Change Lessons Learned - Implementing a Kanban System for Enterprise Agility
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This document describes the implementation of a Kanban system at a large energy company to achieve enterprise agility. It discusses how the company lacked process transparency, had a waterfall development approach, and IT was seen as unresponsive by the business. Kanban practices like visualization, limiting work-in-progress, and collaborative improvement were used. This reduced the backlog from 800 to 350 items within 4 months while new requests remained the same, improving productivity. The key lessons learned were to take an incremental approach to change, focus on shifting mindsets, and collaborate at all levels to sustain transformations.
Change Lessons Learned - Implementing a Kanban System for Enterprise Agility
- 1. Change Lessons Learned Design and Implementation of a Kanban system for Enterprise Agility Shoaib Shaukat @shoaibshaukat Change is the end result of all true learning. Leo Buscaglia
- 2. Lean Kanban Leadership Retreat – Bali 2016 About Me | Lean Agile & Kanban Coachand Management Consultant | Shoaib Shaukat
- 4. Company Competitors Customers Context ImplementSituation LearningThinking Large Energy Distributor in Victoria is looking to achieve Enterprise Agility within IT and Business
- 5. • Lack of Process Transparency • Low Decision Making (Priority of work) • Waterfall/Prince2 process • Automated systems/rigid processes • Lot of WIP clogging the teams • Push driven (fungible resource mindset) • 2500+ employees • Lack of big picture understanding • Low Commitment • Low Accountability • Functional/Siloed • Leadership hierarchy • Cost & Efficiency driven • Central Customer services model Context ImplementSituation LearningThinking Structures Processes People Industry • Energy distribution • Regulated by Govt. • Facing technology disruption from battery storage • Low commercial focus
- 7. Organization is a social and interaction space – very difficult to change large organisations To foment change all of this needs to be changed: People, Process, Culture Context ImplementSituation LearningThinking Courtesy: Linda Rising
- 8. Implementing processes is all about shaping behavior • The traditional view is that by defining processes you can control peoples behavior, but it is actually the other way around. • Organization's processes and practices are an outcome of people's thinking and behavior. Context ImplementSituation LearningThinking
- 9. Predictability Adaptability Emergence Convergence AEPE PC AC Ad-Hoc Lean/Agile Agile Lean Startup Teams Low Trust Become Predictable Reduce Batch Size Fully Decouple Phase One Phase Three Phase Four Phase Two Phase Five Phase Five • Invest to Learn Context ImplementSituation LearningThinking Phase Four • Increase Local Autonomy Phase Three • Break Dependencies Phase One • Stabilize the System Phase Two • Reduce Batch Size
- 10. • Every team will be an expedition team with their own experience and culture • Focus on the governance, empower the teams and promote shared values • Every team will travel at own pace depending upon the luggage they carry on path to Agility Context ImplementSituation LearningThinking Transformation: Expedition Approach – Know your trek
- 11. Transformation: Change Adoption curve Innovators – 2.5% This is new – so it’s cool! Early adopters – 13.5% It’s interesting but I want to learn more. Early majority – 34% I want to know what other people think. Late majority – 34% If I have to – I guess. Laggards – 16% We have always done it this way. Context ImplementSituation LearningThinking Courtesy: Linda Rising
- 12. Context ImplementSituation LearningThinking • Enterprise wide system change requests including small to large changes. • Lack of business engagement • Lack of accountability on part of teams • Highly dissatisfied business stake holders • Backlog grown to > 800 outstanding issues • ~ 80 new feature/change requests every month Transformation: Pick a high visibility problem with enterprise wide impact Case Study
- 13. Context ImplementSituation LearningThinking Questions: • Where to locate this new project team? • Where is the product owner? • Scrum needs all the roles co-located Decisions Kanban is the humane “start with what you do now” approach to change Transparency Balance Respect Understanding Collaboration Customer focus Agreement Leadership
- 15. Improve Collaboratively – Evolve Experimentally • Building a Governance team (initially Business Partnership Managers)and expanding to include the IT Group Managers (influential coalition) • Identify Business Managers (Finance, Strategy, HR, Legal, Electricity Networks, Services, Customer group etc.) who could prioritise or influence they teams • Identified process champions from Application teams and Business teams. • Approaches • Carrot & Stick • Experimentation • Coaching & Mentoring Context ImplementSituation LearningThinking
- 16. Transparency provides management control with less overhead Context ImplementSituation LearningThinking Visualise Portfolio Wall • Provides clarity and sense of achieving it creates motivation (ZeigarmikEffect) • Positive feedback from your peers re-enforces the behaviour • Also helps us to see problem(s) and do somethingabout them
- 18. Improved Decision Making • Created pipelines of work by business units • Prioritise (based on Value) collaboratively with business stake holders at wall every fortnight • Working with Delivery teams to Estimate (Effort) the prioritised backlog every fortnight • Simple T-Shirt Sizes (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) for Value and Effort • Rank = Value / Effort (WSJF) • Setting the rules of engagement • Every team will only work from a prioritised backlog etc. Context ImplementSituation LearningThinking
- 19. Turn the focus on finishing and delivering work. • Easy with some teams vs others (on going coaching) • Educating the business is a continuous effort Context ImplementSituation LearningThinking
- 20. Make Policies Explicit • Classes of service (standardising types of requests) • Prioritisation policies for business units e.g. Regulatory, Strategic, BAU etc. • Introducing fast lane (Super highway) for urgent requests with agreement • Simplify accounting practices Context ImplementSituation LearningThinking
- 21. Implement Feedback loops • Monitor Balance (Story/Issue counts – CFDs) • Regular showcases • Team retrospectives • Release showcases • Joint planning sessions with Business & IT teams Context ImplementSituation LearningThinking
- 22. Achieving Results • A renewed focus on making the work visible and prioritised helped the same teams to become more productive. • Backlog of 800 items was reduced to < 350 within 4 months of the introduction of new process. • This was despite the fact that new issues were coming at the same rate ~ 80 per month. Context ImplementSituation LearningThinking
- 23. • An expedition approach for agile transformation is required – acknowledge different teams will adopt agile at their own pace. • Organisations are too difficult to change – establishing a long term goal at start but be prepared to adapt and set short term goals. • Use change adoption curve to your benefit – move people towards the innovators group. • Focus on people to change the mindsets & beliefs. • Use process as a tool to shape behaviours not to control people. • Use depth of Kanban process to improve your system. • Collaborate at all levels and build coalitions to make the change happen and take roots. Learnings: Sustaining long term change … Context ImplementSituation LearningThinking