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The Reluctant Agilist

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Agile 2013 - Updates from the Biodome

Categories: LeanKit, Chris Sims, Ron Jeffries, Monte Carlo Analysis, Chet Hendrickson, Jim Elvridge, David Bernstein, SAFE, Active Listening, Questions, NVC, Non-violent communication, Agile Atlas, Agile Manifesto, business value estimation, intuition, Agile 2013, NLP, Scrum, Agile, kanban, Communication

Day 1 of Agile 2013 is in the books. There are over 1,700 Agilists who have gathered in the Gaylord Opryland in Nashville to sharpen up their skills in all things related to Agile. For those who are unable to attend, Projects at Work and BigVisible Solutions are co-sponsoring interviews with speakers, attendees and vendors who are participating in the event. Our goal is to provide updates for you throughout the event so that even if you weren't able to join us in the Gaylord Biosphere you will be able to keep pace with what's going on. For the rest of the week, keep checking back here for new interviews and show news brought to you by Projects at Work and BigVisible.

Here are some of the interviews we shot today:

Interview with Ron Jeffries and Chet Hendrickson on how well the Agile Manifesto has maintained it's applicability since it was created back in 2001 and an update on the Agile Atlas.

David Bernstein offers some details on his Agile 2013 presentation on how the kinds of questions we ask ourselves and others can help us become better collaborators, coaches, and impact our very quality of life.

Jim Elvridge explains the importance of not just relying on data and paying attention to you intuition in Agile.

A product update on LeanKit's new advanced predictive simulation features from CEO and co-founder Chris Hefley.

About Leankit

Chris Sims gives an update on the talks he is giving here in Nashville on Business Value Estimation in Agile and the importance of Active Listening.

We'll have lots more tomorrow, so keep checking back for more.

Posted on: August 05, 2013 11:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Personal Kanban - App Review Update: LeanKit and Kanban Pad

Categories: LeanKit, Kanban Pad, WIP, personal project management, productivity, kanban, personal kanban, personal productivity

I mentioned before that I was happy enough with LeanKit that after I had adapted to using it, that I was not going to keep testing out different apps for Personal Kanban.

What can I say...

I was pretty happy with LeanKit from a Personal Kanban standpoint. When I checked it against my original criteria a few weeks ago, it only hit 50% of my original requirements:

Must be available on laptop, iPhone and iPad (PASS)
Must be as close to my physical board as possible (meaning must allow for swim lanes) (PASS)
Must have some capacity for dealing with recurring tasks (FAIL)
Must be available online and offline with a sync capability or something as easy as capturing notes on a post it or index card (FAIL)

But that was better than none, and it let me do some stuff I felt was really important:

Set up my swim lanes just like I had them on the wall.
Define the work state columns however I wanted.
Establish whatever WIP limits I wanted and warn me when I tried to exceed them.
It let me color code the cards based on work type.

I am also part of a volunteer group that had made a decision to use it and we were able to get full access to the tool which opened up some additional functionality. Being able to attach files to card and assign them to multiple individuals is something I found very helpful when using it with a team.

And then.....

I went to a meeting. I sat next to someone way smarter to me. I glanced at his screen and saw that he was using a Kanban app. Since he is smarter than me, and had come to a meeting with just an iPad (an obvious indicator of superior intellect and travel skill), and his screen was filled with a lot of really bright colors, it became obvious to me that this was an app worthy of further investigation. And this is how I was introduced to Kanban Pad.

When I compare this Kanban Pad against my original criteria:

Must be available on laptop, iPhone and iPad (PASS-ish)
Must be as close to my physical board as possible (meaning must allow for swim lanes) (PASS)
Must have some capacity for dealing with recurring tasks (FAIL, but)
Must be available online and offline with a sync capability or something as easy as capturing notes on a post it or index card (FAIL)

The app works great on an iPad or in a web browser. It's easy to drag cards from one column to another. And technically, Kanban Pad works on an iPhone as well. They do have a version sized for the small screen. Unfortunately, in the smaller screen, you can only view one column at a time. Trying to move tasks between columns in this format left me feeling like I was wearing boxing gloves while carrying a small child, a folding chair and trying to eat an ice cream cone at the same time.

Kanban Pad does allow for customizable, swim lanes, but not in exactly the same way that you'd set them up on a physical board. It allows you to establish multiple columns and within each column the Type setting allows you to establish Queue, In Progress or Queue and In Progress workflows. By using Queue and In Progress and editing the labels, I found an easy solution to my recurring task issue.

