Agile Scrabble

The Dream Team Nightmare — by Portia Tung (40 / 230)

👈 The Count | TOC | Kanban Applied 👉

“Let’s go through the session plan,” you say. “We’ll use a kanban board to visualize the work we have planned for this project retrospective.”

“We don’t use Kanban here,” says Jason. “We use Scrum.”

You take this opportunity to clarify a common misunderstanding of the word ​kanban​.

“The word ‘kanban’ has many different meanings, depending on the context,” you explain. “In Japanese, ​kanban​ means “signal board.” In the context of this meeting, I’m referring to a ‘kanban board,’ a tool for visualizing and tracking the activities we’ll be covering in this session. I find that it helps everyone stay focused and get things done.”

“Isn’t kanban related to lean manufacturing?” asks Roger.

“Yes,” you reply. “In the context of lean, kanban refers to a scheduling system for managing workflow that is also known as a ‘kanban system.’ It was developed by Taiichi Ohno at Toyota in order to improve and maintain a high level of production.”

“My car’s a Toyota,” says William.

“In the context of software development, ‘Kanban,’ with an uppercase ​K​, usually refers to applying a kanban system to an existing software development life cycle process. Key principles of such a system include visualizing work and limiting work in progress. We create a pull system by applying these principles, which means a team only pulls work in when it has spare capacity. Pull systems prevent teams from being overloaded.”

“Pulling work sounds like a sensible idea,” says Matt. “We’re used to having work pushed onto us. Push systems result in overloaded teams.”

“What’s more, being an overloaded team makes life a total nightmare, for us at work and for those we love at home!” replies Rebecca, while everyone around the room nods.

“Can you give us some examples of how Kanban could work for us?” asks Jason.

Do you choose to:

👈 The Count | TOC | Kanban Applied 👉

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