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Kanban

Little’s Law and CFDs

How much information can a triangle give you? Well, if it’s on a CFD (‘Cumulative Flow Diagram’), then it appears to be quite a lot. After sitting in a presentation recently, someone came up to me to ask how changes in WIP, Cycle Time and Delivery Rate alter the shape of… Read More »Little’s Law and CFDs

Burndown versus CFD

As Jeff Sutherland finished describing how important the burndown chart had been in the creation of Scrum, I started feeling guilty for my previous attacks [on burndowns, not on Jeff]. But then I started thinking of examples of how burndowns can easily fail to reflect reality. Even if we ignore… Read More »Burndown versus CFD

Agile on the Bench

Today, Emily Webber and I launched Agile on the Bench. Our idea was simple: people gather around a bench and listen to short talks on agile. In the spirit of Speaker’s Corner, we wanted to create a cheap, fun, and no-tech platform for people to share ideas, raise questions and… Read More »Agile on the Bench

Little’s Law

What is Little’s Law? If you have a stable system (e.g. one-in-one-out), then the average number of customers you have within that system is equal to the average rate of customer arrivals multiplied by the average time a customer spends in the system. That was the law proposed by John… Read More »Little’s Law

STATIK

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  • 1 min read

I heard Mike Burrows talk about STATIK at the Kanban Leadership Retreat in June. STATIK is an acronym for Systems Thinking Approach To Introducing Kanban, a good title for the process of bringing the following steps into play: Understand sources of dissatisfaction Analyze demand and capability Model the knowledge discovery… Read More »STATIK

Life and Death Kanban

Imagine working in a hospital and accidentally injecting someone with the wrong thing (a toxic antiseptic instead of a harmless dye). Over the next three weeks, as a result of your mistake, they slowly die. This was the fate of a “much loved mother-of-four”, Mary McClinton, in a Seattle hospital… Read More »Life and Death Kanban

Acronym Quiz

The Agile and Lean communities love an acronym, but will settle for an initialism if they have to. For clarification, an acronym is when a word is formed from the initial letters of words in a phrase, and is then pronounced as a separate word (for example, BAFTA or WYSIWYG).… Read More »Acronym Quiz

Subjective Well-Being

“Doing things you don’t enjoy reduces your effectiveness.” – Jim Benson and Tonianne DeMaria Barry in Personal Kanban I agree: aren’t you much more effective when you are doing things that you find fulfilling and are doing them with people you like? I know I am. I also agree that… Read More »Subjective Well-Being

How to get things done

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  • 3 min read

So, you want to make progress in 2014? Perhaps you have a new business venture that you want to start? Perhaps you just want to improve yourself? Either way, chances are that you will run out of steam pretty quickly. However, there is hope. I am highly productive and motivated,… Read More »How to get things done

The Goal

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  • 3 min read

“Have you read The Goal by Eli Goldratt? If not, you’re in for a treat.” This was a statement made by Chris Young at LKUK13 which, although it was said about every book he mentioned, was very true. I was in for a treat. Although it was written nearly 30 years… Read More »The Goal