Whether as a trainer, coach, manager, consultant, or business builder (I’ve been all of those), I’m interested in helping people see work flowing and processes improving. In software development that means Better Software Faster (the title of one of my books, and something of a theme in my career). In other fields, it means timely delivery of fit-for-purpose services that delight customers. For businesses, it’s about advantage through agility. In all cases it means applying principles and clear thinking in different contexts. Since meeting David Anderson I’ve been convinced that Kanban unlocks many of the keys to this. That’s why I wrote Essential Kanban Condensed with him, why I became a Kanban coach (KCP), and then an Accredited Kanban Trainer (AKT), and why I’m delighted to be with you for this conference talking about what Kanban can do or you. When not engrossed in my technical work, I also enjoy singing, golf, and entertaining, particularly when our large grown-up family comes home to visit.

The Heart of Kanban

What makes Kanban tick? What raises the passions, drives the urgency to improve, and inspires as well as guides? What is buried in the essence of this method, which – in ironic contrast – is often valued as little more than a visual to-do-list?

This is a personal story of a journey to understand Kanban, and the motivations and goals of those who apply it. What is at the heart of the method... and in the hearts of those who use it? It started as my search for ways to extend the gains from Agile methods, that I found diminished drastically in every attempt to apply them at scale. It became an exploration of the essence of Kanban -- what defined it, what its practices and principles were, and the scope of its application. Discoveries along the way pointed me back to earlier lessons in software engineering and management. In the end, it was the heart of Kanban – the method’s orientation towards service and value – that has proved most profound

In this session you will hear about many aspects of Kanban’s “body” of knowledge:

• The “eyes” of Kanban – a different way of seeing work, workflow, knowledge work and the organisations carrying out knowledge work
• The “feet” of Kanban – the fundamentals of flow systems and efficiency, enabling steady and continual improvement
• The “brains” of Kanban – the basis of managing with data: logical inference applied to the physics of flow and the management of risk
• The “muscles, nerves and sinews” of Kanban – joining customers, makers, designers, managers and leaders in collaboration, co-dependency and commerce

Most importantly you will see the centrality of Kanban’s heart – its ability to bring focus on to the consumers and users of our services, and to improve their experience.

Feedback and Cadence

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.