Clarity Means Completion: The Psychology of Kanban – Jim Benson from Øredev on Vimeo.

.

Personal Kanban: Optimizing the Individual Coder – Jim Benson from Øredev on Vimeo.

Planeban - A Quick offline kanban for in-flight work

As a matter of fact, yes.

I boarded the first leg of my flight from Seattle to Hanoi. I had 19 hours of flying ahead of me. I also had a backlog, and no wifi. Agile Zen was not going to be useful for me. So, I opened Open Office Writer and made a quick table.

I had a series of things to do, but with a few constraints. The first was that I was likely to fall asleep at some point, so I wanted to knock out the most important task first. The second was that I had a list of commitments I’d made over the week and needed to make good on them. Fortunately, I have a 17 hour battery and a 4 hour battery as backup, so I had enough juice to cover me.

In no particular order I wrote down my work. I had 14 papers to read for Hanoi, so I began with those.  I knew that not finishing them first would mean I’d read them when I was too tired to retain anything. Then I went to work on the feature sets for the new software projects. Finally I ended with blog posts (of which this is one).

In the end, I had a full accounting of what I’d done – so I could make sure that the files and work completed in-flight made it to the appropriate people and after-action steps were taken.

I want to point out again, you don’t need special hardware or software, you just need to visualize your work, limit your WIP, and prioritize.

That was step one.

Step two is visualizing that FIP. Jessica was concerned because her triathlon regimen included both repetitive and non-repetitive tasks. She needed to consume the right amount of calories, be sure to take her meds, and of course work out. This would equate to three repetitive, monotonous tickets per day in Ready –> Doing –> Done.

Many tickets. Too little real information.

Getting the work done for the triathlon was of course, important, but Personal Kanban is built to be an information radiator. What was the real information she needed?  This turned out to be:

1. what workouts did I do
2. when did I do them
3. did my caloric intake match the workouts
4. did I take my meds and, most important
5. am I being consistent or missing anything?

So here we see Jessica’s board. She just had a little white board, so we worked with the walls in her home. Backlog and Done are both off the board (on the walls where the board hung). Her spontaneous tasks still work through a Ready –> Doing –> Done value stream, those tasks were color coded between work, family, studying and other tasks.  But there’s more here than that.

There are two additional “swim lanes” on this board. A swim lane is another value stream or dedicated horizontal lane on our board for special tasks.

The first swim lane is Triathlon Training. We have several metrics here:

Diet: each day net calories, water, and meds are measured. Calories are a number, meds and water are a checkmark for done.

Workout: Type, severity, and subjective well being are noted here. “20” is a 20 minute cardio. On Wednesday you can see “10 mile ride.” E,M,H are easy, medium and hard workouts. Smilies measure how Jessica subjectively felt about the workout.

She can then take these metrics and not only see adherence and progress, but also plan for future workouts.

The second swim lane is Jessica Studying for her Section 65 Certification. She told me that she studies by creating a study plan for herself, studying, and then testing herself on what she just did. So we set up a swim lane with a WIP of one. At any point, she can only be working on one module.

So with this, we took Jessica’s overwhelming combination of things in progress and goals and made them visible and actionable. Take the time to critically look at the different projects you have in flight. In the end, you want to get the work done, but your real aim is to understand what you’re doing. To get those projects done right, Jessica needed some dedicated swim lanes.

I’m willing to bet she’s not alone.

Life presents us with opportunities, and so we’ve no choice but to take on concurrent projects. Unfortunately they don’t always conform to that simple Ready –> Doing –> Done value stream.

Last month I was in San Francisco giving lectures on Personal Kanban at Stanford and Keller. My host for the trip was my good friend Jessica. Jessica is a single mom. She  has two jobs on opposite ends of the Bay. She  is studying for her financial advisor certification. She is training for a triathlon.

Jessica has a lot to keep track of.

As a mathematician and an expert in intangible assets, it was not a big leap for Jessica to recognize: (1) she had so much on her plate that busting her WIP limit was guaranteed, and (2) making money was only one asset out of many she had to devote time to.

So on a sunny Sunday morning at a coffee shop, the simple question “Do you want to talk a little about your Personal Kanban” quickly turned into a 2.5 hour conversation. We discussed what she valued, what her goals were.

