Agile Development Blog

Recently, I was working on an introductory presentation about Kanban. A “thorough” Google search revealed how drawn out and convoluted many Kanban explanations can be. Was there one true answer I was missing? Something nice and succinct like, say, a tweet on twitter?

Acting on this and laziness, I decided to pose the following question to twitter:

I was so surprised by the number of great responses that I’ve decided to compile and share them with you here:

• 

  giff24: #kanban 130 chrctrs? PLS!!! I dnt hve time or patience 2 rd that much

• 

  erwilleke: #kanban combines systems thinking with a work-limited pull system to allow rapid maturation of teams and delivery of software.

• 

  neontapir: Kanban uses visual signals to track and optimize work delivery through key stages in its lifecycle.

I like the commonalities around value, visualization, limited WIP, pull systems, cadence, and flow. This tells me that Kanban is speaking a common and useful language to a lot of us. And, its value can be articulated in a tweet.

But my quest goes on!

I encourage you to add to this list by submitting your own 130 character Kanban definition either as a comment to this post or as a tweet to me (@jeantabaka and use #kanban in your answer.)

In April, I’m attending the Lean SSC conference in Atlanta. There will be a lot of discussion about Kanban.  I’ll personally carry all comments and tweets to the conference for inclusion in the discussion. If you’re able to attend, let’s stretch the envelope and go beyond 130 characters on Kanban.

About the Author: Jean Tabaka is a wine enthusiast, author and Agile Fellow at Rally Software Development. Subscribe today to get free updates by email or RSS.

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending a talk given by Geoffrey Moore. You may know him through his renown as the author of “Crossing the Chasm“, “Inside the Tornado“, and his most recent book, “Dealing with Darwin“. Geoff is an energetic, articulate speaker who always has interesting insights and mental model twists to share. On this particular occasion, Geoff had been sponsored by Rally Software to speak at the annual Toolapalooza event at Cisco. His topic? “The Future of Enterprise IT”.

Geoffrey Moore asking for a show of hands from the crowd about their social media use.

What most struck me about Geoff’s talk was his query about what we are currently capable as consumers versus how we are held back as employees. Specifically he was speaking about the technologies in social media that are growing and advancing at an alarming rate.

As consumers, we engage in MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and all sorts of other emerging social media. We stay connected. We collaborate. We can instantly survey one another. We can quickly comment and offer direction.

In other words, we have an ability to maintain a presence regardless of time or location.

In contrast, we are not embracing these social media tools within our corporations.  Essentially, as Geoff put it,”We are more productive as consumers than as employees. Why can’t I have my tools at work?”

Specifically, he spoke of the need for Enterprise IT to move from its role as “system of record” to supporting enterprise search, enterprise facebook, and enterprise mobility (as examples).

Enterprise IT needs to make a fundamental shift: from being the core of the operations of a company and being data-centric, to being at the edge of the company’s face, being very network-centric.

For this audience at Cisco, this wasn’t too much of a stretch in mental model shifts. Cisco has been leading corporate collaborate shifts, most notably through their Telepresence technology. You’ve probably seen the ads on T.V. for this remarkable collaboration technology. (BTW, the Telepresence project effort  determined that they HAD to use an Agile approach in order to deliver their product in a timely manner. And, they chose the Rally tool to support their multi-team effort.)

For me, Geoff’s talk nudged me into that realm of the “blindingly obvious”.  I really hadn’t thought about how the social media in my consumer life have not been effectively absorbed into my corporate life, either within my company or in the community of companies with whom I consult. I have believed in creating collaborative communities.

It has been a passion of mine in guiding organizations in their Agile adoptions. Geoff’s insights just confirmed to me, my passion now has to invite the consumer world of social media into Agile, collaborative organizations.