We have established an input queue and defined the one metric that matters for our Kanban project. Our standups are more focused than ever before. Now we need to focus on how to prioritize items that go into our input queue. Lean Enterprise outlines an interesting way of doing this: prioritize items by their cost of delay. On an immature product, you … Read More
I was introducing some ideas I’ve learned recently about throughput management to a friend of mine who is on a large project. The question came up, how to make throughput a useful metric when there are some very small features that go through the system and others that can take months with a large team. Let’s review … Read More
One of the reasons I’ve read through David Anderson’s” Kanban book is the need for metrics. I was inspired by Lean Enterprise to become more metric-driven and make measurement more of the foundation of my management approach. Anderson did not disappoint. He devotes a whole chapter to which metrics to track on an initial Kanban initiative. Cumulative Flow Kanban is focused on limiting work in … Read More
For my entire career, I have approached software development project planning at the level of the release. In waterfall, you plan a six month release, the first phase of which is to design and estimate the requested features to determine how much can go into the release. You are supposed to plan the whole thing. … Read More
In a large enterprise it can be difficult to implement large meaningful change. On many days I have ended up frustrated while sitting down to a margarita during one of my quarterly retrospectives. How do I get through all the opinions and politics to create real, lasting change? After reading about the Lean Startup Cycle, I have … Read More
In every Agile project, you’re supposed to have a daily standup meeting to facilitate communication and collective ownership. Intentions are always great at the beginning, but for me they have always descended into a tolerable mess. Can the Kanban method teach us anything about how to do them better? If you’re following the Scrum process, the meeting … Read More
I have been reading David Anderson’s wonderful book on Kanban this week as a means to get more specific on the project improvements I want to make based on what I’m learning with Lean Enterprise. This book has disrupted up my approach to backlog management and prioritization. Within a Scrum or Waterfall process, whenever a customer asks for a request, you put it on a list … Read More
Continuous Delivery sounds wonderful when you’re at a conference. You hear about companies like Netflix that deploy to production many times per day. When learning Chef, people often ask me if we really need something that will enable us to deploy that often. Some of them are on projects that take many months to deliver, and the customer would have it … Read More
The more I measure the more successful I am. I’ve known this for a while, but I realize that the lack of measurement is still the thing that is holding my career back. I’ve already written about how measurement is key to The Lean Startup Cycle of using the scientific method to find innovation in your organization. So … Read More
While reading Lean Enterprise, I’m coming up with a lot of great ideas and improvements for my organization. Much of the book so far has been about how to properly execute portfolio management within an enterprise to make sure that (1) you maximize ROI, and (2) you don’t manage your existing proven products with an investment horizon of this … Read More