Teaching Kanban using Kanban

Teaching Kanban way of software development using Kanban concept was a small experiment we carried out so that the training can be more effective and learning is fun. We in fact demonstrated this even in an International Conference viz. International Scrum summit, Bangalore in 2012. The idea however was given by a friend of mine and colleague Rajith R. 

Setting WIP limits in Kanban

Often during coaching many keep asking me, about the logic behind deciding the Work-In-Progress (WIP) limit per task state; what should be the starting number; should we keep it always one or it can be more. Which number is optimal for a team.Well the simple answer is "Experiment"! However even for an experiment to begin there has to be a starting point.

Kaizen approach for Retrospectives

Kaizen in lean is about Continuous Incremental Improvement and the objective of agile retrospectives is no different. But one key difference in my opinion is the "minimalism of Kaizen" when compared to most of the agile retrospectives that are popular. However not to forget agile retrospectives also encourage minimalism.

Coaching experience in China

Recently visited China (Shenzhen and Hangzhou) on an assignment to coach few teams over there. Overall the coaching experience has been very satisfactory. The result in some of the teams was really pleasing. However it was difficult to say whether it was my coaching or Kanban by itself was the reason for success. But again, there was no other change in the way these teams were working apart from introducing Kanban and few techniques that I suggested during the Coaching.

Double loop learning and Single loop learning

In a bid to find ways at which one’s learning can be improved in an Organization context, I landed up in one of my old trenches and here is a small synthesis out of it. It all started with one of my discussions in a team about how to quicken the learning process.