The 7th deadly sins in the use of the Kanban Strategy - part 1 of 3

Some weeks ago, I started a serie of LinkedIn post about the 7th deadly sins in the use of the Kanban Strategy. Those posts were in french and I thought today that it was time to bring to the english speaking community that work, those thinking to a larger community.

Hopefully it will bring other interesting discussions and an opportunity for me to improve as well.

So let's begin with the first deadly sin !

1) Minimalism

The 1st deadly sin is a real sleight of hand, I call it; “Minimalism”.

You think being in Kanban strategy is just having little tickets ?? wandering between different columns on a board? Nothing could be further from the truth! And nothing could be more reductive!

It's like saying “I'm doing Scrum” and the only thing you've implemented is “we talk every day for 15 minutes to discuss our problems, among other things”... Grrr, just writing it out annoys me ??

The Kanban strategy is much more, but not tons either ?

It's 3 essential practices:

Practice no. 1??: Define and visualize workflow

Practice no. 2??: Actively manage workflow elements

Practice no. 3??: Improve workflow

These 3 practices are supported by 4 key metrics that inform ? the state of the process and enable the team to improve it, as well as being predictive about the elements that will flow through it.

The 4 key metrics are :

- WIP (number of items in progress),

- Throughput,

- Cycle time,

- Work item age

These elements are the basis of a Kanban strategy (applied to knowledge management).

If you remove any of these practices or metrics, you'll fall into the 1st deadly sin “Minimalism” and you won't want to cross the Flowmizer's path !

2) Disrespect

That's great, you've collaborated as a team to define the ? workflow (DoW). You've clearly defined the unit(s) of value that will flow, you've set explicit rules for moving from one state of your process to another, you've defined starting point(s) ?? and ending point(s) ??, you've got your pull rules, your way of controlling WIP, and you've even defined a service level expectation (SLE)!

However, few team members remember ?? this after a few days, and it's rare that the things explicitly described are adhered to. The others, who try to play along, don't take offence at the lack of respect shown by some of their colleagues.

All's well in the best of worlds ?? ! Your flow expresses its gratitude. It's in very good hands ??!

What are you really hoping for? Having defined all these explicit elements, everything was going to run, fall into place, and you were going to be touched by the grace of the flow ?

I can see that you're barking up the wrong tree. You're going to have to get a little wet and start by respecting your explicit process rules.

How else are you going to figure out that this definition doesn't work? What rules could be modified to improve performance ???

You should think of your definition of workflow (DoW) as an experiment ?? you're conducting. Like any experiment, to know if it's conclusive, you need to set the entry criteria (your explicit DoW rules) and stick to them so you can analyze conclusive results and thus think about what would be interesting to do on a next experiment (what you'd need to change from the DoW).

On this sin, you're flouting the 3 key practices and unless there's a miracle, it can't go well.

Do you believe in miracles ??? I don't.

Failing to respect your workflow definition is like disrespecting your mother-in-law-you're going to realize sooner or later that it wasn't a super-good idea!

3) Procrastination

This deadly sin is directly linked to the 2?? Kanban's overriding practice:

? Actively manage the elements of your workflow

and to the most important metric of the Kanban strategy:

? the work item age

Procrastinating lead you to let things age unnecessarily.

There may be plenty of reasons why an item can't flow smoothly (dependencies, lack of expertise, unforeseen absence in the team, technical / feasibility problem, etc.), but these events should never cause you to enter a “wait and see” mode.

These problems won't magically resolve by themselves. It's your responsibility to do your utmost to remove these constraints, and to make appropriate decisions based on whether or not it's possible to solve them, considering the range of time ? it would take.

An element that is aging unnecessarily, should be a trigger for a conversation ??.

- Should we cut ? this element to deliver some of the expected value and learn?

- Should we reinforce ?? the person(s) working on it? The whole team? Part of it?

- Do we need expertise ??♂? external to the team? Do we know someone? Who can we contact? Is there anything we can do in the meantime to move forward or get a head start on future steps?

- Should we stop investing ?? (give up), because we've discovered that we don't have the capacity to handle it for several weeks/months?

In short, you have to react!

Another aspect of this sin is around the practice of improving the workflow.

This isn't going to happen by itself, either. You have customers and users who expect something from you. You need them to use your product, to buy it, to recommend it. Without this, your chances of survival and growth will be very slim. Your product must meet their expectations, as must your process ? to create it (VoP: Voice of the Process). Their expectations are many and differ from one context to another, among which there will certainly be :

- The time it takes ? to respond to an expectation, a problem (Cycle time)

- The quantity ?? of new products and value you provide (Throughput)

- The quality ?? of what you put in their hands

- The quality of change management, of support ?? for the adoption of new features

etc.

You need to hear them (VoC: Voice of the Customer), understand them and improve your process so that it matches their expectations as closely as possible.

You must actively seek equality in the VoP = VoC equation.

The part you control is on the left, it's your process, so don't "procrastinate", be “reactive”!

The second part next week, follow me, activate the bell to not miss it !