It soon became clear that Jessica is not simply goal-oriented, she’s a goal-collector. So we needed to get that under control. Goals are awesome, but when they start generating more tasks than we can handle – they need to be tamed.

We agreed she needed more than a WIP Limit – she needed a FIP limit. Future In Progress. She had the triathlon, the certification, a book she wanted to write, and more. It made sense to pick two and (no pun intended) run with them. The triathlon enforced health and working out, so we couldn’t say no to that. The certification was immediately necessary for her job and short-term. So that too was obvious. The others, went into the FIP queue.

Jessica now had a FIP limit of two.

Joe edited the conversation into two parts which can be found below:

Part 1

Part 2

Last week, Eva Schiffer of Net-Map wrote me and said:

I have just erased my to do list and transformed it in something kanban-like. My own to do list format, that always worked well for me, had 4 categories:

Important and urgent
Important, less urgent
Less important, urgent
Less important, less urgent.

That helps me a lot because I normally love the less important, less urgent tasks, and while they often lead to really interesting creative outcomes, it is important for me to keep procrastination at bay and make sure that I don’t just impress myself with the number of tasks performed, but also do those things that are most urgent and/or important.

This got me thinking about the relationship between productivity and effectiveness. Eva recognized that simply increasing her throughput was not enough, that was mere mindless productivity.

What Eva was searching for was effectiveness.

At Modus, we do dynamic prioritization using a priority filter that looks like this:

For Tonianne and myself, this works wonders. We constantly have a short list of items that need doing, and as they move from 3 to 2 to 1 they become more important. However, prioritization is a contextual exercise that varies from moment to moment. As we can see here, “Eat all the chicken on earth” is Priority 2, but that could suddenly change to Priority 1 if suddenly I were in a place where all the chicken on earth was accessible.

Eva, like many organized people, uses a matrix to ascribe values of urgency and importance, which results in something like this:

Major Tom's Backlog

In the case of Major Tom, he has been sent into space to find out what’s there. He’s a celebrity and everyone is watching him. There are a variety of things he could be doing up there, but he has a a backlog that varies between levels of urgency and importance.

So for example, the papers want to know whose shirts he wears. That’s important both to his individual fame and to the space program in general because after all, it’s being good to the press. But at the moment, he’s in space so he can get to that later.

Major Tom's Workflow

If the press scores an interview while he’s up there, though, it can become relevant and therefore is something to complete.

So we reach Major Tom here in the middle of his work day. He’s already managed to tell his wife he loves her very much, and he’s stepped outside the capsule. He’s put his previously active conversation with ground control on hold because at the moment, he’s working on other things. And he’s now floating in a most peculiar way (and noticing how different the stars look).

Major Tom is still limiting his WIP and he’s still visualizing, even if his backlog is drawn as a matrix rather than columns. The matrix is a familiar organizational tool for him, and it should be preserved. (Although he probably should have checked his instruments.)

So Eva’s concern is very real – we stand a real risk of becoming mindless production units, grinding tasks out at hyper-speed without assessing their value. The key with Personal Kanban is to assess the value of what you are doing – however it is that you define value.

We’re all individuals – quality, value and growth are different for us all.

Not only that but quality, value and growth are also contextual. Today, home repair might be very low on your list. After a tornado, however, it’s probably going to be pretty high. Did you put it there? No. Life did. Context shifted. For that reason, just-in-time dynamic re-prioritization is key for workload management.

So be like Eva. Find the way you define your work – visualize it, and thoughtfully examine how you can best be effective.

That is why we are canonizing her as our Personal Kanban saint.

Yesterday I had the good fortune to spend some time at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History contemplating her kitchen.  Where Martha Stewart’s kitchen is the epitome of OCD tidiness, Julia Child’s kitchen looks as if the instruments of her craft were shaped only slightly differently than if she’d be making furniture or refitting a 1952 Studebaker.

That’s because Julia Child’s kitchen was her workshop.

Julia Child could have had the most cutting-edge kitchen in the world, and most likely she could have had it for free. Surely any appliance company would have paid handsomely to say they custom-fit her kitchen with their latest product line.

