Why all the boards for your lean and agile teams should be visible all the time

A simple answer would be: spatial memory.

A slightly longer answer could be: spatial memory and confirmation bias.

(Oh, and by the way: They should be visible all the time only for the people who need to see the information on them)

But let's put that into context. Why are spatial memory and confirmation bias important for the way we use boards in Agile teams?

As many people have pointed out in the past Agile doesn't fix any problems, it just makes them visible, so that it is easier to do something about them. One of the tools agile teams started to use early on to facilitate this is visualization. A team, working towards a goal, visualizes the information they need to know about. This can be all kind of information –which might be a topic for another blog-post–, but one of the most prominent visualization techniques is the taskboard. Taskboards are especially helpful for knowledge workers because the very nature of our work makes it impossible to directly perceive the status of the work – let alone knowing how much work is currently in progress. The Kanban method went so far as to have the notion of ‘making invisible work visible’ at its very heart, albeit many so-called Kanban-boards are merely task-boards.

To really make use of this visualization we need to leverage spatial memory and counter confirmation bias.

Why spatial memory?

If the great benefit of (Task-)boards is, that they make work tangible and agile only makes problems visible, then it is important, that we help our brain to make use of this information. With a visible board, it is plausible that the amount of information displayed is still manageable. With electronic boards on the other hand: not so much.

Physical work (what David Allen –of getting-things-done fame– calls "cranking widgets") takes up a defined amount of space and most of the time also a defined location. So, for example, when working on some home-made stuff, during sanding it is easy to remember that “the blocks on the left side of the table still need work, and those in the upper row need some special treatment because they felt ’strange’.“ In this case, ‘left-hand side’ would be associated with unfinished and ‘top row’ with special treatment needed.

Likewise, if we have a number of boards physically placed throughout the workspace, location gets mapped to meaning. After a while, we just ’know’ that we have to look at the board on the wall behind Jenny to see the current status of Portfolio initiatives. Or at the board in the hallway to see the state of affairs with regard to the committed user-related features.

One could argue that having electronic boards for the same information works almost the same, because with electronic boards we just ‘know’ that we have to go to «boards»->«companywide»->«MyDepartment»->«Initiatives» to find the portfolio information and we have to go to «boards»->«MyDepartment»->«Stories» to see the committed user-related features. But this draws on a different kind of memory, which is accessed a lot slower. And takes more energy to activate. At least that's one of the learnings I took away from Sharon Bowman’s “Training from the Back of the Room”.

Even our figures of speech are quite informative here. Getting a ‘picture or the situation’ or having the ‘big picture’ are good examples of this.

And glancing at the walls just takes somewhere between a fraction of a second and a couple of seconds, depending on how much information you want to absorb. It even happens without conscious effort. Just walking by the feature-board in the hallway and the portfolio-board behind Jenny's desk gives you a certain amount of situational awareness - whether you want it or not.

What about confirmation bias?

Unfortunately, even though one of the original ideas behind Agile approaches was to make problems visible most humans are influenced by confirmation bias. We tend to look for helpful clues to help us to confirm whether a course of action is feasible. In earlier times that was helpful – and it even is helpful today as Jeffry Levine explains convincingly on quora. We wouldn’t be able to act in the world if we didn’t apply filters to the huge amount of information that comes at us all the time. And re-thinking topics we already thought about would –most of the time– be a waste of the rare resource mental power.

One of the implications of this is that we –in general– don’t go out there and look for things that are not as expected. We probably won’t open the portfolio board every day to check whether the portfolio item that our current feature relates to just got flagged ‘canceled.’ And neither is it likely that all portfolio managers look at the detail boards all the time. But, in my personal experience, they develop quite a keen eye for an agglomeration of blockers on features if they pass that wall several times a day.

To help people tackle problems and issues they care about it does help to make this information visible. Especially in those cases where nobody would actively look for the unwelcome information.

It's called visual management for a reason

Even if Agile and the Kanban method have both somewhat evolved from their roots in Lean, the whole board idea is based on visual control and the enormous lever for self-management it provides.

