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This week I enjoyed attending a two day Kanban training class by David Anderson, the Father of Kanban-style software development.  The class provided an overview of Kanban and offered many tips on how to get the most out of Kanban.  David rolled through a deck of some 150 slides and answered various questions.  On the practical side, the class was divided into four teams and each team had to design a Kanban board for an actual company and then play an entertaining Kanban game, which turned out to be quite competitive.  The team I was on, Grand Kanban :) managed to squeeze out a slim victory with around $62,000 in revenue, which according to David was a pretty good score ;-)

Few points from the class:

The Kanban Method is based on three core principles:
   Start with what you do now    Agree to pursue incremental evolutionary change    Initially, respect current processes, roles, responsibilities & job titles
The five keys to a successful Kanban implementation are:
   Visualize Workflow    Limit Work-in-Progress    Manage Flow    Make Process Policies Explicit    Improve Collaboratively (using models & scientific method)
Key class takeaways according to Dave were:
Kanban is like water  It goes around obstacles and slowly changes them, rather than removing them like a bulldozer Change has to come from within How many experts does it take to change an organization?  Answer: One.  But people are going to have to want to change
Surprising fact from the class:

According to a research done by David, getting more done only ranks number 4 on most manager's lists!  The list of their preference being:
Predictability Business Agility (ability to respond to changes in market) Good Governments (managing budgets, money spent the way intended, etc.) Getting more done
[Image] Playing the Kanban game
All in all a good class and I look forward to continuing the improvement of Kanban at Hugsmiðjan where we develop the Eplica CMS.