Tag Archives: Kanban

The Secret History of Agile: From Japan to America

August 11, 2024Agile, PMPagile, Kanban, Lean, New New Product Development Game, toyota production system, waterfallDavid McLachlan

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The Secret History of Agile: Unveiling the Roots of a Revolutionary Methodology

The Agile methodology, a transformative approach in software development, is often mistakenly attributed solely to the Agile Manifesto of 2001. However, the roots of Agile stretch much deeper into history, with influences from manufacturing and even early industrial practices. Let’s check out the lesser-known origins of Agile, and see how it has really evolved from the 19th century to today.

The Waterfall Model: A Misunderstood Beginning

The story of Agile cannot be told without mentioning the Waterfall model, traditionally seen as the “enemy” of Agile. Interestingly, Winston Royce, who formalized the Waterfall model, came up with a more iterative and feedback-driven approach in his final notes. Royce emphasized the importance of integrating feedback from testing into design and requirements, advocating for an iterative process and customer involvement.

This philosophy, remarkably similar to Agile, shows that even the origins of the Waterfall model came from principles that Agile later embraced.

Early Industrial Influences: Toyota’s Innovations

Agile’s principles can be traced back to early industrial practices, particularly those pioneered by Toyota. In 1896, Sakichi Toyoda introduced the “Stop and Notify” concept, also known as Jidoka or autonomation. His invention of an automatic loom that halted production if a needle broke was revolutionary, combining human oversight with machine efficiency. This concept of built-in quality control is a cornerstone of Lean manufacturing and, subsequently, Agile.

Post-War Innovation: The Birth of Lean and Kanban

The real transformation began in 1948 when Toyota faced severe resource constraints post-World War II. This led to the creation of the Toyota Production System, the precursor to Lean manufacturing. Lean emphasizes waste reduction and Kaizen, or continuous improvement. From Lean, Kanban emerged, a method of visualizing the work to optimize flow. This later became integral to Agile software development.

The Agile Manifesto: A Culmination of Decades of Ideas

Agile as formally recognized today was crystallized in 2001 with the Agile Manifesto, but its foundations were laid much earlier. The Manifesto was influenced by various methodologies, including Lean, Kanban, Extreme Programming, Feature Driven Development and Scrum. These frameworks collectively contributed to Agile’s emphasis on flexibility, customer collaboration, and iterative development.

Scrum: A Revolutionary Approach

Scrum, often synonymous with Agile, has its roots in a 1986 white paper titled “The New New Product Development Game” by Japanese researchers Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka. They proposed a holistic, team-based approach to product development, likening it to a rugby team working together to move the ball down the field. This approach emphasized overlapping development phases, self-organizing teams, and continuous learning—key principles that underpin Scrum and Agile.

The Six Secrets of The New New Product Development Game

Takeuchi and Nonaka identified six characteristics of successful product development teams, which resonate strongly with Agile principles:

Built-in Instability: Assigning broad goals to capable teams, granting them autonomy and flexibility to meet that goal.
Self-organizing Teams: Teams acting like startups, from ideation to implementation, fostering autonomy, self-transcendence, and cross-functional collaboration (the Product Owner idea in Scrum today).
Overlapping Development Phases: Continuous interaction between research and development and production to ensure constant progress and iteration.
Multi-learning: Encouraging team members to pursue ongoing learning, both within and outside their areas of expertise.
Subtle Control: Implementing visual management and maintaining open workspaces to facilitate communication and collaboration.
Organizational Transfer of Learning: Converting project activities into standard practices to spread knowledge throughout the organization.

As you can see there are many similarities between Scrum as we know it today, and The New New Product Development Game introduced in 1986, even if some of the names are different.

Conclusion: The Ever-Evolving Journey of Agile

The history of Agile is rich and multifaceted, drawing from various disciplines and evolving over decades. From Royce’s iterative vision for Waterfall to Toyota’s Lean principles and the collaborative ethos of Scrum, Agile embodies a continuous pursuit of improvement and adaptability. Understanding this deep and varied history not only enriches our appreciation of Agile but also underscores its enduring relevance in today’s fast-paced, ever-changing technological landscape.

