Insights Archive
All published English LEANability insights from 2017.
At the LKCE in Hamburg I had the opportunity to give my talk two times – in German as well as in English. Now after the event there are two good news, one for me an one for you. The good one for me: Both my talks have been voted by the participants on ranks […]
Read articleTroy Magennis is my Chief Executive Hero, I just have to call him that way. He’s one of the nicest people I know and a fantastic partner for trainings as well. On December 4 and 5 we had actually planned to give an „Improving Kanban“ training together for the first time with a bit more […]
Read articleIn this episode of Lean Business Agility I talk to Mike Burrows about how to handle organizational change in the 21st century. An important point is that the intended change must already be visible in the change process. For example, as is often the case, agility is pushed into the organization with
Read articleIn this episode I talk to Mike Freislich about change and why it is inevitable for organizations to change permanently. Mike Freislich is agile coach at agile42. Subscribe to the YouTube Channel of Lean Business Agility or the Podcast at iTunes or Overcast oder check the RSS Feed.
Read articleSince a few weeks now, the English edition of my second book „Practical Kanban“ is all completed and available on Leanpub. Ben Linders has asked me about the key insights of the book in this interview on InfoQ and together we had the idea of making a special offer to InfoQ-readers. Until 26th Novemb
Read articleIn this episode of Lean Business Agility, I talk to Cliff Hazell about the Spotify Model. What is known today as “The Spotify Model” goes back to an article from 2012 that explains how Spotify worked at the time. Since then, countless organizations have adopted this practice and “implemented” the Sp
Read articleIt was really nice at the Agile Greece Summit, and I mean not only the bright sunshine on the conference day. Two years ago, the first conference for the southern European Agile Community took place with around 200 participants. On 22nd September 2017, more than 600 people strolled around the old Pa
Read articleA drastic title, but I really mean it. Some people have a fit when I say that you should limit the work in a Kanban system. The notion of limiting them, and the work, leaves an unpleasant aftertaste. At the implementation level, it sounds like, “You think I’m not capable of doing two things at […]
Read articleIn my new book Practical Kanban I conducted an interview with Markus Andrezak about the topics prioritization, cost of delay and risk assessment. Markus has been developing high traffic, high revenue internet products for more than 15 years. Before starting his product consulting company “überproduc
Read articleChapter 5 of my book, Practical Kanban, has now been published. Only one chapter left to publish and the book will be complete. Hooray! What is Chapter 5 going about? Generally speaking, you could probably say it discusses prioritization. To be more precise
Read articleI am always pleased to get feedback on the work I have done with clients. After we sent out our July Newsletter, Anton Spitzer from Porsche Informatik in Salzburg contacted us. His colleague, Oliver Bonrad, wrote an article about how Porsche Informatik uses
Read articleDaniel S. Vacanti is a software veteran. He started as a Java Developer/Architect and has worked with Lean and Agile methods for more than 15 years. Dan was involved to the development of Kanban, and he was part of the first Kanban project in 2007. With his company “Actionable Agile”, he has special
Read articleIn this episode I am discussing with Joanne Perold one particular question: “What shall we do when there is too much work in the system?” You probably know the situation when you start to visualize your work, the whole system is overloaded with work. We discuss strategies of how you could deal with
Read articleI am frequently fine-tuning my Flight Level model. The way I see it, right now there is a flaw: It appears as if management at Flight Level 3 makes the decisions and everyone else has to implement them. This shouldn’t be the case, especially if the company’s mission is to be innovative (which is a [
Read articleKlaus: You use models to simulate different future scenarios. How did you come across this, and what is the best way to use models and simulations? Troy: I have an electrotechnical education and am familiar with simulating electrical circuits. It felt like a good fit with IT. Simulations – especiall
Read articleAs the chapter headline suggests, Chapter 4 of Practical Kanban is all about forecasting when work is done. You will find answers to these main questions: When is this work item finished? When are these N work items finished? How many work items can be delivered by the date X? The good news is that
Read articleRecently, as I was leading the design of a C-level strategic portfolio board (Flight Level 3), an interesting question arose: How do you organize a board with swim lanes so that it makes sense? This is not a trivial question since a swim lane, or line, is a very dominant element. Quite often, discus
Read articleBosch Automotive Electronics, with their headquarters in Reutlingen, Germany, is worldwide one of the most important suppliers and development partners for the automobile industry, but also for other fields of application. The microelectronic products like semiconductors and sensors are used in brak
Read articleDone! The next chapter of my new book Practical Kanban is published. This 31-page chapter is all about “Kanban at Scale”. I show with a case study how Kanban was used to develop a sales platform with about 200 people involved. Then I write about what it means to scale Kanban. Kanban is inherently sc
Read articleLast week, after two days in Düsseldorf and a short stopover in Vienna, I headed on to South Africa for „Applying Kanban“ and „Improving Kanban“. It was almost like a class reunion because some of the participants who came from all over South Africa had already attended my „Applying Kanban“ course a
Read articleThere is an interesting traffic light system at Ultimate Software in Florida. The traffic light logic functions based on a probabilistic forecast. If the probability that the team will work off the backlog by the release date is at least 90 percent, the light is green. If the probability drops to be
Read articleBlocker clustering – a topic which I’m working on for several years now, may not be missing in my new book Practical Kanban. In addition to a detailed explanation of how blocker clustering works and what you can achieve with it, there is also an interview with an intensive user in the book: Matt Phi
Read articleKlaus reduces the number of levels in his popular flight levels model from four to three. This makes it even easier to track where in the organization it is necessary to make changes in order to achieve the desired improvement.
Read articleIn this episode I’m talking about my new book “Practical Kanban. From Team Focus to Creating Value” which is a translation of the German book “Kanban in der Praxis”. I decided to self-publish the book on Leanpub and I will release it chapter by chapter. The translation work is basically done and it’
Read articleKlaus Leopolds new book „Practical Kanban – From Team Focus to Creating Value“ is available on Leanpub. Enjoy reading!
Read articleFrom DB systel’s Skydeck one has a stunning view all over Frankfurt. Even more stunning for me was what was going on on the Skydeck itself on March 20th. After an “Improving Kanban”-Training during the day I had the pleasure to give a talk on Lean Business Agility at the Agile Round Table (ART) of [
Read articleTo be honest: I don’t have much of a problem if I „have to“ fly to Florida every year at the end of february/beginning of march. At this time of the year, temperatures in Florida are simply more agreeable than in Vienna and I prefer endless beaches to the snow on our terrace. But that […]
Read articleTroy Magennis, numbers cruncher and Chief Nerd Officer is my guest in this episode of Lean Business Agility. We are talking about what numbers to capture, how important it is to not optimize for only one number if you want to prevent sub optimization, and how to measure quality. You can download the
Read articlePrioritizing work is quite the topic. Most of the time, work first gets prioritized when it is already in the system and, quite frequently, that leads to perpetual reprioritization. The criteria for reprioritization usually remain unclear, and they often only deal with the fear of possible consequen
Read articleThe wedding of one of Katrin’s friends in Thailand five years ago started it all. „Given the fact that we travel to Thailand anyway – why not also try to organize a training over there?“, we thought. We tried to organize the first two trainings on our own but luckily we met Kulawat Pom Wongsaroj […]
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