A Pecha Kucha given at the Agile2014 conference describing a set of heuristics that can be used to think about the design of kanban systems.

1. Heuristics for
Kanban Thinking
Karl Scotland
@kjscotland
http://KarlScotland.com
http://AvailAgility.co.uk
http://kanban-thinking.net

2. Flow
Value
Potential
Study
Share
Stabilise
Sense
Search
Kanban
System
Interventions
Impacts

3. ?
?

4. Descriptive
not
Prescriptive

5. Heuristic:
involving or serving as an aid to learning, discovery,
or problem solving by experimental and especially
train-and-error methods.
of, or relating to exploratory problem-solving
techniques that utilise self-educating techniques (as
the evaluation of feedback) to improve performance
Mirriam-Webster Dictionary

6. Heuristics
Replace
Rules

7. Heuristics
Support
Substitution

8. Heuristics Guide
Towards New
Possibilities

9. What systemic problem,
difficulty or frustration
are we trying to
address, and who is
experiencing it?
System

10. What stories might be
told about the work
going through a perfect
process which has
reliability and efficiency?
Flow
Impacts

11. What stories might be
told about the work
creating an unbeatable
product which has validity
and effectiveness?
Value
Impacts

12. What stories might be
told about the work being
done by passionate
people who have flexibility
and euphoria?
Potential
Impacts

13. Flow
Value
Potential
Process
Product
People
Reliability
Validity
Flexibility
Efficiency
Effectiveness
Euphoria

14. What could be done to
learn more about customer
and stakeholder needs, the
resultant demand, and how
that demand is processed?
Study
Interventions

15. What information is
important to share, and how
can tokens, the inscriptions
on them, and their
placements, create a
common understanding?
Share
Interventions

16. What policies could help
limit work in process, and
remove unnecessary or
unexpected delays or
rework?
Stabilise
Interventions

17. What measures and
meetings might create
insights and guide
decisions on potential
interventions?
Sense
Interventions

18. What small experiments
could be run to safely
learn the impact of
different interventions?
Search
Interventions

19. If we can’t generate 5-10
options for a solution it
means we are overly
constrained and have too
little diversity.
Jabe Bloom

20. http://kanban-thinking.net

21. Thank You!
Karl Scotland
@kjscotland
http://KarlScotland.com
http://AvailAgility.co.uk
http://kanban-thinking.net