Scalability is currently a big topic in the agile world. Most agile methods and practices often reach their limits when one wants to “agilize" more than a few teams, let alone one wants to achieve real agile collaboration of several hundert people. The main problem is that many agile methods focus on the team. Kanban follows a completely different path - Kanban is not a team method! Kanban is a management method which focuses on generating value. "Manage work and not workers" is one of the key messages of the Lean Kanban management philosophy. Therefore, scalability is not a real topic within Kanban: if you focus on value generation of work, scaling Kanban simple means doing more Kanban - it’s inherent scalable. In this session I show how one could use Kanban at scale. Besides the general schematic explanation I will also show a case study where Kanban is used to coordinate work of more than 200 people.

1. Dr. Klaus Leopold
web: www.LEANability.com
blog: www.klausleopold.com
mail: klaus.leopold@LEANability.com
twitter: @klausleopold
Kanban at Scale
Lean Kanban Central Europe Conference, November 2014, Hamburg, DE

2. www.LEANability.com@klausleopold
What’s the problem?
Why is agility at scale difficult?

3. www.LEANability.com@klausleopold
Common Misconceptions
• “In an agile organization, all teams use agile methods.”
- Optimize value generation and not team performance
- Focus on interactions
• “You just need to strictly follow the method.”
- World is too complex to not adapt to your specific
situation.
- You need an individual working system which adapts to
your specific situation.
• “Teams just need a strong vision and empowerment.”
- Lean/Agile is a cultural change and you cannot “install” a
culture
- It’s a process which requires leadership skills

4. www.LEANability.com@klausleopold
Team
Dynamic Systems
Development Method
ScrumKanban
Extreme
Programming
Adaptive Software
Development
Agile Unified Process
Crystal
Feature Driven
Development
Lean Software
Development
Scrum-ban

5. www.LEANability.com@klausleopold
Team
Team
Team
Team
Team
Team
Team
Team
Team
Team
Team
Team
Team
Team
Team
Team
Team
Team
Team
Team
Team
Team

6. www.LEANability.com@klausleopold
Team
Team
Team
Team
Team
Team
Team
Team
Team
Team
Team
Team
Team
Team
Team
Team
Team
Team
Team
Team
Team
Team
An organization is not
a container of
independent teams!!
Organizations are
living social
systems!

7. www.LEANability.com@klausleopold
customer wish: write a love letter

8. www.LEANability.com@klausleopold
The performance of a system is not
the sum of its parts.
It’S the product of its interactions.
— Russell Ackoff

9. www.LEANability.com@klausleopold
Common Misconceptions
• “In an agile organization, all teams use agile
methods.”
- Optimize value creation and not team
performance
- Focus on interactions and not individual parts
• “You just need to strictly follow the method.”
- World is too complex to not adapt to your specific
situation.
- You need an individual working system which
adapts to your specific situation.

10. www.LEANability.com@klausleopold
Common Misconceptions
• “In an agile organization, all teams use agile
methods.”
- Optimize value creation and not team
performance
- Focus on interactions and not individual parts
• “You just need to follow the method.”
- World is too complex to not adapt to your specific
situation.
- You need an individual working system which
adapts to your specific situation.

11. www.LEANability.com@klausleopold
Common Misconceptions
• “In an agile organization, all teams use agile
methods.”
- Optimize value creation and not team
performance
- Focus on interactions and not individual parts
• “You just need to follow the method.”
- If you apply another one’s solution to your problem
don’t be surprised if the solution does not solve
your problem!
- You need an individual working system which
adapts to your specific situation.

12. www.LEANability.com@klausleopold
Common Misconceptions
• “In an agile organization, all teams use agile
methods.”
- Optimize value creation and not team
performance
- Focus on interactions and not individual parts
• “You just need to follow the method.”
- If you apply another one’s solution to your problem
don’t be surprised if the solution does not solve
your problem!
- You need an individual working system which
adapts to your specific situation.

13. www.LEANability.com@klausleopold
What could be a solution?

14. www.LEANability.com@klausleopold
We need a working environment,
which is created by active leaders
instead of lazy administrators who
only ask for best practices.
We need a working environment,
which continuously adapts to reality
instead of trying to fit a blueprint.
We need a working environment,
which optimizes for value creation
instead of optimizing organizational
structures (like e.g. teams).

15. www.LEANability.com@klausleopold
Principles
1. Start with what you do now
2. Agree to pursue evolutionary change
3. Initially, respect existing roles, responsibilities and job titles
4. Encourage leadership on all levels in the organization
Practices
1. Visualize
2. Limit work in progress (WIP)
3. Manage flow
4. Make policies explicit
5. Implement feedback loops
6. Improve collaboratively, evolve experimentally

16. www.LEANability.com@klausleopold
Scalability in Kanban simply
means doing real Kanban at any
scale in your organization!
I don’t know how each and
every company on this planet
works most effectively!
But we can figure it out!

17. www.LEANability.com@klausleopold
Example: Kanban at Scale

18. www.LEANability.com@klausleopold
SW Development Program
• SW development program, ~200 people
- program management
- 1 PRM, 5 PMs
- 1 solution team
- 8 business and marketing representatives
- 5 business analysts, 3 architects
- 10 dev teams, ~110 people
- 4 Web teams, 2 iPhone teams, 1 Android team,
1 Shop team, 2 backend teams
- 3 QA teams, ~35 people
- 2 OPS teams, ~25 people
• Main dissatisfactions:
- Bad coordination of the whole program
WHAT WOULD
YOU DO?

