Kanban Method: Improving Your Process Framework with Joey Spooner and Todd Little

Agile Coaches' Corner

This week, Dan Neumann and Justin Thatil are joined by two external guests for Kanban University: Joey Spooner, Vice President for Community Development and Product Management, and Todd Little, Chairman of Kanban University.

In this episode, experts from Kanban University join the podcast to share their expertise with the audience. Listen to this conversation and learn about the trajectory of Kanban University and its fantastic community. Also, they dive into a profound exploration of what Kanban Methodology really is and how it can improve what you are already doing.

Key Takeaways

• What is Kanban?

• Kanban University has been educating a vast community on its method since 2013.

• The Kanban method is often misunderstood. Some significant aspects characterize the Kanban Methodology. It is a way to visualize the workflow, called operational practice. There are also Management Practices, which consist of taking and managing policies effectively in an organization. The practices of collaboration and experimentation are also of crucial importance.

• Kanban can also be used as a complementary practice to Scrum.

• A fundamental principle of the Kanban Methodology is to Start with what you do now. If you have started with Scrum, you can improve it with Kanban. Kanban is fundamentally an approach to improving your process framework; it isn’t a framework itself.

• The Kanban Method vs. the Lean Manufacturing:

• Lean Manufacturing aims to remove uncertainty, which is conceived as a waste.

• Sometimes, uncertainty does not need to be eliminated; it is inherited, and often, it is this uncertainty that brings value.

• Kanban tries to understand knowledge work and its behaviors while still representing the workflow.

• How does Kanban manage the predictability challenge while doing complex work?

• There are three common challenges while working with complex work: Delay, Dependencies, and Dormancies. Every Team needs to explore possible solutions for these challenges.

• Check Team reliability.

• An approach to predictability: Do more and better estimates.

• Advice for Scrum Practitioners starting to use Kanban:

• You can use Kaban on top of what you are doing with Scrum for more efficiency.

• Kanban tools allow Teams to stay focused and deliver consistently.

• Find first what your struggle is at the moment and see how Kanban can help with it.

• Learn to manage resistance to change and get accustomed to constant evolutionary change.

• Learn from the water's capacity for adapting to its environment.

• Agile needs to adapt to culture as much as a culture needs to adapt to Agility.

• Take small steps.

• You have to get your system under control, map it out, and ensure it is not overloaded. If a system is overloaded, it is not predictable.

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