Kaizen Software Development

  

Nebbia partnered with Kaizen to augment our software development capabilities. The Kaizen team delivered value right away and they were able to quickly become part of our team. They helped us deliver quality software, based on best practices, and they were always willing to go the extra mile to make sure that deadlines were met. Another early contribution came from Corey Ladas, whose 2008 book Scrumban suggested that kanban could improve Scrum for software development. Ladas saw Scrumban as the transition from Scrum to Kanban. Jim Benson and Tonianne DeMaria Barry published Personal Kanban, applying Kanban to.

Software development
Core activities
Paradigms and models
Methodologies and frameworks
Supporting disciplines
Practices
Tools
Standards and Bodies of Knowledge
Glossaries

Kanban (Japanese 看板, signboard or billboard) is a lean method to manage and improve work across human systems. This approach aims to manage work by balancing demands with available capacity, and by improving the handling of system-level bottlenecks.

Work items are visualized to give participants a view of progress and process, from start to finish—usually via a Kanban board. Work is pulled as capacity permits, rather than work being pushed into the process when requested.

In knowledge work and in software development, the aim is to provide a visual process management system which aids decision-making about what, when, and how much to produce. The underlying Kanban method originated in lean manufacturing,[1] which was inspired by the Toyota Production System.[2] Kanban is commonly used in software development in combination with other methods and frameworks such as Scrum.[3]

Evolution and documentation of method[edit]

David Anderson's 2010 book, Kanban,[4] describes an evolution of the approach from a 2004 project at Microsoft[5] using a theory of constraints approach and incorporating a drum-buffer-rope (which is comparable to the kanban pull system), to a 2006–2007 project at Corbis in which the kanban method was identified. In 2009, Don Reinertsen published a book on second-generation lean product development[6] which describes the adoption of the kanban system and the use of data collection and an economic model for management decision-making. Another early contribution came from Corey Ladas, whose 2008 book Scrumban[3] suggested that kanban could improve Scrum for software development. Ladas saw Scrumban as the transition from Scrum to Kanban. Jim Benson and Tonianne DeMaria Barry published Personal Kanban,[7] applying Kanban to individuals and small teams, in 2011. In Kanban from the Inside (2014),[8] Mike Burrows explained kanban's principles, practices and underlying values and related them to earlier theories and models. In Agile Project Management with Kanban (2015),[9] Eric Brechner provides an overview of Kanban in practice at Microsoft and Xbox. Kanban Change Leadership (2015), by Klaus Leopold and Siegfried Kaltenecker,[10] explained the method from the perspective of change management and provided guidance to change initiatives. A condensed guide to the method was published in 2016, incorporating improvements and extensions from the early kanban projects.[11]

Kanban boards for software development[edit]

The diagram here shows a software development workflow on a Kanban board.[12] Kanban boards, designed for the context in which they are used, vary considerably and may show work item types ('features' and 'user stories' here), columns delineating workflow activities, explicit policies, and swimlanes (rows crossing several columns, used for grouping user stories by feature here). The aim is to make the general workflow and the progress of individual items clear to participants and stakeholders.

As described in books on Kanban for software development,[4][3] the two primary practices of Kanban are:

  1. Visualize your work
  2. Limit work in progress (WIP)

    Four additional general practices of Kanban listed in Essential Kanban Condensed,[11] are:

  3. Make policies explicit
  4. Manage flow
  5. Implement feedback loops
  6. Improve collaboratively, evolve experimentally
Software

The Kanban board in the diagram above highlights the first three general practices of Kanban.

  • It visualizes the work of the development team (the features and user stories).
  • It captures WIP limits for development steps: the circled values below the column headings that limit the number of work items under that step.
  • It documents policies, also known as done rules,[9] inside blue rectangles under some of the development steps.
  • It also shows some Kanban flow management for the 'User Story Preparation,' 'User Story Development,' and 'Feature Acceptance' steps, which have 'In Progress' and 'Ready' sub-columns. Each step's WIP limit applies to both sub-columns, preventing work items from overwhelming the flow into or out of those steps.

Managing workflow[edit]

Kanban manages workflow directly on the Kanban board. The WIP limits for development steps provide development teams immediate feedback on common workflow issues.[4][9]

For example on the Kanban board shown above, the 'Deployment' step has a WIP limit of five (5) and there are currently five epics shown in that step. No more work items can move into deployment until one or more epics complete that step (moving to 'Delivered'). This prevents the 'Deployment' step from being overwhelmed. Team members working on 'Feature Acceptance' (the previous step) might get stuck because they can't deploy new epics. They can see why immediately on the board and help with the current epic deployments.

Once the five epics in the 'Deployment' step are delivered, the two epics from the 'Ready' sub-column of 'Feature Acceptance' (the previous step) can be moved to the 'Deployment' column. When those two epics are delivered, no other epics can be deployed (assuming no new epics are ready). Now, team members working on deployment are stuck. They can see why immediately and help with feature acceptance.

This workflow control works similarly for every step. Problems are visual and evident immediately, and re-planning can be done continuously. The work management is made possible by limiting work in progress in a way team members can see and track at all times.