But instead she chose to used the same range for 40 years.

Her arsenal of cutlery was mismatched, “unsexy” by today’s standard. Her pans hung from every available surface – from walls, doors, wherever they would fit. Each knife, each pan had its place, fitting perfectly within a designated spot or outline. It wasn’t a mess, but it wasn’t streamlined, either.

Julia Child said things like,

“I am a knife freak.”

and

“Life itself is the proper binge.”

and

“Everything in moderation, including moderation.”

Her demeanor and her actions seamlessly integrated her passion for food with everything else in life. She understood her work and as such, it ceased to be work.

It became life.

She was organized without being compulsive. She was meticulous but retained her humor. She had little to prove, but everything to share.

To the right we see, unsurprisingly, Julia Child’s Wine Kanban. Every bottle, as it ages, is tracked to the point of drinking.

We have pots and pans on a visual control, knives on a visual control, wine on a visual control. For Julia, her stuff didn’t just go places, it was a marker for the nature of her work. If a 6 quart sauté pan was missing from its place on the wall, it meant it was in use.

Her tools told her story.

Her tools represented her creation of value.

The take-away here is that visual controls are always graphic markers of how we work. The more seamlessly we can integrate visual controls into how we actually work and live, the less time they take to maintain.  Especially for specific projects, where we are already focused and updating, a literal kanban may take more time than is necessary – creating elegant visual controls that stem from the actual activity can really help give the task an internal coherence and make it easier.

Take a page from Julia’s cookbook and examine your work. What might your tools be saying to you?

Julia's Knives

Watch out for undertow

In Personal Kanban, our primary step is to define our workflow. Workflows tend to be linear, and often look like this:

Waiting –>Doing–>Done

or

Outline –> Pre-writing –> Draft –> Edit –> Final Draft

or

Backlog –> Coding –> Testing –> Integration –> Release

Unfortunately, life isn’t always that straightforward.  A few weeks ago on Twitter, I was asked if it is ever acceptable to move a card backwards along a value stream in a Personal Kanban.

My answer?  Absolutely!

If you write some code and turn it over to your testers and the testers hate it, of course it should come back to you for re-coding.

There are a few ways of dealing with work that splashes back, but first let’s define two ways this can happen, further exploring the water metaphor of value stream and workflow.

Undertow: The scenario above (where the code failed testing) generally suggests that something was pulled prematurely and needs to go back to an earlier stage in the value stream for additional work. Undertow is a hidden, submerged current of water flowing contrary to the flow of the stream. It is present in most rivers and in the ocean, and quite often in our work.

Just like undertow in nature, if we ignore it in our workflow it will pull us under and we will drown.  But if we recognize it as a natural part of the environment, we can compensate for it.

Churn: Water sometimes finds a point where it no longer flows linearly, but instead thrashes about.  Even in these violent moments, water can be beautiful, exciting, and self-purifying. In the end of a moment of churn, water resumes its flow.

Innovation often results from moments of such thrashing about – through collaborative processes that may happen while the creators are all together and focused (synchronously) or separately, when the individuals happen have time to touch that piece of work (asynchronously).  To further complicate things, asynchronous work can happen linearly (Bob edits, then Mary, then Yuri…) or at-will (Bob, Mary and Yuri each edit whenever they get time to do the work).

How to Deal With Undertow and Churn

Undertow

Backlog –> Conceptual Design –> Business Analysis –> Production –>

Stakeholder Feedback –> Final Production –> Done

Here we have a generic, linear workflow. It could be for new software, a clothing line, or a consulting offering. Work is pulled from one stage to the next, as it reaches completion in one phase and a worker is available in the next.  Each stage has its own Work in Progress (WIP) limits and work generally flows well with each stage at their limit.

When undertow occurs, work can move backwards through the system.  This can be moving back one step (Production doesn’t feel there is clear enough direction from Business Analysis) or multiple steps (Stakeholder Feedback is that this is the single most stupid idea in the history of ideas, and may send it back to Conceptual Design).

When work moves backwards, it can simply move into the active working column for the unlucky section.

Or, if the Personal Kanban is using “ready” columns, it can move to the ready column of that part of the stream.  If this happens with any frequency, the ready column is far superior to handling this type of event.