Another great feature is that the Product Backlog and Backlog of work that has moved past Accepted (meaning it no longer needs to be seen), can be maintained off the main task board.

Kanban Pad also allows you to establish WIP limits for your queues and it warns you fairly incessantly about your flagrant violation of them should you choose to venture off the path. (I ended up not using this feature because my frustration over the warnings became more significant than my desire to maintain WIP limits.

The app includes a feature where you can customize colored tags which can be applied to each task so that you can tell what type of work you are looking at.

There are a number of additional features that Kanban Pad offers, but those are the ones that have proven to be most valuable to me from a Personal Kanban perspective.

By way of a final verdict/opinion on the app, I offer this... I've been using Kanban Pad for about 6-8 weeks now. It has become my primary tool for managing my work using Personal Kanban. After all my efforts at trying to find a way to use Things as a tool for Personal Kanban, I've all but stopped using Things and only open it (or Reminders) now when I have to capture something that I will add to my task board later.

A Tip for Embracing Dysfunction

One thing I have noticed about my use of Kanban Pad is that I've begun using the screen on which I am looking at the work as my way of limiting WIP. If there is so much on the board that I have to scroll up and down to see all the work, then there is too much on the board. This means that some tasks have to be A) Cleared on the right so I can keep moving items over B) That I've got to remove some work from the active columns into the Product Backlog (which is not visible form the main board) or C) I need to consolidate and/or delete some items. This may not be the "right way" to do it, but at the moment, it is working pretty well for me, so I am okay with that.

Posted on: July 05, 2013 12:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Personal Kanban : The Heart of Darkness

Categories: Trello, LeanKit, Things, productivity, kanban, personal kanban, personal productivity, kanbanfor1

Personal Kanban Experiment... Weeks 10-12

Kanban. (expletive) Still only in Kanban. Every time I think I’m gonna wake up back in the GTD…

Towards the end of my experiment with Kanban-for-1 I was feeling like I had lost my way. I was still carrying too much work to be able to make use of Kanban-for-1, but my attempts at using it had taught me a number of useful things.

Whatever I use, it needs to be completely portable.
Whatever I use needs to be available to me whether I am online or off.
Whatever I use needs to be simple enough that the act of using it does not become a time/productivity suck. The tool can’t be in my way.
I really like working with a physical board and would like something as close to that as possible.
When I am home, and using the physical board on the wall, the process works quite well for me.

I toyed with the idea of trying to get a piece of plastic that I could use for a physical board and that I could roll up and carry with me. But I’m guessing that the person in seat 21A (who is probably still a bit irked about losing the battle for the armrest) is not going to take kindly to me unrolling my big Kanban board to work on it mid flight.

The Horror, The Horror

I did attempt to use my Kanban journal. This is the book I make notes in each week on how things are going. I carry it with me each time I go on the road, so it seems like a great fit. Exiting Kanban-for -1, I re-created all my post its and created a PK Board in my notebook that was just like the one on my wall. It worked great until I actually placed the post-its in the book. I was right back to the Kanban-for-1 issue.

Drowning in a bunch of stuff I could not really see clearly. Just like with Kanban-for-1, if I had to move a task, first I had to dig through the piles of tasks to figure out where it was.

Disclaimer: I should point out that if you are reading this hoping to get to a point where I realize I’m just carrying way too many tasks… you might want to get a sandwich… it’s gonna be a while.

I decided to take a look at the Personal Kanban apps again. My requirements were the same:

Must be available on laptop, iPhone and iPad.
Must be as close to my physical board as possible (meaning must allow for swim lanes).
Must have some capacity for dealing with recurring tasks.
Must be available online and offline with a sync capability or something as easy as capturing notes on a post it or index card.

Basically I’m looking for Things, but Kanban style (cough cough Cultured Code cough cough).
Since I’ve started writing this blog people have been kind enough to send in a number of recommendations. Trello seems to be very popular. I’ve also received suggestions that I use Evernote for Kanban. I’d love to be able to do that, but I’ve not yet found a tool that would allow me to do so in as effortless a manner as I am looking for. Basically, if using the tool is more work than pulling an index card or a post it out of my pocket and capturing the item/updating the item while I am in an elevator, walking down the street, or sitting on a plane, it’s too much work.

