I just finished reading Kanban
What I enjoyed about the book more than anything else was the delivery of the material. It was not overly analytical nor was it written in story form (so that I could get it). It seems to have just the proper mixture of short case studies and instruction. However, what was apparent was that the author is very comfortable in his subject matter. I am always amazed by people that are truly grounded in their knowledge of a subject. Their ease in raising questions and casual reference to others to stimulate thought is the true mark of an expert. I create the analogy to sports. Many superstars are superior athletes but the true great ones have the ability to make the entire team better. I think they call them champions. David comes across as someone that is truly striving for continuous improvement and I believe that he is a champion of Kanban.
One of my takeaways from the book is the outline David uses for Bootstrapping the Kanban.
- Agree on set of goals for introducing Kanban
- Map the value stream
- Defining the entry point
- Define the exit point
- Define the work item types
- Analyze the demand for each work item type
- Meet with the upstream and downstream stakeholders
- Create a board/card wall to track the value stream
- Optionally, create an electronic system to track and report
- Agree with the team to have a standup meeting daily
- Agree to a regular operations review meeting
- Educate the team on the new board, WIP limits, and pull systems.
As David says in his book: “This guide cover has been developed based on real experience and validated by several early adopters of Kanban, both those who followed the steps and were successful and those who recognized that their partial failure could have been prevented had this guide been available at the time.” David goes on to say, “This guide is provided in part to draw attention to the difference between Kanban and earlier Agile development methods. Kanban requires a collaborative engagement with the wider value chain and the middle(senior) management from the start. The unilateral grassroots adoption of Kanban without first building the consensus of managers external to the immediate team will have only limited success and delivered limited benefits to the business.”
As I mentioned in an earlier Tweet today, even though I read the last page last night this book has been queued up to be read again.
P.S. The Kanban
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