Series description

Kanban is the next generation of Agile methods. It has been picking up momentum as many people have become disenchanted with either the difficulty of starting Scrum or have been unable to overcome challenges while using Scrum. Kanban is based on Lean Product Development flow and provides insights into how to solve many software development challenges while being inclusive of management. It also is designed to be able to implemented at a pace of the development organization’s choosing – making it much more flexible in many areas where starting with a Scrum implementation would be difficult.This webinar series is broken into three parts. The first discusses how the methods of Kanban can be incorporated into existing Scrum teams to achieve significant improvement and provide insights on common challenges that are difficult to solve with Scrum alone. The second part shows how to use Kanban right from the start and goes deeper into the Kanban mindset. The third part discusses how to transition from Scrum to Kanban as well as provides more insights on Kanban boards and practices.

NOTE: This series was never completed. We may do so in the future.

Webinar sessions:
Session 1: Key Kanban Practices - Explicit Policies, Managing Work in Progress and Visibility
Session 2: Using Theories of Flow to Manage Work involving Multiple Teams
Session 3: Using Service Level Agreements to Manage New Work
Session 4: Starting a Non-Agile Team with Kanban
Session 5: Kanban is More Than a Set of Tools – the Mindset of Kanban
Session 6: Management’s Role in Lean-Agile
Session 7: Transitioning to Kanban from Scrum
Session 8: Kanban Board Tips and Tricks
Session 9: Comparing Scrum and Kanban

Part A: Using Kanban to Improve Scrum

Session 1: Key Kanban Practices - Explicit Policies, Managing Work in Progress and Visibility
Given: 12:00pm-1:00pm PST. Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Session 1 RecordingQ&A Page for Webinar
While Kanban is more than a set of tools, the tools of Kanban can be used by existing Scrum teams to overcome many challenges they have. Scrum is a framework for discovering problems quickly. Unfortunately, it provides few insights on its own to provide solutions for these problems. The thought process of product development flow, which underlies Kanban’s methods, can be readily incorporated into Scrum teams – achieving many of the results pure Kanban teams achieve.

Session 2: Using Theories of Flow to Manage Work involving Multiple Teams
Given: 12:00pm-1:00pm PST. Monday, November 22, 2010
Session 2 Recording
As Scrum’s adoption has increased so has the size of the organizations attempting to find success with it. Needing to coordinate multiple teams working together has become commonplace. Scrum suggests doing Scrum of Scrums. While it has no doubt worked in some situations, there are many more stories about where it hasn’t. In this webinar we discuss how the theories of flow and designing a multiple team process to shorten the time from when work starts until it is completed – even if not delivered – can create new hybrid processes that are very effective.

Session 3: Using Service Level Agreements to Manage New Work
Given: 12:00pm-1:00pm PST. Thursday, January 13, 2011
Session 3 Recording
A common challenge Scrum teams have is what to do with interruptions. Scrum teams struggle with this uncertain load. This webinar discusses how service level agreements combined with managing WIP can manage what you commit to while preparing for an unknown number of interruptions.

Part B: Kanban

Session 4: Starting a Non-Agile Team with Kanban
Given: 12:00pm-1:00pm PST. Friday, March 11, 2011
Session 4 Recording: Unfortunately, we had an error in our equipment and failed to get a recording of this webinar. We will re-record it and post it online by April 8, 2011. We apologize for the delay.
One of the advantages of Kanban is that it does not require any organizational changes (structure or roles) in order to start it. It allows companies to start where it might be difficult to start a Scrum team. This webinar discusses the steps required to get Kanban going in virtually any environment. It also discusses when you should use Kanban versus starting with Scrum.

Session 5: Kanban is More Than a Set of Tools – the Mindset of Kanban
Date/Time TBA
Kanban has been called a set of tools by many people. Kanban, however, is much more than that. Kanban is more a mindset and approach than the tools it is known for such as limiting WIP, explicit policies and including management. This webinar is a brief introduction to the lean-thinking behind the Kanban practices.

Session 6: Management’s Role in Lean-Agile
Date/Time TBA
Management has long seemed to be the forgotten aspect of Lean-Agile organizations. Many in the agile community even talk about protecting their teams from management. This session discusses how management is an essential aspect of any lean-agile transition that involves more than just a couple of teams. While the business side of the organization must select the proper product enhancements to work on and the teams must actually do the work, management’s role is just as critical. It must provide the organizational structure that allows for the flow of ideas to be manifested as value to the customers. Lean-thinking provides new opportunities for managers to lead, coach and support their teams in order to accomplish this. Outline:

• Managers as leaders, coaches and agents of organizational change
• Why managers are essential to lean-agile transformations
• How Lean-Thinking enables managers to improve the organization

Part C: Advanced Scrum and Kanban

Session 7: Transitioning to Kanban from Scrum
Date/Time TBA
Many Scrum teams are finding that once they understand Kanban mindset and practices they no longer have a need for iterations. This webinar shows how to move from Scrum to Kanban and when you’d want to do that. It discusses the opportunities and challenges of not having iterations. In reality, the biggest difference between the two is not just the lack of iterations in Kanban.

Session 8: Kanban Board Tips and Tricks
Date/Time TBA
The Kanban board is not meant to be followed. It is a reflection of the team’s work and therefore the Kanban board follows the team in a sense. However, many times people have ways they would like to work and the difficulty of reflecting this on the board becomes a problem for the team. This session describes some of the many flavors of Kanban boards we’ve seen. It also discusses several tricks we’ve incorporated in Kanban boards to help people communicate with each other.

Session 9: Comparing Scrum and Kanban
Date/Time TBA
This session provides a summary for the entire series. It does this by taking a high level view of the attitudes, mindsets and tools of both Scrum and Kanban. This is useful for helping decide which to use where.