London Lean Kanban Day March 2013 Part 1

Well, it makes a change for me to get out and listen to the great and the good of the Lean thinking world. The first Lean Kanban day in London, provided me with a good opportunity. The line up was impressive, and I have to say I enjoyed the speakers and came away with some renewed vigour. I will endeavour to cover the main points I found interesting in these posts. I'm going to to a post per speaker, and then maybe do a round up. That said, I may well change my mind half way through! First up was Mike Burrows with a general take on getting started with Kanban. This was the start of the "Big Thing" that I would be taking away. Understanding queuing, and the affect this has on our throughput. Whilst I have paid "lip-service" to WIP Limits, I have to say, I have struggled to convince people of the effectiveness. Perhaps that's because I hadn't been convinced enough to stick firmly to them, and therefore haven't been effective in convincing others. Mike referred to Little's Law. Sorry it's a link to Wikipedia, but it's a place to start. Now, I haven't read up on this fully yet, but there seems to be some mathematical truth kicking about here. I've had WIP limits demonstrated by playing manufacturing games, but that isn't software development. However, there were some other arguments in store for me. Slides are here