Session Title: The Heart of Kanban Abstract: Feedback and cadence are two essential elements of control. Management of agile teams is no exception – particularly as its purpose is to help the business respond to the changing fitness landscape. Choosing the feedback loops and their cadences (the periods between feedback cycles) is the key to effective management, and this workshop will explore the actual feedback loops in participants’ businesses. Participants may be using agile methods like Kanban or Scrum, scaled frameworks like SAFe or LeSS, bespoke processes that have evolved uniquely within the business (perhaps guided by Kanban principles), or indeed no conscious or deliberate process at all. Nevertheless, feedback loops and cadences abound in controlling work. Scrum has a dominant cadence, defined by Sprint length. Kanban – described by one critic as an agile method without a cadence – in reality defines many of them. Other methods may use cadence-driven or event-driven feedback loops to achieve control, or like the “no deliberate process” approach, use instinctive feedback loops based on managers’ experience or preference. In all cases examining current processes and comparing them with a schematic feedback and cadence model, yields important insights that can generate improvements The workshop will introduce a simple framework for applying systems thinking to management systems. Participants will be asked to apply the model to their own management systems, or those of others in their groups, and to compare results in four main areas: Choosing the right work Making the work flow Ensuring the work’s right Improving workflow We’ll look at three typical scales – the agile team (proverbially 7 plus or minus two), and the multi-team service, and the multi-service layer, as addressed by management teams with wider responsibility. This workshop will help leaders in organisations understand where feedback loops exist for managing the business, at what cadence these controls operate, and where opportunities exist for improvement. While providing some helpful and pragmatic models for future use, the workshop will also generate outputs that can be applied immediately and directly, and providing agendas for discussion and implementation.