Why do companies like Toyota and Zappos open up their shop floors for tours? It's because they know visitors won't be able to replicate their culture, yet Toyota/Zappos may learn something from a visitor's questions. So these companies actually have something to gain--and little to lose. Their culture of continuous improvement is almost impossible to replicate--which is exactly what Ravindar and I have witnessed in multiple environments that are implementing Kanban. As a result, we've come up with a series of tactics to help teams develop a learning culture--nothing that would surprise you in a healthy Kanban system--but signals that aren't written about elsewhere.
This week I was invited to talk about Multi-Sensory Kanban for Agile NYC, so I've decided to share the slides here. In a nutshell, this is a talk about how to keep a kanban system healthy. We find that a focus on work-in-progress and flow blinds people to the whole system; our minds tend to lock in to either in a synthetic (whole-system) or analytic (subsystem) mode, and we need regular reminders to switch between the two. Since Kanban is normally a visual control system, and therefore the visual channel is already saturated, we encourage teams to use signals from our other senses, most notably the auditory channel and kinetic channels.
These slides have few speaker notes; if you'd like to learn more please invite us to speak! It's easy to get in touch with me-- write to andre -a-t- dhondt-teams-gel -d-o-t- com.
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
vote Dan Mezick for the Scrum Alliance Board
If you care about the Scrum Alliance, or have benefited from its work, please vote for Dan now!
In Agile Boston, he’s led a team of organizers to live by these values: http://newtechusa.net/user-groups/ma/visionmissionvalues/
Who else is running?
If you Google the other candidates, Stephen Forte and George Gosiski, you'll see they haven't had the same reach or impact as Dan. Their qualifications show they are definitely strong Agile team members--but I'd much rather depend on someone that's a great organizer to bring the Scrum Alliance to the next level. That's Dan!
Who is Dan? Dan is an accomplished Agile coach, speaker, and mentor, has come to Agile Philly to speak, and knows his stuff. He's long been a community organizer for technology professionals, and cares about delivering value to both the community and his clients. Vote for Dan today! – it’s just two-clicks to vote! I know Dan personally and fully endorse his candidacy!
When? The elections will close in the next 10 days. Vote for Dan today!
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