Other examples of use[edit]

Although it is usually used for software development and software teams, the kanban method has been applied to other aspects of knowledge work.[13]. Business functions which have used kanban include:

  • Human resources[14] and recruitment[15]
  • Marketing
  • Organizational strategy and executive leadership[16]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^James P. Womack (2007). The Machine That Changed the World. ISBN978-1847370556.
  2. ^Taiichi Ohno (1988). Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production. ISBN978-0915299140.
  3. ^ abcCorey, Ladas (2008). Scrumban and other essays on Kanban System for Lean Software develoment. Seattle, Washington: Modus Cooperandi Press. ISBN9780578002149. OCLC654393465.
  4. ^ abcAnderson, David J. (April 2010). Kanban: Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Business. Blue Hole Press. ISBN978-0-9845214-0-1.
  5. ^Anderson, David J. and Dragos Dumitriu. 'From Worst to Best in 9 Months: Implementing a Drum-Buffer-Rope Solution at Microsoft’s IT Department'. TOC ICO World Conference November 2005. USA: Microsoft Corporation, 2005.
  6. ^Reinertsen, Donald (May 2009). The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development. Celeritas Publishing. ISBN978-1935401001.
  7. ^Benson, Jim; DeMaria Barry, Tonianne (January 2011). Personal Kanban: Mapping Work, Navigating Life. Modus Cooperandi Press. ISBN978-1453802267.
  8. ^Burrows, Mike (2014). Kanban From The Inside. Seattle, WA: Blue Hole Press. ISBN978-0-9853051-9-2.
  9. ^ abcBrechner, Eric (2015). Agile Project Management with Kanban. Microsoft Press. p. 160. ISBN978-0735698956.
  10. ^Leopold, Klaus; Siegfried, Kaltenecker (2015). Kanban Change Leadership. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. ISBN978-1-119-01970-1.
  11. ^ abAnderson, David J.; Carmichael, Andy (2016). Essential Kanban Condensed. Seattle, WA: Lean Kanban University Press. ISBN978-0-9845214-2-5.
  12. ^Jasper Boeg (February 2012). 'Priming Kanban'. InfoQ. Retrieved 17 February 2014.
  13. ^Leybourn, E. (2013). Directing the Agile Organisation: A Lean Approach to Business Management. London: IT Governance Publishing: 160–66.
  14. ^'Kanban for Short Intense Projects: How We Used Kanban to Visualize Our Hiring Process Workflow and Make Our Lives Easier'. Personal Kanban. 19 January 2011. Retrieved 17 August 2012.
  15. ^'Kanban and Recruitment'. The Social Tester. 6 August 2014. Retrieved 8 June 2015.
  16. ^'New Zealand Post Group - An Agile Executive!'. Agile Business Management Consortium. 2 December 2013. Retrieved 8 June 2015.

Further reading[edit]

  • Kanban: Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Business, David J. Anderson. (United States, Blue Hole Press, 2010. ISBN978-0984521401
  • Scrumban: Essays on Kanban Systems for Lean Software Development, Corey Ladas. (United States, Modus Cooperandi Press, 2009. ISBN9780578002149
  • Agile Project Management with Kanban (Developer Best Practices), Eric Brechner. (United States: Microsoft Press, 2015). ISBN978-0735698956.
  • Kanban in Action, Marcus Hammarberg and Joakim Sunden. (Shelter Island, NY: Manning Publications, 2014). ISBN978-1-617291-05-0.
  • Lean from the Trenches: Managing Large-Scale Projects with Kanban, Henrik Kniberg. (Dallas, TX: The Pragmatic Programmers, 2012). ISBN978-1-93435-685-2.
  • Stop Starting, Start Finishing! Arne Roock and Claudia Leschik. (USA: Lean-Kanban University, 2012). ISBN978-0985305161.
  • Real-World Kanban: Do Less, Accomplish More with Lean Thinking, Mattias Skarin. (United States: Pragmatic Bookshelf, 2015). ISBN978-1680500776.
Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kanban_(development)&oldid=916019561'
Know who needs to be trained on what and when.

Now you can plan and prepare for training without the last minute scrambling that occurs when recurring training becomes due. Run a report to show overdue and upcoming training for the next period of time that you define, and see what's coming up while you still have time to prepare and schedule.

Easily track Employee Safety Training, HR Training, Internal/External Training, and more.

Do you have employee training records stored in different systems, file cabinets, or within various groups? With Training Manager, you can consolidate these disparate systems into one and always know where to find all your training records.

Manage and share your training data across your company in a central repository.

Kaizen Development Jamaica

Whether you want to provide more transparency to training records for everyone or just standardize a back-office system for training records administrators and managers, Training Manager allows you to create login accounts to define who can login, view, or edit the training records database.

Eliminate the tedious, time-consuming work spent preparing training compliance reports.

Kaizen Software Solutions


Kaizen For Software Development

If you have been working with a paper or Excel based tracking system, you know how much work it takes to determine whether an individual is compliant with required training. Summarizing compliance metrics for a Group or the entire Company can be a daunting task without a training records database. With Training Manager, you can print these reports at any time without the trouble of manually collating and preparing the data.