So, if you use boards, make sure the important ones are visible all the time to the right people.

till next time
  Michael Mahlberg

Think “executable process visualization” instead of “task-board”

A lot of the boards I see in offices nowadays are called Kanban-boards, even though they are actually more task-boards. And while often that is okay there are some advantages that we’re missing out on when we settle for task-boards.

Why exactly do we do Kanban boards?

There is a multitude of reasons to introduce Kanban boards, but one of the main goals might still be to visualize the workflow. On the other hand visualizing the workflow can hardly be a means in itself. One of the ends the visualization can help to achieve is clarity. Clarity about what we’re really doing. Clarity about the state we’re in. Clarity about the state the work is in. The ‘last workflow you’ll ever need’ (todo-doing-done) doesn’t really provide much help towards this end.

Accept reality

Modeling the real workflow does help. While preparing a talk, a friend and colleague of mine, came up with what I think is a great metaphor. He called the Kanban board an ”executable process visualisation.”

And once we start to think about the board as an “executable process visualisation” this metaphor turns out to be quite helpful in detecting differences between our model and reality. Let’s assume we have some kind of daily standup and talk about the work items on the board. Now, as soon as we find we have to explain that the ticket (the work item’s representation) is still in the same place, but work has progressed to a different state, this is a strong indication that our model does not quite reflect reality. On the other hand, if we move our ticket, but the work item actually still is in the same state, this might indicate an overly complex model that needs to be simplified to reflect reality.

Talk about the way you work

The great thing about having an “executable process visualization” is that talking about the model becomes much closer to talking about the work and vice versa. “But I thought that would be the first thing to do” becomes a question of “In which column does it happen? Can we make that explicit?”

This way the visualization becomes a powerful tool to enable substantial discussions and continue evolving the way you work from there.

till next time
  Michael Mahlberg

It's a Task-Board, not a Kanban-Board (and oftentimes that is fine)

In years gone by – in the high times of eXtreme Programming for example – people used to have task boards.

Along came Scrum and for a while we used to see Scrum boards all around.

Nowadays we see Kanban-Boards all around.

Or don't we?

Without the Kanban it's not a Kanban-Board

In virtual Kanban systems (and that is what we're talking about here) the “Kanban” is the difference between the capacity of a column (the WIP-Limit of the station) and the actual work in progress.
Even though the first step of the Kanban Method is simply to “visualize work” the very thing that gives the method it's name – the Kanban – can not be present in boards that don't have a WIP-Limit.

Kanban focuses on value to the user - not on tasks

It's fine if you conclude that you have to complete a couple of tasks to create a thing that is of value to the customer, but not necessarily the most “Kanban-like” way to approach the situation. If you take the approach to it's extremes you end up with all tasks being just columns on your board
And no I don't recommend building db-, ui-, and logic-silos. But if you have them, be honest and acknowledge the fact. Change it afterwards. Start with what you do now as they say in Kanban.

So while on a task-board cards typically contain things like "Implement the FizzBuz", "Install the FizzBuzz" or "Deploy the FizzBuzz to production" on a Kanban board you would just have a card (representing a system capability) "FizzBuzz functionality" that flows through the value stream.

Sometimes a Task-Board is enough

Implementing a Kanban system is a great thing (IMHO) - especially if you want to improve the way you work together (formerly called “the process”) in a scientific way, manage flow etc. But just omitting Sprint-Plannings reviews and retrospectives and putting cards in todo-doing-done columns doesn't mean your board has become a Kanban board. But it's still a good start.

Often Task-Boards evolve to Kanban-Boards

When you start with todo-doing-done you might find that your discussions around the ‘real’ status of the tasks help you finding out how you really work together. Don't be afraid to adjust your Board accordingly. And perhaps after a while you'll be able to switch from tasks that get pushed over the board to system capabilities that get pulled.

