Lean Kanban Practice

Moving from Beijing to Shenzhen is settled.

2015-12-7 Day, I started to the brokerage m company working days. During the interview, I learned that the M company in Shenzhen is the new research and development center on this side of the Hong Kong Mother W Company. The head of the entire research and Development center, Lao Wang, has been a technical bull in the software finance industry for many years. The company rented a modest temporary office, more than 10 development, two Tests, one operational dimension, one paint UI and one product rationale I had Chi chi for months before I came. According to Lao Wang in the interview, 9-10-6 is the normal pace of work ... You know, little friends who work in the internet industry.

Here, then Ann. Understand the business first. Because it's not yet cooked, be careful, polite, courteous, and politely say hello to colleagues around you trying to find out where you can get some product or project documentation--though prepared for the new research and Development Center, it was a surprise, really nothing. This is a group of humans gathered in a less bright corner of the earth, engaged in very primitive product development, what has been done, and what needs to be done is unknown.

Let's ask each other orally. As a project manager, I want to know what everyone is doing.

Form the first version of the Kankan wall

For the current project, it is most likely to use the kanban of the physical wall. The introduction of physical wall Kanban can provide the following help at this stage: visualization team Each member's work establishes the initial workflow, is used for later evolution and the Solidification understands the team to deliver the ability, from the experience model to the quantification model prepares to quantify the remaining workload and to develop a feasible work plan

The vast majority of members of the team have not practiced or heard of Kanban. Many new practices can lead to resentment and resistance. In order to avoid this situation, the first is to get the support of Lao Wang, the second is to let team members understand what is Kanban, Kanban can help us do, especially how we use. To this end, the first week of time in the team to observe the way the work, with the habit after I began to prepare a presentation of Kanban ppt. The goal is to introduce the team's views and ideas to kanban the first version of the Kanban wall for the team.

1 The first step is to understand and visualize the work flow of the team.

From the fuzzy concept to the working software at each stage, this is the Kanban wall workflow. The Department has product management, development, testing, operations and other departments, each department has a focus on the work, then the flow of the column will naturally form from the product list, development buffer, development in progress, the end of the development; test buffers, tests in progress, test completion, deployment buffers, pre-production deployments, production deployments, and announcements.

2) Establish process rules

In order to reduce rework, reduce the conditions in the workflow from one stage to the next, and rule, manifest, define the definition of phase completion and the rules to make work items appear especially important in workflow flow. Building process rules and making them explicit is not only conceptually the team understands what needs to be done to deliver the work downstream, but also makes the information transparent, which is what I understand at each stage of the definition of doing. DoD not only for user stories, at all stages should have, this is also the important prerequisite for the quality of construction.

3 Limit the number of products – Set clear limits on the quantity allowed at each stage of the work

Each team has a limited number of tasks that can be handled at the same time, and humans are a species that cannot multitask at the same time. Setting the limit of each stage in the product quantity is beneficial to the entire workload from upstream to downstream flow. However, in the absence of any reference data, how to set the number of products in the product?

Considering that the team is an office, in fact, daily meetings, back mail and other communication costs than large companies, especially foreign enterprises are much lower. I propose that we set the number of 2n-1 (n) to handle this type of work at the workflow stage. Each of the 2 tasks, 1 indicates that a portion of the work will be spent on daily standing, team discussions, and other communication expenses. In the absence of other objections, agree to start trying to set the number of products in 2n-1. In the future, follow the actual task items to adjust according to the observation in the operation.

This 3-step setup is complete, the following figure is introduced and team discussion, the first version of the Kanban wall format reached. Colleagues in the development, testing, operations and product management departments agree on a principle: from simple start, incremental improvement, continuous improvement.

To this, the earliest version of the Kanban style formation, is taken as the first step. In this style, a physical kanban wall was erected on the glass wall in the office.

About work splits

To understand how much work we still have, we need to split and refine the task at hand.

