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It often comes to me as a surprise that people misunderstand different concepts or definitions that we use in our writings or presentations. Actually, it shouldn’t. I have to remind myself over and over again that I do exactly the same thing – I start playing with different ideas and only eventually learn that I misused or misunderstood some definitions.…
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This is another problem that comes in different colors. It’s either simple acceptation of WIP limits violation, no matter how commonly it happens, or setting WIP limits so high that a team never gets even close. Now, I don’t say that violating WIP limits should be forbidden at all. Pretty far from that. I just say that if it is…
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When applying Kanban on project portfolio level you’re dealing with different challenges than in case of standard Kanban implementation on a team level (if there even is such a thing). Both the flow dynamics and task granularity is very different, thus you need to focus on different aspects when designing Kanban board. This is basically why typical Kanban board design…
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This is something I see very often and at least in a couple of flavors. The problem can be a team member who haven’t really bought the whole thing and see little value in updating all these stickies on the board every time something changes. It can be more a whole team’s thing – Kanban implementation has its leader, or…
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One of tricks I sometimes use when coaching teams that are starting with Kanban is I tell them why they shouldn’t adopt it. Challenging the team in such way helps me to indicate whether there is buy in as this is crucial thing to deal with issues the team will face. I do that knowing that, thanks to its flexibility,…
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It is a problem that never really goes away. You build your app and at the beginning everything seems to be as planned. Suddenly you realize you are late. For the sake of this post it doesn’t really matter whether late means 6 more months in 18-month long project or a day in a week-long sprint. Either way you realize…
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When I was starting my journey with Kanban on project portfolio level I based on a classic board design I knew from my work with Kanban within project teams. I basically tried to map value stream to the board but on a different level. The effect was sort of predictable. It was also naive. The basic strength of such design…
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One of common patterns of adopting Kanban is that teams start just with visualization and, for whatever reasons, resist applying Work In Progress limits at the very beginning. While, and let me stress it, resignation from introducing WIP limits means drawing most of improvement power out of the system I understand that many teams feel safe to start this way.…
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There is said a lot about feedback. We continuously learn how important it is and how to deliver it in constructive way. Yet still, for many of us, me included, delivering feedback is difficult. I already hear you nodding your heads and saying “yes, especially critical feedback is a hard part.” Well, no. Not at all. I mean when it…
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Jurgen Appelo recently touched the subject of slack time discussing what kind of tasks are supposed to be done in such time slots. First thing that I find disputable is reducing slack time to mere padding: “I expect the task to be done in 1,5 hours but to be perfectly safe I’ll start it 3 hours earlier so I can…
Hi, I’m Pawel and I’m your host.
Leadership in Technology is a blog dedicated to wide variety of topics related to running a technology business.
Among others you will find here: product management, agile and lean, leadership, organizational design and more.
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