For those eager to dive deeper into Agile’s principles and practices, comprehensive courses and coaching can offer valuable insights and practical skills. Embracing Agile is not just about adopting a methodology; it’s about joining a long-standing tradition of innovation and excellence in product development.

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Kanban – The Agile Practice Guide

November 7, 2019Agileagile, David McLachlan, Kanban, project managementDavid McLachlan

– Back to the Agile Practice Guide (all) –

We’re looking at the Agile and Lean frameworks from the Agile Practice Guide, by the Project Management Institute and Agile Alliance.

The reason we’re looking at these is because there are many different methods that you’ll come across in your organization on your Agile journey, and there are many core methods that you’ll come across and also many auxiliary methods that you’ll come across as well. It’s important to know what they are, and a little bit behind them so you can match them up to the core methods and see whether a team is truly Agile or not. This one in particular is Kanban.

The Core Agile Framework of Kanban

Kanban translates to “visual sign” or “card” in Japanese. It has come from the Toyota Production System so it’s got decades and decades of proof behind it in a production environment, and now it’s found its way into technology and project management and even enterprise management as well.

It’s a form of visual management, and it comes from Lean manufacturing for monitoring the Work In Progress. It enables “Pull” and “Flow”, which are two key Lean concepts. The Lean concept of Pull means that we pull the work when we’re ready, so we never have too much work on our plate – we’re never overburdened. It was traditionally used for inventory, so we would never have too much inventory (which is basically money just sitting there in a manufacturing plant, in a business sense) but it’s the same for technology.

Continue reading Kanban – The Agile Practice Guide →

Five Minute Lean – Create a Pull System with FIFO, Kanban Triggers and Visual Management

July 27, 2017Five Minute Lean ExcerptFIFO lane, FIFO Lane definition, five minute lean excerpt, Kanban, Kanban definition, lean book, learn lean, pull system definition, visual managementDavid McLachlan

This is an excerpt from the book "Five Minute Lean", by David McLachlan - a wonderful book that blends teaching of the tools, culture and philosophy of traditional Lean with a modern-day Lean parable.

You can get the whole book on Amazon here and enjoy your own copy.

Create a Pull System with FIFO, Kanban Triggers and Visual Management

‘By making our process visible, including visual triggers and a small standard inventory where necessary, we can create our product or service as our customer orders it, instead of working to create something that no one wants.’

We know that our customer can be our end customer or anyone who is next in the process (downstream) from our department or process. In this part of our Lean journey we will start doing things to get rid of work piling up and being forced on us or our downstream customers.

At the Lean Enterprise Institute, this fourth step is simply called “Pull”, and the idea is to create a Pull system as opposed to a Push system. What this means is that you or your department creates a product or service only as your customer (or downstream process) requests, or “Pulls” it. We don’t “Push” our product to our downstream process or customer, or we don’t create product unless it is asked for.

This has the effect of reducing large inventory of unnecessary items, reducing “work in process” or a build-up of unfinished work, streamlining the process and promoting one piece flow (3.5). This in turn improves upon our customer driven metrics of Quality, Delivery and Cost.

Many of the tools below will assist in promoting a Pull system, and fit nicely with the methods we’ve already learned.

FIFO Lane

FIFO stands for First in First out, and it is an outstanding way to make sure that stock doesn’t go out of date, or that work is distributed fairly. It is most commonly used in a “FIFO Lane” where items in a lane are taken at one end and supplied from the other.

Lean - FIFO Lane

Figure 19: An example of First In First Out – a small amount of inventory that takes the oldest first.

You will have seen this in the bread aisle in your local supermarket – you take, or “Pull” bread from the bottom as you need it, and they restock it from the top. Of course, this is the best way to avoid stale old bread! But it might also be how you delegate work. It might be how you replenish perishable medicines. It might be the order in which you prepare food in after taking a customer’s request in a drive-through. The main idea is that the item is pulled only as it is needed, and an empty space in the FIFO lane triggers the need for the item to be replaced.

