Course Description
Kanban Workshop
In this Kanban training course, you will learn how to:
- Optimize the flow of work by managing work in progress (WIP) and removing bottlenecks
- Increase team velocity by identifying and eliminating sources of waste in your development lifecycle
- Size and decompose requirements into minimal marketable features that provide faster value to your customers
- Understand the difference between 'push' systems and 'pull' systems
- Combine Kanban with Scrum to improve team performance
- Understand when to use Kanban in order to maximize its benefits
- Scale agile by using Kanban at the Program and Portfolio levels of your organization
Substitution & Cancellation Policy:
You may cancel or reschedule up to 21 days prior to the start date of the class at no penalty. For any cancellation or reschedule requests within 21 days, the full course tuition is still due and not eligible for refund. Any paid tuition will be credited towards a future class and must be used within 12 months.
*Partner delivered courses may be subject to different cancellation terms
Agenda
Section I: History and Principles of Lean
Lean is a flavor of agile that focuses on optimizing the throughput of an end-to-end process by rooting out and eliminating sources of waste. Lean has its roots in manufacturing but has been adapted to the software development lifecycle as a powerful means to increase team velocity and efficiency. In the section, we'll discuss the following:
- The Origins of Lean
- Core Beliefs of Lean
- What Is Lean Software Development
- Principles of Lean Software Development
- The Seven forms of Waste
- How does Lean work with other flavors of Agile
Class Exercise
Working individually, think about the Seven Forms of Waste identified in Lean Software Development and identify what forms of waste exist in your current organization.
Section II. Understanding Kanban
Kanban comes from the Lean manufacturing world and when applied to software development dramatically improves an agile team's awareness of inefficiencies so they can maximize productivity and business value delivery flow. In this section we explore:
- Origins of Kanban
- Understanding Flow
- Learning the difference between 'push' and 'pull' systems
- Reviewing practical examples of Kanban in action
Class Exercise
Using the principles of Kanban, attendees will play the Kanban Pizza Game that not only teaches the concepts of flow but how to transform an existing process to a Kanban system.
Section III: Kanban Measurements
The benefits realized by Kanban are based on proven concepts used in the manufacturing sector. These concepts measure the throughput of work through a system, whether it is an assembly line or a software team. In this section we cover:
- Understanding and monitoring Work in Process (WIP)
- Measuring Lead Time and Cycle Time
- Creating Continuous Flow Diagrams
Section IV: Program and Portfolio Management using Kanban
One of the key challenges of agile is scaling it from a few teams to the enterprise level. This involves orchestrating the work across multiple teams working on multiple projects within a program or multiple programs within an organization's portfolio of products or services. Kanban is an ideal tool to manage the flow of work at the Program and Portfolio levels so that it can be effectively disseminated across multiple teams. In this section we will explore:
- Managing the queue of work at the Program and Portfolio level
- Understanding how to integrate Scrum at the Team level and Kanban at the Enterprise level
Section V: Combining Kanban with Scrum
Kanban can be used effectively on its own but can also be applied with Scrum to realize the benefits of both agile approaches. In this section we will explore:
- Comparing Kanban to Scrum
- Understanding the what Scrumban is
- Learning how to apply Scrumban and when to use Scrum and Kanban separately
Section VI: Value Stream Maps
A key concept of Lean is to optimize the whole by looking at the entirety of an end-to-end process to identify opportunities for streamlining. Value Stream Mapping is an invaluable technique to define the current state of a process and analyze it for opportunities to reduce time spent on non-value steps. In this section we will explore:
- Learning to define the 'as is' state of a process
- Understanding how to identify steps in the process that provide value to the customer and those that do not
- Learning how to calculate the efficiency of a process from end-to-end
- Appling steps to create a future state process that reduces total cycle time
Class Exercise
In teams, apply the method of value stream mapping to an inefficient process within your organization. Learn to diagram the 'as is' process to identify areas of waste and then develop the 'to be' process that reduces total cycle time.
Section VII: Minimum Marketable Features
One of the main benefits of agile is to deliver value more rapidly and frequently to your customer. The concept of Minimum Marketable Features (MMF) provides an essential tool to effectively decompose customer needs into finer grain features that can be delivered more rapidly than waiting for large scale features to be complete. In this section we will explore:
- Understanding what is a Minimum Marketable Feature
- Learning how it increases flow of value to your business
- Decomposing coarse grain requirements into MMFs
Class Exercise
In teams, review a product backlog consisting of coarse grain Epics for a release. Using the concepts of MMF, decompose the Epics into smaller sets of stories that provide value to users in shorter development cycles.