Unfortunately, none of the tools I was able to find met all my requirements. However, after looking over the options, I decided o give Leankit a try. My reasons for choosing it were not entirely scientific, but I’m human…

Leankit allowed me to do the following:

Set up my swim lanes just like I had them on the wall.
Define the work state columns however I wanted.
Establish whatever WIP limits I wanted and warn me when I tried to exceed them.
It let me color code the cards based on work type.

The last point may seem trivial, but to me, it is very significant and one of the primary reasons that I have so much trouble with personal Kanban applications. The value of my physical board is that I can put everything I had to do up there at once. I can look at it all at once. It is a really big information radiator. For me, it’s a billboard telling me what is going on with the things I feel I need to do. No matter how awesome the software is, or how big my monitor is, there doesn’t seem to be a way to replicate the big thing on the wall + tactile interaction thing.

While my preference for a physical board is clearly established, there is no way that my physical board and my Martin travel guitar are going to fit in the overhead, so I need me some app-age.

"Never get out of the boat... Unless you were goin all the way."
(Capt. Willard)

Leankit

I used Leankit for about a month during this project. As far as Personal Kanban apps go, it is my weapon of choice. I’ve not tested out the paid version, which includes some extra features and more detailed analytics, but I found the free version to be very helpful in tracking my work on the road. My favorite aspect of the application was the customization. I really liked that I could set up my board in Leankit to mirror the one I have at home. In practicing any work habit, I believe the first step should always be the physical practice. If it moves to an electronic tool, then it is important to select a tool that allows you to mirror your physical behavior. Leankit offered me the most freedom there.

It even allowed me to set up multiple backlogs so that I could mirror how Things had worked for me. While I wasn’t able to figure out how to get recurring tasks going, I was able to create a ReUsable backlog so that each night I could move the recurring Daily items back into that backlog if I wanted. I didn’t actually end up doing that, but it somehow eased my mind to know that I could.

It also allows you to set due dates, mark work as blocked and it has an icon system for type of work.

So, Leankit allowed me to replicate my physical board on the web. It also has an iPhone application which took a little time to get the hang of, but which allowed me to update items as long as I could get online. With respect to my requirements:

Must be available on laptop, iPhone and iPad (PASS)
Must be as close to my physical board as possible (meaning must allow for swim lanes) (PASS)
Must have some capacity for dealing with recurring tasks (FAIL)
Must be available online and offline with a sync capability or something as easy as capturing notes on a post it or index card (FAIL)

From a mobility standpoint, with the exception of offline sync, the tool works quite well. It allows me to access my work, update it, enter new items, etc. You can even set it up to allow you to access multiple accounts. On my iPhone I have Leankit set up to access my personal account under one email address and another one I use for Scrum Alliance volunteer work.

The fact that Leankit did not meet all my requirements is not significant for me. None of the applications I looked at were able to meet all of them. From a customization, portability and usability standpoint, I am a big fan of Leankit.

You can't go out into space with fractions.

Initially I had planned to keep testing different applications. What I discovered after a few weeks was that while I want to the portability, the loss of big information radiator-ness was crippling. This was something I decided needed further research, but not so much in the way of testing additional apps. What I felt I needed a better handle on was why I wanted the apps and what I was actually doing with them. I do expect to go back and test out some additional apps – I really want to take a look at Trello because a lot of people have mentioned to me that they use it. But, after a few weeks with Leankit I decided to bail on trying new software for a while because it was time to start working with a Personal Kanban coach. Coverage of that will begin in the next blog post.

Posted on: May 14, 2013 12:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The Reluctant Agilist

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Personal Kanban - App Review Update: LeanKit and Kanban Pad Categories: LeanKit, Kanban Pad, WIP, personal project management, productivity, kanban, personal kanban, personal productivity

And then.....

A Tip for Embracing Dysfunction

Personal Kanban : The Heart of Darkness Categories: Trello, LeanKit, Things, productivity, kanban, personal kanban, personal productivity, kanbanfor1

Personal Kanban Experiment... Weeks 10-12

The Horror, The Horror

"Never get out of the boat... Unless you were goin all the way." (Capt. Willard)

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Personal Kanban - App Review Update: LeanKit and Kanban Pad

Categories: LeanKit, Kanban Pad, WIP, personal project management, productivity, kanban, personal kanban, personal productivity

Personal Kanban : The Heart of Darkness

Categories: Trello, LeanKit, Things, productivity, kanban, personal kanban, personal productivity, kanbanfor1

"Never get out of the boat... Unless you were goin all the way."
(Capt. Willard)