparison of Kanban and Scrum – their approaches as process tools in software In-the-trenches case study of introducing Kanban in operations Hope you enjoy the reading!

For further reading about the case study,  see my presentation at Devopsday’s 2009.

My new book "Kanban and Scrum – making the most of both" is done! The purpose of this book is to clear up the fog, so you can figure out how Kanban and Scrum might be useful in your environment. The book includes: Foreword by Mary Poppendieck Foreword by David Anderson Updated version of my

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 just saying no?" But not all events are under our own control and as this story will tell; I’m now convinced it actually works.

The personal kanban can help address three problems:

• "Constant reprioritization"
• "I need to be able to focus"
• "I want to feel the reward of completing work"

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

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.

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