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1. FOCUS ON VALUE CREATION
—> How are you creating value?
—-> What are your services?
2. FIGURE OUT WHOM YOU NEED
—> teams, departments, etc.
—-> it’s not about local optima
START AS BROAD AS YOU CAN
—> Use the leverage if you can!
—-> PROGRAM in this example

20. www.LEANability.com@klausleopold
Build a hierarchy-bridging and
cross-functional change team.
program manager,
project manager(s),
team delegates
build a Kanban system
together

21. www.LEANability.com@klausleopold
concretize
idea
define B-epics
split epics,
develop & test
integrate &
test
run user acc.
tests
roll-out
rough
idea
prog.
version

22. www.LEANability.com@klausleopold
define B-epics
split epics,
develop & test
integrate &
test
business &
marketing
2 ops team
10 dev
teams
run user acc.
tests
roll-out
5 BAs &
3 Arch
prog.
version
concretize
idea
rough
idea
3 QA teams

23. www.LEANability.com@klausleopold
idea
doing approved doing done
(32)
concretize
idea
(24)
define
B-epics
in
development
(8)
review
B-epics
(16)
ready
for dev
rejected Shop (2)
Web (8)
Android (2)
iPhone (4)
(∞)
ready
for int
(4)
int &
test
(2)
UAT
(2)
ready
to roll
(1)
roll
out
DONE
(4)
NEXT
epic
program
version
integration train
Monday
release train
Wednesday
Backend (2)
Kanban on program level
doing done doing done

24. www.LEANability.com@klausleopold
idea
doing approved doing done
(32)
concretize
idea
(24)
define
B-epics
in
development
(8)
review
B-epics
(16)
ready
for dev
rejected Shop (2)
Web (8)
Android (2)
iPhone (4)
(∞)
ready
for int
(4)
int &
test
(2)
UAT
(2)
ready
to roll
(1)
roll
out
DONE
(4)
NEXT
epic
program
version
integration train
Monday
release train
Wednesday
Backend (2)
Kanban on program level
doing done doing done
There are no recipes and
blueprints in KANBAN.
UNDERSTAND what you’re
doing and IMPROVE!
This is just an EXAMPLE
and NOT the
KANBAN blueprint!!

25. www.LEANability.com@klausleopold
It’s not “mandatory” that
(all) teams do KANBAN!!
LET TEAMS PULL
CHANGE!
We only started
KANBAN on program level
That’s also a perfect way
to organize work for
multiple SCRUM teams

26. www.LEANability.com@klausleopold
user
story
< 1d
(10)
develop
(∞)
int. test
(∞)
UAT
(1)
waiting
4 EPIC
epic
program
version
(2)
define
User Stories
(16)
Pool of
User Stories
< 2d
< 5d
(4)
NEXT
(1)
review
epic
READY 2
ROLL
Kanban on team level
1 analyst, 8 developers, 3 test specialists
This part of the board
is POTENTIAL DEMAND
for the team!
Epic 1 + User Stories
Epic 2 + User Stories

27. www.LEANability.com@klausleopold
Coordination
• Program stand-up, twice per week
- 2 program management delegates
- 3 delegates from the solution team
- 5 delegates from the dev teams
- 3 delegates from the QA teams
- 1 delegate from the OPS teams
• Team stand-ups
- Dev teams, daily
- QA teams, twice per week
- OPS teams, twice per week
• Improvement meetings
- each Dev, QA, and OPS team, 2-weekly to 4-weekly cadence
- Program retro, monthly cadence
- cross-team retro, 3-monthly cadence

28. www.LEANability.com@klausleopold
Kanban is scale-free:
Simply apply Kanban
principles & practices
at any scale in your
organization.

29. www.LEANability.com@klausleopold
When to Scale?

30. www.LEANability.com@klausleopold
you might discover a
problem where scaling
is a solution
We wouldn’t call it scaling.
It just means that you’re doing
proper Kanban!

31. www.LEANability.com@klausleopold
Aggregate
Aggregate multiple systems into a single systems.

32. www.LEANability.com@klausleopold
(3)
READY 4 DEV
(4)
FRONTEND Process
(2)
READY 2
INTEGRATE
(3)
WAITING 4 Backend
FRONTEND Development
BACKEND Development
(3)
READY 4 DEV
(4)
BACKEND Process
(2)
READY 2
INTEGRATE

33. www.LEANability.com@klausleopold
AND
FRONTEND Development
BACKEND Development
(5)
READY 4 DEV
(8)
DEVELOPMENT Process
(2)
READY 2
INTEGRATE
Aggregated services
improve liquidity of flow

34. www.LEANability.com@klausleopold
Connect Services
Join disconnected systems by limiting unlimited
queues/buffers between systems.

35. www.LEANability.com@klausleopold
develop integrate
(3)
READY 2
DEVELOP
(10)
DEVELOPMENT
PROCESS
(∞)
READY 2
INTEGRATE
(4)
INTEGRATION
PROCESS
(∞)
READY 2
ROLL OUT
(2)
READY 2
INTEGRATE

36. www.LEANability.com@klausleopold
develop integratebiz analyze roll outmarketing
(3)
READY 2
DEVELOP
(10)
DEVELOPMENT
PROCESS
READY 2
INTEGRATE
(3)
Scale out in a
service-oriented
fashion!!
READY 2
INTEGRATE
(4)
INTEGRATION
PROCESS
(∞)
READY 2
ROLL OUT
READY 2
INTEGRATE

37. www.LEANability.com@klausleopold
TAKE AWAYS
*KANBAN is a scale-free approach.
It does not not scale.
*Scaling KANBAN means doing more
“real” KANBAN - improving!
*Scale/improve in a service-
oriented fashion:
-aggregate services to improve
liquidity of flow
-connect unlimited buffers to
larger services

38. www.kanbaninit.com
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