1. Copyright © 2011 Constant Contact Inc. Transitioning Your Team to Kanban: Theory and Practice Gil Irizarry & Susan Jacobs Constant Contact August 2011

3. Theory –

4. Motivations

5. Background

6. What is Kanban and how does it work

7. Practice –

8. Setting up a Kanban board

10. Over 20 years software development and management experience, over 5 years in an agile software development environment

11. CSM and PMP certifications, Kanban coaching training with David Anderson

12. BS from Cornell, ALM from Harvard, certificate in Management from MIT Sloan

13. girizarry@constantcontact.com, gil@conoa.com

15. BS degree in Computer Science / Information Science from Binghamton University

17. >$200MM gross revenue per year

18. >800 employees

19. >470K paying customers

20. Engineering and Operations total about 150 people

23. React quicker to changing market conditions

24. Get new features to users more quickly

25. Frequent releases are smaller releases

27. Daily stand-ups

28. What did you do yesterday, what did you do today, any impediments

29. Retrospectives

30. Burn-down chart

32. Build Quality In

33. Create Knowledge

34. Defer Commitment

35. Deliver Fast

36. Respect People

37. Optimize the WholeLeading Lean Software Development: Results Are not the Point by Mary and Tom Poppendieck

39. Agree to pursue incremental, evolutionary change

40. Respect the current process, roles, responsibilities & titlesFrom: http://agilemanagement.net/index.php/Blog/the_principles_of_the_kanban_method (David Anderson)

42. Team board states are a reflection of the value stream

43. Limit WIP

44. Manage Flow

45. Implied that flow should be continuous

46. Make Process Policies Explicit

48. Copyright © 2011 Constant Contact, Inc. 13 You are one team!

49. Copyright © 2011 Constant Contact, Inc. 14 Value Mapping Exercise How do you make dinner?

50. Copyright © 2011 Constant Contact, Inc. 15 Sample Value Stream Shop for food 30 min Cook Food 15 min Unpack groceries 5 min Value: Eat! Serve Dinner 5 min Drive home 30 min Wash Pots 15 min Drive to market 30 min No Value: 50 min / 130 min = 38% efficiency

53. Work should not be pushed when completed, even if its lane is fullPull: Push:

55. Less multitasking

56. Less time lost to context switching

57. Better quality

59. We manage this through the concept of classes of service. Similar projects are grouped into classes and each class is assigned an allocation.

62. Teams test continuously

63. It’s OK if a team finds a defect on the last day of the release. Pull the feature or delay the release, but keep the flow continuous

64. It’s OK if a team starts work for the next release in the current release

66. Cycle time on items after grouping them by size:

67. Completion time for small, medium and large

68. Spread of cycle times

69. Work items completed

71. So, over time, an estimate of completion time for items of a given size should become more accurate.

72. Work items can be sized by t-shirt sizes (smalls, mediums or larges) and the average cycle times for those sizes from the last release become the estimate for the upcoming release.

75. Implementing Lean Software Development: From Concept to Cash - by Mary Poppendieck and Tom Poppendieck

76. Scrumban - Essays on Kanban Systems for Lean Software Development - by Corey Ladas

79. I was a Principal Engineer at the time. I’m currently the Engineering Manager of our advanced editor team.

80. Mike Fitterman (currently Director of Engineering) and Rick Simmons introduced Kanban to the team.

82. Sprint planning consumed the team for an entire day.

83. Most of the work for a sprint was getting completed all at once, close to the end of the sprint.

84. QA had nothing to do at the beginning of a sprint, but were overworked at the end.Copyright © 2011 Constant Contact, Inc. 29

86. We asked the teams to map out their current development process.

87. It was really complicated…Copyright © 2011 Constant Contact, Inc. 30

88. Mapping the Value Stream Copyright © 2011 Constant Contact, Inc. 31

90. Don’t overthink the initial WIP limit, it will change based on metrics.

91. Start WIP limit at 1.5X the number of team members.

92. That WIP limit is for the whole board.

93. Divide total WIP amongst the columns, whatever feels right.

94. Take photos of the board daily for Cumulative Flow Diagram.Copyright © 2011 Constant Contact, Inc. 32

95. Week 2 – Patterns emerge Copyright © 2011 Constant Contact, Inc. 33 Verify column over limit Blocked Items Work not on board

96. Week 4 – Board Changes Copyright © 2011 Constant Contact, Inc. 34 Wait states Less columns Team adding policies

98. Policies are the requirements that must be met before an item is considered ready for the next state.

99. Policies were written down in a wiki and posted on the board.

100. The team frequently ignores policies, so the scrum master has to keep them honest ;-). Copyright © 2011 Constant Contact, Inc. 35

101. Copyright © 2011 Constant Contact, Inc. Items Tasks Week 5 – Items broken into Tasks 36

102. One Team – Single Flow Copyright © 2011 Constant Contact, Inc. 37 Item and task type by color Produce Todo Bugs & Footprints on board WIPL = 6 full items Visible policies

104. Perceived lack of predictability compared to Scrum was an issue.

105. By tracking Cycle Time, we can eventually provide Service Level Agreements to stakeholders.

106. SLA = Avg. Cycle Time + 2(Standard Deviation)Copyright © 2011 Constant Contact, Inc. 38

107. Cycle Times – May 2011 Copyright © 2011 Constant Contact, Inc. 39 SLA = Avg. Cycle Time + 2(Standard Deviation)

108. Cycle Times Copyright © 2011 Constant Contact, Inc. 40

109. Cycle Time Standard Deviation Copyright © 2011 Constant Contact, Inc. 41

111. SMB Week Landing Page – we decided to start work despite the fact that many dependent assets were not ready. Stakeholder pressure to meet a deadline.

114. Worked on more constant delivery

115. Identified a bottleneck with source control

116. Changed our branching strategy to improveCopyright © 2011 Constant Contact, Inc. 44 Before After

119. Conclusion Copyright © 2011 Constant Contact, Inc. 47 Thanks For Spending This Time With Us