A very good talk, very inspiring. Every developer working with scrum will recognize the problems that kanban solves. But with Josh's real live tips and lessons it makes it even more interesting.
Josh also takes the time to answer your questions after the talk. I really appreciated your kindness. Please do more talks like this!
I have very mixed feelings about this talk. On the one hand I'm a very big fan of almost any form of agile and I like Kanban a lot. On the other hand Josh promoted Kanban by comparing it to scrum. My problem with that is that he took the most horrible, hideous and obviously incorrect implementation one could ever come up with and led us to believe that this was “the scrum way”.
I'm certainly convinced there will be lot of people doing what Josh said and are calling it scrum. But it simply isn't. Terms like scrumbut and waterscum exist with reason. Full disclosure: at Procurios we do scrum for all our client projects. For any internal process or internal product development we use kanban however. Both have very good reasons for fitting in certain situations. All in all I feel Josh sold Kanban short by putting it up against an unfairly pictured opponent. Kanban doesn't need this, it is very much good enough on its own merits.
Nice introduction to Kanban. I liked it. Left me with mixed feelings.
The comparison to SCRUM, or how SCRUM goes about it, was not always accurately portrayed I think. eg:
"Kanban: no estimation, Scrum: the estimation is budget for the team or manager".
I'm not doubting Josh's capabilities, but I must say that the scrum bashing was a bit over the top. I can be wrong off course, but I had the impression that he did not really had a full understanding of a correct implemented scrum process. On the other hand, he was right on a lot of topics imho, but the bashing just put me off.
As said by others already, if you want to promote a 'new' system, why bash another one? I'm sure there's much more to be told about Kanban without trying to tear down Scrum or any other method. Of course, you can compare them, but try to be less opinionated.
What I did miss in your talk is the focus on the pull vs push principle and the extreme flexibility of Kanban. Instead of stating your own findings as absolute truth, you may want to keep a more open way of presenting for examples the number of columns and/or swimming lanes.
Nevertheless, a very valuable introductory talk to Kanban.
Very insightful talk about Kanban. Loved to notice a few differences with our approach at Yoast! Very happy with the reminder of the need for incremental change! I also liked the scrum bashing, because I think it was not meant to be taken that seriously, but more as way to put things a little more on edge (at least that's how I took it). Just a couple of points:
- I think a lot of devs are using scrum as a means to their actual (far more important) end, which in most cases will hopefully be Agile software development and continuous delivery. In those cases they are probably not being too meticulous about sprint lengths, estimations etc. Many of the downsides of Scrum disappear when going about it flexibly. Unfortunately some companies seem to think the scrum master role is not just a role, it's an actual job...
- That said, I think the quickest path from scrum to Kanban in any organization is simply shortening the sprints. Go from two week sprints to one week sprints to daily sprints... Eh, right.... Kanban!
- I think the pull principle in Kanban could have been more strongly emphasized. There's much truth in this idea that people don't get work pushed their way, they pull it in themselves, never juggling around more balls than they can manage at a given time.
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Very good overview on Kanban process with good tips and lessons learned. :D
Great talk about Kanban, with a clear explanation how you can start with Kanban within your current progress.
Maybe a little less bashing on other methods would not be a bad thing :-)
Very insightful, thanks.
Good introduction to kanban, het gets it!
A very good talk, very inspiring. Every developer working with scrum will recognize the problems that kanban solves. But with Josh's real live tips and lessons it makes it even more interesting.
Josh also takes the time to answer your questions after the talk. I really appreciated your kindness. Please do more talks like this!
I need more thumbs ;-)
I have very mixed feelings about this talk. On the one hand I'm a very big fan of almost any form of agile and I like Kanban a lot. On the other hand Josh promoted Kanban by comparing it to scrum. My problem with that is that he took the most horrible, hideous and obviously incorrect implementation one could ever come up with and led us to believe that this was “the scrum way”.
I'm certainly convinced there will be lot of people doing what Josh said and are calling it scrum. But it simply isn't. Terms like scrumbut and waterscum exist with reason. Full disclosure: at Procurios we do scrum for all our client projects. For any internal process or internal product development we use kanban however. Both have very good reasons for fitting in certain situations. All in all I feel Josh sold Kanban short by putting it up against an unfairly pictured opponent. Kanban doesn't need this, it is very much good enough on its own merits.
mixed feelings about the talk.
Nice introduction to Kanban. I liked it. Left me with mixed feelings.
The comparison to SCRUM, or how SCRUM goes about it, was not always accurately portrayed I think. eg:
"Kanban: no estimation, Scrum: the estimation is budget for the team or manager".
Otherwise great talk
Inspirational talk.
I'm not doubting Josh's capabilities, but I must say that the scrum bashing was a bit over the top. I can be wrong off course, but I had the impression that he did not really had a full understanding of a correct implemented scrum process. On the other hand, he was right on a lot of topics imho, but the bashing just put me off.
As said by others already, if you want to promote a 'new' system, why bash another one? I'm sure there's much more to be told about Kanban without trying to tear down Scrum or any other method. Of course, you can compare them, but try to be less opinionated.
What I did miss in your talk is the focus on the pull vs push principle and the extreme flexibility of Kanban. Instead of stating your own findings as absolute truth, you may want to keep a more open way of presenting for examples the number of columns and/or swimming lanes.
Nevertheless, a very valuable introductory talk to Kanban.
Very insightful talk about Kanban. Loved to notice a few differences with our approach at Yoast! Very happy with the reminder of the need for incremental change! I also liked the scrum bashing, because I think it was not meant to be taken that seriously, but more as way to put things a little more on edge (at least that's how I took it). Just a couple of points:
- I think a lot of devs are using scrum as a means to their actual (far more important) end, which in most cases will hopefully be Agile software development and continuous delivery. In those cases they are probably not being too meticulous about sprint lengths, estimations etc. Many of the downsides of Scrum disappear when going about it flexibly. Unfortunately some companies seem to think the scrum master role is not just a role, it's an actual job...
- That said, I think the quickest path from scrum to Kanban in any organization is simply shortening the sprints. Go from two week sprints to one week sprints to daily sprints... Eh, right.... Kanban!
- I think the pull principle in Kanban could have been more strongly emphasized. There's much truth in this idea that people don't get work pushed their way, they pull it in themselves, never juggling around more balls than they can manage at a given time.