Kanban in practice

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This presentation will show how to adapt Kanban in your development project.

There are quite a lot of slides and quite little text on each slide and the whole idea is that you should go through the slides
quickly and a little animation effect will take place.
 About us

• Avega Group

• Joakim Sundén, Marcus Hammarberg, Christophe Achouiantz

• These slides are protected under Creative Commons Attribution-

Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Sweden License

måndag den 19 juli 2010 (v.)

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One of the good things of Kanban is that it’s a evolution, not a revolution. You can adapt Kanban step by step.

Start from your current Scrum board and enchance it to reflect your process.

Actually - it will be many slides down before we will doing something that not fit inside Scrum.
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So a good starting point could be to visualize your workflow. If you are working with Scrum you are doing that already.

But maybe it could be a little more crisp than Todo, Doing and Done
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Make some place for some more columns

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and move the “Done” items to that column

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Often you start by analyzing a story, so lets a put a column to represent that work.

- what’s included
- how should it be solved
- break down into task
- etc.
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And then we’ll add a column for the development of the story
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And finally we need to verify and test the feature so that we are sure that the quality is good enough for our team to release.
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One way of handling handoffs between specialists is to introduce queues so that work is buffered. In this way the next step can
see when things are ready to be pulled from the Done-queue of the previous step.

It doesn’t have to be hard specilization - even if it’s roughly the same people doing the work this can be useful to visualize the
flow. So that we can where blockage, uneveness and other problems occur.
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Let’s add a done-queue for development, to give a signal to Test when new work is ready to pull.

In this case we added the Done-queue in the Development-step. You could also argue that it should be in the Test-step and be
called “Ready for test” or something.
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We now have our (simplified) work flow setup. Now it’s time to decided how to limit how much work we will allow to be in
progress at one time - to Limit our WIP.

There are some different approaches to come up with the total number for that:
- 2 per person, so that you don’t get blocked. A bit less maybe. We don’t want everyone to be blocked
- Equal to the number of persons in the team
- The number of persons divided by 2 for experienced agile teams
- Start from the bottleneck, the number of tester for example

- Any number! We will change it as we see problems and opportunities.

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Limit Work in progress for all columns or some, at least “Doing”

We have limit Work in progress for Analyze to 2, Development to 3 and Test to 2 features at the same time.

We have no limit for our backlog, Todo - but you very well could, to limit the flow into the system.
 Kanban-board
A normal flow

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We will now quickly demonstrate a normal flow on a Kanban board.

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Here’s the intial stage...

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Work is pulled from the backlog into the Analyze column as the WIP-limit allow.
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You could wonder what Dev and Test is doing in these early stages of the flow...

Well, the start will get a bit bumpy since no work are ready to be pulled. But this is for the very first time only, since a Kanban
board never will be reset. In Scrum, for example, this situation is likely to occur in each sprint.
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As work progress you monitor the flow of items.

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Follow the WIP limits and only pull new work to your capacity
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As we can see...
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... work is flowing along nicely since...

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... each step is only pulling work when it’s done ...
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... and not over their capacity.

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Tam-tam-tam - working with Kanban is a breeze!

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We’ve started work on the last feature in our backlog.

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About the same time as the first feature is ready to be launched!

Yeah! Champagne to all!

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And we’ve pulled the last feature into development.

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Now the development of the last feature is done and we’re ready to do the last bit of testing
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The testers are working along to bring our goodness to the customers.
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Closing in on the last feature.

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And we’re done!

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Queue as a leading indicator

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That wasn’t to educating since everything went well. It was good - but not educating...

How do we handle problems? Let’s reset the board to a problem situation and find out.
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Here all columns are fully loaded. Test is up to their limit and Development is finishing off the last story.
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Actually, the Development team want to pull some new work. They are sitting idle...
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But we cannot allow that - that would break their Work in progress limit off 3, now wouldn’t it?
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So here we have a bottleneck in the Test-step. We want to move things along, but since Test are up to their WIP-limit we cannot.

What’s good is that queues like this doesn’t happen instantly. You can see it build up and you can react to prevent it. The queue
is a “leading indicator”. Compare that with burndown in Scrum which is an example of an trailing indicator that gives you the
figures on how thing went.

What to do? Theory of Constraints gives some options:

- Exploit the bottleneck so that it’s used to the maximum, for example remove other work from them so that they are only doing
testing
- Elevate the bottleneck by increasing the capacity, for example employee more testers
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Starvation

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Another thing to look out for is starvation.

