Kanban-Compact with Matthias Bohlen

09/13/2010, 2:00pm – 09/13/2010, 6:00pm, Cologne, TOP OF COLOGNE, Organizer: itemis AG, Price per person: 99 EUR + VAT

Fast market launch, short feedback cycles and high transparency - because of these benefits in software projects, agile project management methods such as Scrum, are increasingly being adopted because they make complexity controllable. The realization of having to react quickly and flexibly to changing requirements, and the desire to get executable software earlier, led to the emergence of agile project management methods.

Since 2003, Scrum has drawn increasing attention to itself and in recent years has been used successfully in more and more projects. However, there are areas within IT-organisations (e.g. support, maintenance and operations), where Scrum, due to its revolutionary approach and fixed iteration cycles, can not really intermingle. Hence, since 2005, forcing a further very slim and lightweight methodology to emerge: Kanban

Kanban is a lightweight, evolutionary Project- and Change-Management-Approach. It transfers the Kanban-Principles, which are originally developed in the environment of Lean Production, into the software development. Kanban itself is not a process but complements existing processes. It is  made up of only a few rules:

1. Need you work, fetch it from the predecessor in the workflow (pull-principle)
2. Produce no more results than your successor can process in the workflow (limit WIP = work in process).

Kanban helps to be become more efficient, resolve bottlenecks and to constantly improve. Kanban functions both within the software development and also in the adjoining departments, such as support and operations, even in product marketing and sales. David Anderson has developed this methodology and first used at Motorola, Microsoft and Corbis.

Kanban is easy to integrate into existing development processes, because it makes very few demands. It helps to look at the organisation as a whole and to optimise the value chain beyond the mere development. This makes it interesting for companies that for example already successfully apply Scrum or other agile methods.

How can these advantages be used in practice? The answer will be given to the participants of the workshop “Kanban-Compact”. Matthias Bohlen, a well known coach, guides the course, helping the software development teams to become more productive. He is among the early adopters of Kanban and within four hours provides everything you need to know about the change management methodology.

1. Introduction to Lean, Pull-Systems and Kanban
   • What is Flow?
   • Why Kanban?
2. Examples and case studies
   • Microsoft: Processing time reduced by 90%, productivity increased by a factor of 3
3. The ingredients for the Kanban recipe for success
4. How to get started with Kanban
   • drawing a Kanban chart
   • reaching Service Level Agreements
   • limiting WIP
   • agreeing on planning- and release rhythms
5. How to be productive with Kanban
   • Manage bottlenecks
   • Improve throughput
   • Measure the value stream
   • Use metrics and reporting for continuous
6. How Kanban and Scrum go together
7. Outlook, questions and answers

Lecturer