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Flow Efficiency

What percentage of your team’s time is actually spent working on the items that are ‘in progress’? 70%? 75%? 80%? Some suggest that it is as low as 2% and that 40% is the most that’s been observed. This is the world of flow efficiency. Originating from the manufacturing industry,… Read More »Flow Efficiency

User stories reimagined

One of the key practices of Anderson’s Kanban Method is “visualise the workflow”. Many people insist that we’ve been doing this from the early years of Scrum via Scrum boards. However, I suggest that most teams are only just scratching the surface of what is possible, and many need a… Read More »User stories reimagined

Thinking in systems

I’ve recently been involved in delivering a number of new services designed to replace a long serving monolithic web application. Sound familiar? The move to a service oriented architecture can be described, for many reasons, as a good thing. However, care needs to be taken to ensure that the dependencies… Read More »Thinking in systems

Monte Carlo simulators

“There are too many variables to take into account … it’s impossible to know what the chance of success is.”   When I started my latest venture I knew that there was a possibility that it would fail. I’d spent years working with estimates and trying to forecast timelines, but this had lots… Read More »Monte Carlo simulators

The Design Sprint

The Design Sprint

In his book, The Lean Startup, Eric Ries advocates considering the development of a product as a “grand experiment that aims to answer a question”. With that question being “should the product be built?”. The idea is that, once you know the problem you are trying to solve, then you create a… Read More »The Design Sprint

CFD plugin for Trello

I’ve been using Trello quite a lot recently: it seems to be the tracking tool of choice for many because it is lightweight, simple to use and free. But with simplicity comes a lack of features. Unlike other systems (e.g. LeanKit and Jira), it doesn’t have metrics such as cumulative… Read More »CFD plugin for Trello

Is your backlog like a tree?

“What makes trees special? They live long and grow large by being mostly dead. Only about 2% of tree cells are alive” ~ @biotweeps When I saw this, I immediately thought of Product Backlogs. I have heard a number of people admonish an audience with statements such as “50% of most… Read More »Is your backlog like a tree?

Agile on the Bench conference

Agile on the Bench goes Camping

Question: What could be better than a lunchtime mini-conference in the fresh air? Answer: A day long version followed by some fireside dining Scrum & Kanban is happy to be sponsoring the first Agile on the Bench one-day conference on 25 July 2015. Following a similar format to the lunchtime sessions that have… Read More »Agile on the Bench goes Camping