Not every job will be able to create their product or process from scratch as quickly as a customer orders it. A bakery still has to bake their goods, and a hotel still has to prepare their rooms, for example. This is why keeping a small amount of “inventory” handy in any process via a FIFO Lane or Supermarket (below) can assist you in delivering quickly, without overproducing.

Supermarket

Another similar theme to FIFO is the Lean “Supermarket”. A Supermarket is a predetermined standard inventory that is kept to supply the downstream process in exact amounts.

For example, if a doctor used 10 vials of medicine at a time in one operation, we might keep 10 of that particular medicine in one place so the doctor could take that exact amount for each operation. When that box is taken it will leave an empty space, triggering us to replace it with another pre-made box of 10.

Figure 20: A basic Pull system, where the customer pulls (orders) the product, and the empty squares prompt our team-mates to pull ingredients from their upstream supplier and create another product for the customer.

Kanban Trigger

Kanban is a Japanese term for “sign” or “signboard” and is basically a signalling system to trigger action. In other words, we ask ourselves:

How do we know when we need to begin work on an item?

And:

How do we let our supplier know we are pulling work (or product) so they can replenish or create their product as necessary?

What is the trigger that tells us these things? This is where a Kanban comes in.

Traditionally Kanban was associated with a “Kanban card”, which was a card (or small “sign”) holding details such as the product and quantity required of a product, handed to the upstream supplier to trigger production.

In a company using Agile techniques (5.3) it might be items in a Kanban “To Do” lane waiting on their wall. Ask yourself what the trigger is, or if you don’t have one, what trigger would work best for you? In other industries, a Kanban can simply be any trigger to begin working on an item. It might be a green light telling us “ready to go!”, it might be an “ORDER MORE” or “REPLACE” card placed where there are two left of something in stock, it might be an empty slot in a FIFO lane or an empty space (specially allocated by Five S in 4.4) for our Supermarket.

Figure 21: A simple Kanban card, with standard instructions and quantities included.

Visual Management

Visual management is another Lean method that can be applied to industries of all types. The idea is to increase transparency by making your process “visible”. Things that are visible tend to get noticed, and things that are visible tend to get done. This can include detail of work queues, anything blocking the flow of the process, who is doing what or sizes of jobs; the list goes on and really depends on your industry or workplace.

For this step we ask ourselves:

What information would be really useful to see at a glance, so we can know if things are working as they should?

Then we can go about putting this on one board, signal or sheet of paper for all to see. A Layered Check Act board (5.2) that shows process metrics is a good example of visual management. It could also be instructions for a process step made clearly visible at the work station with Five S (4.4). The Kanban board or Kanban card we mentioned earlier is also an example of visual management.

Visual Management is something that Lisa might use, if she wanted to make her sales calls visible. It is not uncommon for a call centre to have a large electronic board with the amount of people waiting, or the amount of people available to take calls.

If you come up with any ideas for visual management during your Kaizen meeting, add them to your current Value Stream Map as a Kaizen burst (2.5) so you can remember them for later.

Selected chapters from the story within Five minute Lean:

Check out these selected chapters from the teachings within Five Minute Lean:

Kanban: Lean Glossary

February 11, 2014Lean GlossaryKanban, LeanDavid McLachlan

– Back to Lean Glossary –

Kanban: What Is It?

Kanban is the Japanese term for “Signboard”. It is a way of signalling that gives authorisation and instructions for the production of items in a Pull System.

The most common form of Kanban is a card that holds the relevant information on it, telling an upstream process the type and quantity of products to make for a downstream process when the demand arises.

Kanban is therefore an important part of a Pull System, where items are produced at the demand of the downstream process or customer. It also works well with a Supermarket, where a small inventory is kept and a Kanban is sent when the inventory is running low or emptied.

– Back to Lean Glossary –