Many teams
transition to Kanban from other agile processes. And often, they conduct the daily stand up just like
they used to in their previous process. Since Kanban is an evolutionary method,
in the beginning that's fine. However, very soon you'll find that changes are
necessary.
Teams new to Kanban
use the stand up like a status meeting - often taking turns to update the team
on the status of their "tickets". Or, they keep it very
Scrum like, typically answering the following questions, with some variation, in a round robin format:
- What did I accomplish yesterday?
- What can I commit to doing today?
- What are the impediments in the way?
While that may have been appropriate for your past agile process, of the three questions, only the last
one is relevant in a Kanban stand up.
(1) is unnecessary
because the cards on the board tell the story. The WIP (Work in Progress) is
visual.
(2) is irrelevant
because work will take whatever time it will take to get done. Committing to
accomplishing the work will not necessarily make it faster. Often, that leads to
heroic effort. In addition, the focus on completing the work that has been "committed"
to can actually come in the way of continuous improvement.
So, what
should we discuss in the stand up? I'd suggest:
- Impediments: What's impeding us?
- Flow: What's the flow like?
- Kaizen - or "Continuous Improvement": What can we improve?
Let's take a deeper
dive into these questions.
What's impeding us?
Impediments are in
the way of getting work done. Impeded work items should be marked visually on
the board - usually with a pink sticky on top of it. Team leads or managers
should focus on getting these impediments removed as quickly as possible.
Note that you don't
have to talk about which item is impeded
- that's obvious from the board. The conversation should be around resolution.
What's the flow like?
Kanban looks at
software engineering as a flow problem.
The board will show where the bottlenecks are and therefore what's
preventing the team from accomplishing more. The conversation should be around
smoothening the flow and what actions the team can take to relieve the
bottlenecks.
What can we improve?
Kanban is an
evolutionary method. It's success largely relies on a mindset that's looking to
constantly improve. These do not have to be big changes and can be a series of
small improvements. Having a brief conversation on this topic everyday will
make it clear that it is everyone's responsibility to make the process
better. When suggestions for improvement
come from the team (rather than from managers), there is greater ownership and
more likelihood of success.
These are the core
questions. Here are some additional practices for a successful standup:
Ensure
the board is up to date before the stand up
Many teams also use
electronic tools along with a board. It is important to keep the two
synchronized. Before kicking off the stand up, ask the team if the board is
synchronized.
Celebrate
the small victories
The done column
on the board should ideally have two
parts. Work done for the week (or an appropriate time period) and work done
since the last stand up. You can now see what got done since yesterday. Call
attention to what got done. Recognize the effort, if only for a
moment. Bring your hands together. Yes - applaud and cheer.
Celebrate small
victories and energize the team. And
move on.
Change
facilitators
Encourage different
team members to take on this responsibility. When you facilitate, you'll get a
different perspective of the process. You'll also take more ownership and
funnily enough, suggest more improvements.
End
the stand up on a high note
If you have a team song, team dance, a war cry
- do it. It'll always elicit a laugh and keep good cheer.
I'd encourage you to try these practices and
improve on them. You should bring in your variations to the stand up around the
core practices.
Remember - the goal
is to continuously improve.