Be honest about where you are so that you can improve to where you want to be.

till next time
  Michael Mahlberg

The difference between a sprint-backlog and a product-backlog

Those who learned about scrum the old fashioned way might call me names for the title of this articles, but since I run into more and more people out there who mingle both terms I think a clarification might be beneficial.

A product backlog is about what you plan to accomplish

“The Product Backlog is an ordered list of everything that might be needed in the product[…]” (Scrumguide 2013)

And it is good practice to keep these things in the bounds of the INVEST properties. This implies that the product-backlog does not prescribe how the requirements are met, but what should be achieved.

A sprint backlog is about what you plan to do

“The Sprint Backlog is the set of Product Backlog items selected for the Sprint, plus a plan for delivering the product Increment and realizing the Sprint Goal. The Sprint Backlog is a forecast by the Development Team about what functionality will be in the next Increment and the work needed to deliver that functionality into a “Done” Increment.“ (ibid, emphasis added)

Big difference!

So yes, sorry mates, if you want to do scrum (and not scrum but) you'll have to do what used to be called ”Sprint planning 2“: Sit down and plan your work.
There are some options to handle things differently – like breaking down the board and “kanbanizing” that part of the workflow – but then these approaches might no longer be exactly what should be called scrum.

Cheers
Michael

If you can't avoid Jira, at least have an admin on your team

I used to be one of the people in favor of electronizing your task board using jira with the Greenhopper plugin – of course only after starting with a paper version first. Greenhopper has morphed into something called Jira Agile, accompanied by something called Jira Kanban.

And I have to tell you: am very weary of Jira Agile and Jira Kanban.

Especially if there is a central administrator who is in charge of the tool-handling.

Agile processes (and lean approaches like Kanban as well) almost always include a section on how to improve the process – called a retrospective in some processes or an operations review in some others.
This means that the process is meant to be changed. Often. From within the team.

Modeling the team’s process in a tool that is so complex that it makes economic sense to have someone outside the team cater for its administration makes it almost prohibitively harder to change the process.

And a lot of the admins I’ve met are so overburdened by too many projects that they have to optimize. For example by using Jira workflows (i.e. process-definitions) for more than one project. Which might be good, because: reuse!

But then I hear things like “our jira admin doesn‘t allow that” or “I think we‘ll have word on that from our jira admin in a couple of days” or “yes, we could try that – but I’m afraid it might break some of our reports.”

How is a team self-organized when they have to ask for someone else’s permission to change the process? Not so much, in my opinion.
And if they are worried that their process might break, then obviously “working software” isn’t the primary measure of progress any more.
If they have to wait “a couple of days” to find out if they can implement the process changes they came up with in their process improvement meeting, then – I would say – their process isn’t exactly agile any more.

Don’t become that team. Keep control of your process – even if that means you have to administer yet another tool.

till next time
  Michael Mahlberg

How to find the cards

When teams turn towards kanban as a process control method I often see people standing in front of the board asking “Where the #*$+%+ is the card with task #12345?“

Is that a problem of physical boards?

One could easily argue that this is because it is much harder to find a card on a board than it is by using an electronic search engine.
And I guess that is true.
But that is not the problem here. In my opinion the real problem here is that the board is not yet used as a tool but only as a reporting system.

If you use the board as a tool you never have to search a card

If you use the board as a tool to drive your work it is hard to image a situation where it would be necessary to really search a card. Since you would be working on one, and only one topic at a time you would know exactly where the card you’re working on right now is. And when it’s finished you would move it to the respective «done» column and select a new card on the board according to the station you're working on and the prioritized cards on the board.
In most cases that card would be the topmost card in the «done» sub-column upstream from the one you're going to work in. And once you select this card as your new item to work on, you would move it in the «doing» column of your selected station (e.g. development).
Since this is the card you are working on (perhaps together with somebody else, but in your responsibility) that card won't move on it's own. So you know exactly where it is. So once you're finished with it you would move it to the respective «done» column... (see above)
Rinse and repeat.
No need to search for a card.
Unless you let your work be driven by another system – then of course the question arises “which is the leading system?”

till next time
  Michael Mahlberg