If the team rarely encounters undertow, then simply moving  task back and having the affected column momentarily bust its WIP limit is fine.  The discomfort, in fact, will make it patently clear that something has happened that may need to be scrutinized.

Churn Baby Churn

In Personal Kanban, we’re expect to deal with a lot of churn. Knowledge work is often highly iterative.  Making a linear kanban might be just plain crazy and may end up looking something like this:

Outline –> Pre-writing Jim –> Pre-Writing Tonianne –> Pre-Writing Paul –> Discussion –> Draft Jim –> Draft Tonianne –> Draft Paul –> Draft Jim –> Draft Tonianne –> Draft Paul –> Draft Jim –> Draft Tonianne –> Draft Paul –> Draft Jim –> Draft Tonianne –> Draft Paul –> Draft Jim –> Draft Tonianne –> Draft Paul –> Draft Jim –> Draft Tonianne –> Draft Paul –> Draft Jim –> Draft Tonianne –> Draft Paul –> Draft Jim –> Draft Tonianne –> Draft Paul –> Discussion –> Final Draft Jim –> Final Draft Tonianne –> Final Draft Paul –> Final Draft Jim –> Final Draft Tonianne –> Final Draft Paul –> Final Draft Jim –> Final Draft Tonianne –> Final Draft Paul –> Final Draft Jim –> Final Draft Tonianne –> Final Draft Paul –> Final Draft Jim –> Final Draft Tonianne –> Final Draft Paul –> Final Draft Jim –> Final Draft Tonianne –> Final Draft Paul –> Final Draft Jim –> Final Draft Tonianne –> Final Draft Paul –> Draft Production –> Crowdsourcing –> Discussion –> Release Draft Jim –> Release Draft Tonianne … etc.

Phew.

Add to this that during those big repetitive blocks, work isn’t necessarily done all at once.  Jim, Tonianne, and Paul are accessing a shared document, writing it and editing it over the course of several weeks.  But during those weeks, we want to be able to see who is doing what.  We don’t want to lose work in a black hole called “Churn” and have it turn out that Tonianne really wrote the chapter because Jim and Paul were just plain lazy.

Making the task “Churn” with no clear understanding of responsibility obscures who is actually doing the work, the amount of work it entails, and what – in this context – the definition of “done” is. This sends us back to our pre-Personal Kanban state of knowing there is a task, but not understanding its true nature.

Handoffs don’t work. Genericizing the group task doesn’t work. We need clarity.

To respond to this, I’ve created a few design patterns:

The Churn Chart

The Churn Chart – We created this pattern in response to a project at the World Bank. The Churn Chart lists elements in churn, the people responsible for them, their relative state of completion, and any issues they may be facing. If the group can meet regularly (or if an automated system can be developed) Churn Charts are useful for reporting how close to done the element is in that phase.

Routing Slip Ban

Routing-Slipban – This pattern pictured here is a circle but it can, of course, assume any shape you choose. Routing-Slipban owes its admittedly inelegant name to the now-antiquated paper trail tracker that used to accompany documents as they circulated throughout an office. People would read the material, take appropriate action, pass the envelope to the next person on the list and the process would repeat.

With Routing-Slipban, the attached sticky note includes a short routing slip showing who has and has not touched the task.  When an individual is done with a task, they move it into the backlog of whomever they feel should handle it next.  I would assume this pattern would be best used by small groups where the individual members had a very clear idea of whose attention was appropriate for this task next. (This pushes work and therefore can be dangerous).

Cycleban – Like Routing-Slipban, Cycleban notes on the sticky who has and has not worked on this specific item yet.  Here we take tasks completed by an individual and place them into a shared ready queue where they can be pulled again until the task is complete.  As more people complete them, the tasks become increasingly focused inching closer to completion.

This may be a visual cue that one item may be more important to pull than another.  The more boxes that are checked off, the more a task is prioritized because it can be completed and moved entirely off the board.

To Every Season, Churn, Churn, Churn

Undertow and churn are inherent to both knowledge and individual work.  Since the goal of Personal Kanban is to visualize the true nature of work, we cannot hide from these two forces. Embrace churn! Know your undertow!