The Gist of the Story

We believe in Agile software development for teams. From small teams to a 4000 person development group, our clients have enjoyed success with Agile. They have been able to deliver more value to customers at a more sustainable pace and with greater employee satisfaction than ever they were before. That is what keeps us going.

Students in my Kanban training classes ask great questions. Many of these questions come up so often that I have started a list of my "Top 10 (or so) things I wish people knew about Lean-Kanban."

Here is my list and I'd like to know what you think should be added. I will be filling in more information about these over the next few weeks, so keep checking in with me.

"Eliminate Waste!" This is one of the earliest mantras of Lean that people learn. It is easy to say but it can cause problems if we consider it a means - instead it is actually a goal. Forgetting this sets the student up for a long bout of wasted effort or at least incomplete results.

In The Importance of Mindsets, I described why your mindset, where you think from, is critical.  read more »

What is the rationale for a maximum sprint length of 30 days?

This was a question that someone on the LinkedIn Certified ScrumMasters group recently asked.

There are three reasons. Two are explicitly part of Scrum. The other isn't mentioned but is one of the foundations on which Scrum is based. The explicit ones are feedback and enforced view of reality. The second is removing delays.

Software development across an enterprise involves more than efficiently managing a collection of teams. It requires managing a vision across the organization, prioritizing work to realize that vision, and creating contexts and methods that let teams thrive and deliver value. This article describes Net Objectives' own journey and why we feel Lean and Kanban, taken together, make for effective software development at the enterprise.

I have been doing Agile for over a decade. During this time, I have seen many different ways of thinking about what Agile is. One way is to think that there is only one kind of Agile and that there is a large collection of methods to choose from as you feel appropriate. Another way is to realize that there are many different mindsets in the Agile community and that these mindsets are what give rise to the different methods.

My alternative title to this blog was "If You Say Kanban Isn't About People, then You Don't Know What Kanban Is." But that sounded too much like a rant. However, I have to admit, much of this blog is a rant.

I assert the following (please verify with your own evidence from your past):

1. Time from getting information until using it creates new work (one has to redo the information or one works from old information which results in rework)
2. Time from making an error until detecting it creates new work (e.g., a bug found immediately takes little time to fix compared to a bug found weeks later – that additional work is created by the delay)
3. Shortening the feedback times will shorten these delays and therefore lower the amount of work to be done
   

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(Paraphrased from Wikipedia) A racket is an illegal business, usually run as a part of organized crime. The best-known is the protection racket, in which criminals demand money from businesses in exchange for the service of "protection" against crimes that the racketeers themselves instigate if unpaid.

You could say a racket is when you claim to be doing one thing that looks good while really doing something else that isn't.

I would suggest that running rackets is something people do all of the time – most without realizing it.