Category Archives: kanban

Reflecting Reality

Posted on August 31, 2017 by Liz

One of the things I often do as a coach is help people to set up their visual boards, whether physical or electronic. Sometimes that can be surprisingly hard for teams to do without a bit of guidance, so I … Continue reading →

Posted in kanban, lean | 2 Comments

Two exercises, one puzzle

Posted on February 15, 2013 by Liz

Today Benjamin Mitchell played a small exercise I really liked during his Kanban talk. Benjamin gave each of two people 5 A4 envelopes and 5 pieces of paper. The two people were given instructions to either write a letter sequentially, … Continue reading →

Posted in kanban | 22 Comments

LSSC 2012

Posted on May 17, 2012 by Liz

A lot of times when I go to conferences, I’ve already got a slew of half-formed ideas and thoughts from the amazing communities with whom I hang out. The conferences have been fantastic for helping me refine and validate those … Continue reading →

Posted in conference, cynefin, deliberate discovery, kanban, lean | 8 Comments

Scrum and Kanban: both the same, only different

Posted on November 20, 2011 by Liz

When I started coaching Agile methodologies, I didn’t know how much I didn’t know. I had come from Thoughtworks, a company whose tools and processes are mostly driven by Extreme Programming, aka XP. In that respect, most of what I … Continue reading →

Posted in coaching, kanban, scrum | 29 Comments

Lean Software and Systems Conference, Atlanta

Posted on January 7, 2010 by Liz

I’ve been invited to speak at the Lean Software and Systems Conference in Atlanta, April 21st to 23rd 2010. BDD, often described as “TDD done well”, is strongly aligned with Lean principles. It’s a pull-based approach to delivering software that … Continue reading →

Posted in bdd, conference, kanban, lean | Leave a comment

Kanban thinking: hungry vs. peckish

Posted on December 18, 2009 by Liz

I just read Michael Dubakov’s excellent post on Kanban psychology, and the shift in thinking from the habits we’re taught to a more rational behaviour. This post made me remember what it was like, being a developer who’s discouraged from … Continue reading →

Posted in kanban, lean | Leave a comment

Mocks, outside-in, swarming features and guesswork

Posted on October 17, 2009 by Liz

The paradox of mocking When we code from the outside-in in BDD, we start with the layer we know – the UI, often graphical – establish collaborators for the UI, establish collaborators for those classes, and work our way inwards … Continue reading →

Posted in bdd, kanban, stories | 4 Comments

Scrum vs. Kanban: FIGHT!

Posted on September 16, 2009 by Liz

Scrum: Hm, you’re rather small. Are you sure you want to do this? Kanban: Bring it. Scrum: Right. I represent a fundamental mindshift in the way that people do projects. Kanban: So do I. My mindshift is different to yours; … Continue reading →

Posted in kanban, scrum | 23 Comments

A Coaching Kanban board

Posted on September 16, 2009 by Liz

Chris McMahon mentioned my example of a coaching kanban board in the second of his series of posts against Kanban. That it comes across as simple and infantile in Chris’s example is my fault; I only really touched on the … Continue reading →

Posted in coaching, kanban, lean | 2 Comments

The Lean software production line

Posted on August 19, 2009 by Liz

Andy, the release manager at my current client, asked, “How can I get the teams to follow a consistent process where readying the release for deployment is concerned? We have different version control systems, different build processes… how do I … Continue reading →

Posted in kanban, lean | 1 Comment