Next week is full of interesting and fun events! Mary Poppendieck, Tom Poppendieck, and Jeff Sutherland are doing the following events with me in Stockholm: Monday – Tuesday: Certified ScrumMaster course Tuesday evening: Introduction to Lean Software Development Wednesday: Deep Lean The events are all fully booked but you can still register and get on

Mary Poppendieck used this definition in our Leading Lean Software Development course a few months ago. Very nice and concise definition of lean. What is Lean? Deliver continually increasing customer value Expending continually decreasing effort In the shortest possible timeframe With the highest possible quality A journey, not a destination.

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!

Guess what. Toyota uses the waterfall method for software development – and now they’re trying to figure out how to go Lean.

Surprised? So was I!

Read on…

On March 4-5 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. There are still a few spots left, more info and registration here: http://www.crisp.se/leadinglean Join us!

Here are the slides from my breakfast seminar "Agile – ett verktyg inte ett mål" (= "Agile – a tool, not a goal"), hosted by DSDM Consortium. The presentation was in Swedish but the slides are in English. This is more or less the same presentation as my keynote at Integration Agile 2009 conference in

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 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

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 under our control and uncertainty imposed by outside events is a bad management habit.

Instead;
"Manage the normal – treat exception as exceptional"

And have a happier life 🙂

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. Translations: German Japanese Turkish It is sort of like a code example, or a condensed Kanban patterns repository. Print it out and use it

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

Take a look at this chart and tell us how we are doing?

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 for in your Scrum organization..

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,

Experience the humbleness and energy of so many people in one single place was a great experience. I would have liked to stay longer just do discuss and share experiences.

Takeaways:

• As Agile practitioners, we need to continue to evolve
• Kanban is a promising tool for sharing Lean benefits outside teams
• Pick the right tools for the job! Kanban and Scrum have their advantages, start with your problem and then pick the right tool
• David shared my experiences with Kanban teams demonstrating a "white box" behaviour instead of a "black box" (not your business) towards its stakeholders
• Classes of Service is a hot upcoming topic around Risk Management
• In Japan the "why" is the most important thing. Therefore rigorous effort is spent on understanding Values and Princinples, compared to our Western approach of staring with the Practices (therefore not being able to adopt when situation change)

Enough chat. Here are the slides:

• Future of Agile – David Anderson
  http://www.crisp.se/futureofagile/slides/davidanderson

• Kanban vs. Scrum – Henrik Kniberg
  http://www.crisp.se/futureofagile/slides/henrikkniberg
  
  
• Roots of Lean, visiting Toyota – Mattias Skarin
  http://www.crisp.se/futureofagile/slides/mattisskarin

I held a seminar at NFI today "Introduction to Lean Software Development".  Afterwards, I got the question "where is a good starting point to learn more?" – and realized that while there is new material, much is still "in work" (for example: Mary and David are both working in new books).  So updated information it is not easily found.

If you are completely new to the subject:

• Implementing Lean Software Development – Mary & Tom Poppendieck
  [comment] While there is newer material, this is a good starting point.

"I have the basic understanding and now want to move on to the software specific stuff"

• David Anderson Kanban for software presentation
  [comment] good visualization of concepts in practice

• Mary has a great essay page
  [comment] nice inspiration

• ..or grab my slides from today  "Introduction to Lean software development"
  [comment] ..note, at least half of the content was delivered verbally, but the stuff in here is up to date

Psst!: Two great opportunities exists in May to get the latest in Lean here in Sweden:

• Deep Lean 18-19 May –  with Mary Poppendieck and Jeff Sutherland
• Future of Agile – with David Anderson, Mattias Skarin and Henrik Kniberg

I attended the Lean & Kanban conference last week. The first of it’s kind, a big boost of energy and I certainly hope to see more on this subject.

It was striking how, in case after case, the simple introduction of visual management and matching work to capacity (Kanban) sent teams off on a journey exploring Queues, Pull, System Thinking and even Deming(!). 

Here are my biggest takeaways:

• Even highly performing senior teams get a boost by using Kanban (a bit of surprice to me)
• Classes of service enables teams to self organize around risk elimination. (David Anderson). If you have been thinking of  "is there any way around analysing full test suite/architecture up front – this is what you are looking for. Extremely interesting stuff.
• It was nice to hear the community has picked up that the primary model for software is Lean Product development first, then ideas from lean manufacturing
• How system thinking quickly was perceived as the primary constraint when scaling and how Deming holds many answers
• Talking to Dean Leffingwell an confirming my thoughts regarding the need for a cooperation model

I ‘ll probably come back more on this subject 🙂

When applying Lean, or thinking about scaling agile benefits to the Enterprise we tend to "home in" on the practices (Release cadance, Kanban, Flow, Portfolio management, risk etc). These are all valuable and the world would be a happier place if used more 🙂 . But – it is as important to not to forget to bundle those practices with a cooperation model.

Basically, practices without a cooperation model = high risk of failure.

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 you can read in the Crisp blog, some of us have been travelling to Japan to”Find the roots of lean”.
The experiences are many and I will try to write about them in coming blogs but here I will reveal what was the most

important experience for me.

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

I am currently on a visit to Japan to meet Toyota and representatives from Japan’s industry to learn about their challenges. Already on day one, things got really interesting.

We met today with the CEO of a Fujitsu subsidiary, specialized in software. The company is applying TPS to improve their practices. It was interesting to see that:

• The CEO was puts improving engineering and kaizen practices on top of his agenda. He is committed and actively involved, driving improvements. In his world improvements comes first, operations second.
• A sign of the ambition is the fact that the company employs a mathematical expert to help out with analysis. When would that happen in a western company 🙂
• They are experimenting a lot with estimation techniques! The technique currently favored is "Function Scale" –  a simplified version of Function Points. The technique is based on user interface design and is fast, only takes 1-2 minute compared to what a skilled function point analysis would take 30 min or more to do.

Some reflections:

• Culture and local experiences affects solutions looked at. Turning to TPS, Kaizen and statistical process techniques for improving software products is therefore logical
• But – using best practices based on other’s success, without thinking (what problem it was intended to solve, how this would help our situation) – is dangerous. Not only can this stop you from solving the right problem (you might be in another situation!) it can also dilute your competitiveness no longer staying ahead. Something to think about when we apply Scrum, Lean or any practice.

Anyway, a really interesting week up ahead! Tomorrow, first visit at Toyota plant, later in week , meeting the former Lexus cheif engineer Kataymy-san and the former IT manager of Toyota.

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!