A pioneer in applying Lean and Kanban to knowledge work, Jim is the creator of Personal Kanban and co-author of Personal Kanban: Mapping Work | Navigating Life, winner of the Shingo Research and Publication Award. His other books include Why Plans Fail, Why Limit WIP, and Beyond Agile. He is the CEO of Modus Cooperandi, and co-founder of Modus Institute. For the past two decades Jim has worked at uncovering ways for individuals and groups to communicate, collaborate, and find clarity in unpredictable and amorphous environments.

There is more than one visualization

After working in dozens of industries and seeing how our customers live and work, it is clear that kanban as a tool has nearly universal usefulness. There is a danger, however, in assuming it is our only visualization or that it has only one format. I've seen kanban boards as concentric circles, flow happening from the ceiling to the floor, or recursive boards that have multiple passes for work with many revisions.

To this end, Lean gives us the Obeya. A room, real or virtual, where we can display one or more kanban boards, plus the other visualizations we need to solve problems, conduct research, or innovate. These additional visualizations turbocharge the kanban. People use it more reliably, the information on it has more context, and the flow of work is more humane.

I am bringing with me Obeya from several industries and will give real world examples of how people have set them up, even with global teams. I will also talk about why this works, no only in terms of work flow, but in how we, as people and professionals, react socially and psychologically to getting the right information at the right time.