First we want to release the first version of the module division. In the function list area of the Kanban wall, 5 areas are zoned to represent the module. Finally, after discussion, the formation of 5 functional modules: Android, IOS,HTML5, market server, user server, and Transaction Server. The list of features that have been developed is programmed into Kanban diagrams by 6 subdivision modules

Next, pull the old Wang, product manager, technology development leader James We have a few people in a small black room, for the first version of the function to do split. Each module wants to do a testable, deliverable-based discussion of the principle. Each function to be done is recorded as a sticker, labeled with ID, described, and intended to be achieved. This forms the most original version of the first release feature List-exactly the first version of the remaining development feature list, because a small amount of feature development has been completed before I came in. The entire function point of the split was carried out one afternoon, a total of more than 70 functional cards, this is a fruitful afternoon.

About the assessment

Estimation never accurate-assessment is never accurate. I have always believed in this, especially in the software industry is particularly true. Software development is not the same as other industries, its unknown, unpredictable too much. And it involves a programmer's ability, experience, and familiarity with the business, and the assessment is less reliable. There are useful story points in agile, people to do the evaluation, but I think it is reasonable to use T-shirt size to evaluate, especially at this stage, spend a small amount of time on the evaluation of more time in the development and solve the real problem is more in line with our characteristics. and t-shirt size can be measured as well as measurable.

Soon, the old King agreed to evaluate the use of T-shirt technology. and agreed that the number of S is less than 1 days to complete the assessment, m number is greater than 1 days and less than 3 days to complete the evaluation, L number is greater than 3 days and less than 5 days to complete the evaluation amount. A function point larger than 5 days should be split again.

And I hope that more than 50% of the function points are belong to the S model, 30~40% function Point of the M, the function of L is best able to control in the range of 15%.

With the evaluation technique selected, the developer of each module is asked to review the evaluation of each functional point sticker prior to the physical Kanban, and s,m,l the assessment results to the upper right corner of the sticker to identify the estimates that need to be developed for each function point. The entire evaluation of Chen spent about 2 hours, for some questionable function points, product managers and old Wang explained next.

I like the assessment process, which is not time-consuming, but basically allows developers to know what to do and answer most of their few questions, and get the results.

Daily standing will be updated

It is believed that every team that implements agile or lean Kanban will hold a standing meeting. Standard standing will communicate mode mode each participant responds to what is done today, what is planned to be done tomorrow, what other people have to do with me, or what I depend on others.

But in our functional point division, using T-shirt assessment techniques, some M models and L models cannot be completed in a certain day, and all of us will be able to do the following in a standing meeting. For S-model function points we will answer which function points are completed for the function point of not completing M or L in one day, We answered% of the completed.  So in the stickers have such a record 2015-12-16:30%; 2015-12-17:70%; 2015-12-18:100%

This percentage of progress also gives us a clear idea of the progress of the larger function point development

Metric – Weekly development throughput

The cumulative flow graph often used by kanban, especially cycle time,lead time, measures the team's ability to develop.

I'm thinking about how many features can be developed on a weekly basis. In the current situation, there is no measurable data, so what you can do is use the present to track how many s,m,l function points the team can deliver each week.

The design of the tracking table is like this

Weekly computing development delivery capability throughput Statistics Week S M L Total W49 8 0 W50 W51

Release plan

One is time-boxing release, that is, a fixed time release.

The other is a function-driven release, that is, must meet certain fixed functions to be released.

Our product is successful, based on some features, so I use the second-function-driven release plan.

One of the key points of the plan is a mastery of the team's current capacity to develop throughput and an estimate of the remaining workload.

With 2 weeks of record tracking, I have a total of 23 functional points s,m,l a week in the past 2 weeks, which is the weekly throughput of the current team development.

I'll put the rest of the work into the worksheet and use the PivotTable functionality in the Excel table to summarize the number of functional points of the s,m,l. With the current weekly throughput to complete 23 s,l,m function points, the remaining function points will take 3 weeks to develop and complete.

3 weeks later we will deliver all functions, set aside a week to do uat and functionality to production server online  –  This is our first release plan. Count Items: Sizing modules             Sizing H5 IOS Android Market Server user Server total L 0 0 0 3 0 0 3 M 3 6 6 1 &N Bsp 3 S 5 12 11 7 3 1 39 Total 8 (3 4)