Some Day Kanban Will Fail 75% of the Time

http://www.noop.nl/2010/03/some-day-kanban-will-fail-75-of-the-time.html

by nreece • 16 years ago

18 14 16 years ago

swombat• 16 years ago

Very good, if somewhat obvious, point: Ultimately, practices can only help you if you've got the brains to apply them correctly.

There is no substitute for a quality team. No amount of structure can make up for idiots.

WorkerBee2• 16 years ago

A quality team is necessary but not sufficient. Practices like waterfall development can hobble them. Or worse, the people who could become a "quality team" don't, and don't even know what they are missing out on.

Tichy• 16 years ago

How about creating a system that works with normal people, rather than robots? My feeling is that if it is so difficult to implement the system that almost nobody gets it right, it might be the mistake of the system. It should come more naturally, not forced.

wallflower2• 16 years ago

We have been using Kanban for about a month now. It is very successful. Scrum focuses on people. Kanban focuses on the tasks.

It is safe to say that everyone on the project from testers to developers to higher management that is not actively involved has a good sense of the entire state of the project.

Scrum is too micro-management - daily updates - what I did today, what I'm doing tomorrow - you'll laugh but one of my co-workers - he told his wife, a teacher, about scrum and the burn downs. And she laughed and brought over a sample of the 'What I'll do today/What I did yesterday' template that her school uses with 3rd graders to track their progress.

Kanban is not a silver bullet. It really helps to have a large physical board - a virtual board - be it a shared Excel spreadsheet that is version controlled - is not very graspable - even if it is the defacto authoritative source.

Kanban works because people here want it to work. Because they're tired of scrum. Of being micro-managed. Of having to sit through endless scrum burndown calls where everyone has to talk about what they did. Especially when the team is overseas and they are dialing in late. Kanban cuts that down to what is needed to be known. If you need to have longer discussions, you break off from the main talk. Kanban calls are JIT updates, not updates just for updates.

DanielBMarkham4• 16 years ago

Disclaimer: I teach this stuff

I don't make a big distinction in scrum, Kanban, Agile, agile, Crystal, etc.

If the burndowns were buggin' you, stop the burndowns. If the daily standups seemed pedantic, stop them (or better yet, fix them). If your team is too large, Kanban might give you a better sense of control but development's big obstacle is communication, not control.

I think Kanban boards are great. If it tickles your fancy, go for it.

But it's no more a silver bullet than scrum was. At the end of the day, teams that regularly adapt beat teams that jump from one big thing to another, apply it rigidly, then wait too long to jump to the next big thing. The idea is continuously tweaking what you're doing, not latching on to a marketing term.

Hope that didn't tick you off :)

wallflower2• 16 years ago

No you didn't tick me off and I will write a much longer response later.

Disclaimer: We use this stuff. We are taught this stuff.

AlecM3• 16 years ago

Do you consult companies in implementing these practices? What was the largest team using Scrum that you felt was still effective? At my job, there's 30 people at the daily stand-up and it just seems out of control, especially as we pass a speaking stick across the group. What is this, Lord of the Flies?

bmickler• 16 years ago

Wow. The word "kanban" in the title caught my attention so I thought I'd take a look. I currently work (for another week anyway) on the finance team for an aerospace manufacturing firm so we are very familiar with kanban and other lean principles. Little did I know lean principles (even Kanban?) are working their way into the software development world!

This is all the more interesting since I've just taken a position as the financial operations manager for a web/finance startup in Atlanta. Good to know that some of the cool lean principles and tools can translate into my new environment! Definitely something to look into...

AlecM3• 16 years ago

Management at my gig decided to just use both, a ScrumBan if you will. I think the general manager just wanted a board to stop and look at every time he had to go to the bathroom.

Some Day Kanban Will Fail 75% of the Time

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