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This situation gives us empty columns or starvation.

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The analyze don’t have anything done and Development is idle with no more work to pull.
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This of course not good either but is another leading indicator. You can see when it’s about to happen and maybe react early,
rather than face the figures afterwards.
 Kanban-board
How do I draw new work?

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That was some example of the flow of work on a Kanban board.

But how do I draw new work? What are the strategies and rule I need to adhere to?
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Here is Joakim - the tester - ready to complete the feature is testing right now.
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Yes! It’s done!

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What should he chose now?

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Since there are work in progress in his column - the testing Marcus is doing - he should first and foremost see if he can help to
finnish the work that is in progress.

That’s our main goal - to finnish work in progress.

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So Joakim and Marcus will test that feature together

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They start to test it...

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...and before long...

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... that feature is also Done!

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What now? Both Joakim and Marcus is ready for some more work. Nothing to finnish in their column.
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But there are new work to be pulled from the Done-queue of the Development team.
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Great! They draw new work...

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Each starting a feature - to get work to be done as quickly as possible.

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Another way to handling the siutation...

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would be that they could work together...

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... on the highest prioritized item...

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... to quickly get that item done.

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Look - they are on their way to be done

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Well - that was quick! Great work guys!

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Here is a case where Marcus, the tester is left with no work in his column AND no new work to draw.

What should he do now?

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Mikaela apparently wants some help, to get the item she’s working on ready for test...
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But that is sadly not possible since Marcus is no programmer.

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But... we have a bottleneck in Analyze. They are fully loaded and no new work is flowing from them.

Both Joakim and Black-And-White-Marcus is working. Could Full-Color-Marcus possibly help over there?
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Yes, he can help Joakim to finnish his work.

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In this way they can resolve the bottleneck and move it to ready for development.
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Great - another bottleneck resolved!

But, if he couldn’t have done that either? What should Marcus had done then?
Well - find other interesting work maybe. Prepare that automation of tests or get that pesky build server to run faster. Something
to help the team.

Strive to not draw new work. You could, and break your WIP limits - but remember that then all work to come will suffer and take
longer time to complete.
 Kanban-board
Inspect and adapt

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We will now take a look on how your Kanban board can and should evolve over time.

It’s not done - strive to find way to improve your process.

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Say for example that you want your product owner to accept all items before shipping them.

We add a new column for that - Accept.

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And since the product owner is what is called a Non instant availability constraint we add a queue for things that is ready to
accept.
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And a column for accepted items.

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The product owner cannot be with us all the time, but when she’s here she can accept many items at once. It doesn’t take to
long.

We allow up to 4 items in the Ready for Accept queue.

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and as you see all items are quickly accepted when she had the time to sit down with and do it.
 Kanban-board
New member in the team

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Here is another situation when we need to change our board.

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Here is a situation where it’s not possible to share work and all Developers are busy on one feature each.
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And suddenly a new Developer is added to the team. Mikaela is newly employed.

What should she do?

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This could be a time to increase the Work in progress limit.

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And the she can draw new work.

This could also be a indicator that the WIP limit was to low to start with.
 Kanban-board
Work Item Types

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With different work item types you can visualize how different kind of work should be treated in different ways. To enable the
team to easier be self managed.
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Up to now all the items on our board looks and are treated the same.
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But they are not - this is a bug for example

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And here is maintenance feature that we are testing

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Over here is a change request that is waiting to be pulled

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And these normal yellow ones are ordinary features

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Now it’s more visual to us what we are working on. If the board goes all read with bugs we know that we’re having a quality issue
for example.

To remind us and others the colors meaning we could add a legend or key for the different items.
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What is on a card?

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The cards we’re moving around could also communicate a lot of information.
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First and foremost it should describe the feature. In this case in the form of a user story.
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The use of an avatar is an easy way to show who is working on what.

It could also be used to limit work in progress since you only can put your avatar on one card.
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Here is a hard deadline added to the card - so everyone knows how we are doing against it.
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If an electronic system exists with more information you could add the id of the item.
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“Stamp” the date of each stage to get data for lead- and cycletimes that can be used to create cumulative flow diagram for
example.

This card entered the Analyze step 2010-01-19

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and did not reach Development until 2010-02-01...

What was going on there?

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Use other items to signal deviations, such as delays or prioritization.

