Jasper sonnevelt pitfalls of a large kanban implementation

Pitfalls of a large kanban ImplementationJasper SonneveltEmail: mail@jaspersonnevelt.nl | jsonnevelt@vxcompany.comTwitter: @jaspersonnevelt

Content

Context Status Challenges Observations Conclusions

Context

Benelux Insurance Company Employees:

– ICT: 800– Total: 4000– Technology based teams

- Maintenance- Small changes

Kanban Pilot

Characteristics Both new features & incidents Not fully multidisciplinary

– No Infrastructure and operations– Business commitment mostly best effort

Better performance– Increased transparency– Reduced defects– Better prioritized backlog– Higher throughput

Teams asked to adopt Kanban

Kanban team

Kanban team

Kanban teamKanban

teamKanban teamKanban

teamKanban team

Kanban team Kanban

teamKanban team

August ‘09 December ‘09

Pilot success factors

Start out small

Increased personal responsibility

Increased team member involvement

Multi disciplinary teams

Coaching

Status

December 2010 20 dedicated teams 200 people High pressure Only facilitators were trained

Kanban is the new standard way of working for development and operations teams

Challenges and pitfalls

Rapid Expansion Multidisciplinary

Teams End-to-End Collaboration

(Out)Sourcing Budgets Changing

organization Crisis Next Generation Work

Culture Management Digital Boards

One change at a time Knowledge levels Time

Rapid Expansion Multidisciplinary

Teams End-to-End Collaboration

(Out)Sourcing Budgets

Changing organization Crisis Next

Generation Work Culture Management Digital Boards One

change at a time Knowledge levels Time

Rapid expansion

Management just promoted Kanban to a standard…

End to end collaboration

We can’t get everybody in our team. Let’s start anyway…

(out) Sourcing

So what if half our team is in a different country?

Not enough budget

It’s crisis. Lets see how far we get on the money we have…

Next Generation Work

It’s ok if you work from home...

Knowledge levels

Educate only the facilitators… They’ll teach the team members

Cultural change

Its only a different way of working…

At least management doesn’t have to change…

Digital vs physical boards

There is no difference between physical and digital boards…

Digital vs physical boards

“Cards and the Wall are not just visible signs of progress for visitors, managers and team members” […] “they are also an information-rich focal point for co-ordination and collaboration which work in a complementary manner.”

Helen Sharp, Hugh Robinson - Collaboration and co-ordination in mature eXtreme programming teams (2007)

One change at a time

We have some other organizational changes at the moment, but that’s no problem

Give it time

We have been doing this for almost half a year… Why are not all teams perfect yet???

Kanban in all teams?

Kanban will fix all our problems. It worked in the other teams didn’t it?

Every team is different

“Don’t expand unless you know why something is a success. If you don’t know how it works you cant scale it up or down.”

Dave Snowden (2011)

In conclusion

Involve (middle) management Educate (management too!) Understand the dynamics of a Kanban

team Scale consiously

Thank you