As you can see we have plenty of room on our card ...

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... which makes room for another avatar, for when you pair program for example.

It also forces us use ladders to move the items around on the whiteboard that holds these big cards :)
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Classes of Service

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If we want our team to be self organized, we need to help them to know which feature to next.

With classes of service we get a prioritization and policy approach that can help team members to chose their next
work item.
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A common situation is to introduce an expedite/urgent/silver bullet for things that is need to be prioritized over
other work.
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Those items are often given a own “swimlane”

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Everyone is happily working on their items...

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... when suddenly an urgent feature is introduced.

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A common policy for urgent features is that it should be prioritized over all other work. Just let go and start to work
on the urgent feature to move it quickly through the whole process.
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Phew - the developers were quick. The item is drawn by the tester and get going on it immediately.
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And in no time the item is handled.

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Another kind of policy is a minimum number or percentage of items of a certain kind.

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So here we should strive to have 50% features, 12,5 % (1) technical stories, 12,5% maintenance and the rest bugs.
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And with that policy in place Marcus, the tester, can easily see what the system should be filled with.

A maintenance features since there are no maintenance features left in the system now that he finished one.
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Here’s another situation.

Test-Marcus is ready to draw new work. There are two items ready to be pulled.
Which should he chose?
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The maintenance features (light green) has certainly been in the queue long, but we have a policy in place that tells us to always
prioritize features (yellow) above maintenance.
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Test-Marcus can then easily know what to pick.

 Kanban-board
Daily Stand-up

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We all know the ceremony during a Scrum Daily Stand up. But is there a difference now that we’re doing Kanban?

Notice that we’re still within the limits of Scrum - everything we have done so far can still be referred to as “doing Scrum”. It’s a
bit advanced but still.

We will let you know when we’re out of Scrum-country.

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The major difference in Kanban standup is that the meeting facilitator enumerates work, not people.
The board shows the status of the current work, queues and bottlenecks.

When enumerating the work it is useful to traverse the board from right to left (downstream to upstream) in order to emphasise
pull.
 Kanban-board
Managing defects

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How is defects handled on a Kanban board? Can items travel backwards?

This is one of the most common questions we get when doing this presentation. Here is some different strategies for handling
defects.
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When Test-Marcus finds a defect he could...

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1. Mark the feature as blocked

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2. Create a new defect card

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3. And place it in ready for development. Or maybe in Todo since it probably needs to be check by the designers and analytics
team before development.
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4. Work on something else in the meantime. Given that Test-Marcus cannot resolve the issue himself.
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Another approach is that Test-Marcus

1. Mark his feature as blocked and
2. Creates a new defect card
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3. and place it in the Urgent swimlane for quick processing

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Test-Marcus could also.

1. Mark his feature as blocked
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2. and call for help. The whole team is “swarming” on the issue and work together to resolve it.
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Exit criterias

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You could further help the team in running the process with exit criterias for each column
 EXIT
CRITERIA
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By defining exit criteria for what is needed to move items into the Done column, we can reach a standardized work
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Order point

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We have now reach the point where you cannot call it Scrum anymore. We will start skip sprint planning and timeboxes and start
doing our planning just-in-time
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How is the backlog filled with new items?

Start by filling the Todo-column or backlog with as many as the team usually comits to for a sprint.
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Release the planning from the release and retrospective cycle and start planning just in time.
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Maybe once every week or when event driven with an order point when new items should be added.
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We are closing in on the order point

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When all the items above the order point is moved the rest is moved up.

Note the instruction card that tells you to call to a meeting to get new items in the backlog from the product owner. That is
referred to in the industry as a Kanban card
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Three new items is prioritized by the product owner...

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and added to the backlog

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A WIP-limit on the backlog indicates how much that should be planned

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Disneyland wait times

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After a while you can use your data and the different work item types to predict how long before an item is release
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This is referred to as Disneyland wait times, from the queues at Disneyland that tells you that you only have to wait 30 more
minutes before 1,5 minutes of rollercoaster joy is yours.
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Here we can see that the item on top only have 14 days to go before it’s in production
 Kanban-board
Other visualizations

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The board can be used to communicate other important information.

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Here is a team member on vaccation...

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Here is a team member on vaccation...

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... and here is the same team member but sick, in the swineflu it seems but also some stomach disorder
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... and here is the same team member but sick, in the swineflu it seems but also some stomach disorder