Working with the method: the first two weeks

During the following two weeks daily meetings were held each day. They ranged from 5-15 minutes in length and were led by the coach who taught the team how to do daily meetings and coached the team together with the OpEx and Quality Manager. The coaching focused on practical things such as making sure tasks were split into appropriate sizes and that WIP limits were held. The coach also tried to spark conversation by asking the team members questions such as if they had encountered

problems while working or whether there was any additional information they would like to share with their team mates. In the beginning the coach led the meetings and taught the teams how to hold them, but as the days progressed the team became more and more independent and during the second week they started claiming ownership of the process and the coach began taking a more observatory role, observing and asking questions as needed.

The daily meetings were held in a designated space in the office where the Kanban board and backlog were displayed on the wall. Gradually additional documents and tools were also added to the space. For example a sheet of paper displaying important dates, and one sheet of paper displaying the team member’s absences and vacations were added. Also the project schedule (Gantt chart) was displayed next to the board. It also became a habit to display relevant meeting documents on the wall such as feedback from the retrospectives. Below in figure 8 a picture of the teams backlog and Kanban board are shown. For confidentiality reasons the notes have been edited blank. The team members names have also been covered so the team members can stay anonymous.

Figure 8: The backlog and the Kanban board

In the backlog (see figure 8 on the previous page) the team members each have a separate column of tasks in a prioritized order, the highest priority task is at the top. At the time of this picture there were few tasks left so soon more tasks had to be planned.

The box drawn at the bottom of the backlog displays work that is continuous, so tasks of continuous nature can be kept there and then moved back to the board when it’s time to work on them again. The little circle of colorful dots in the backlog is another tool. The dots are utilized to mark that a note has been moved on the board outside the daily meetings. While it is preferable to move the notes at the daily meetings, the dots have proven to be a useful tool in some circumstances.

The team members each have their own row in the Kanban board, a so called “swim lane”, where they move their tasks by “pulling” them forward from one column to the other, creating an even flow of tasks. The WIP limits of the “To do” and “doing”

columns are displayed at the top of the column, note the the WIP limit for “doing” does not include the sub-column “waiting”. The engineers usually have one or maximum two tasks in their doing column, but the project manager (pink notes) sometimes exceeds the WIP limit since some of his tasks are very short, the rule of thumb is that the tasks in the “doing” column should be about one day’s work taking into account the multi-project environment. The waiting column has proven useful and is used a lot for different reasons; sometimes tasks wait for input and sometimes tasks wait for other tasks to finished before sending the tasks collectively for approval. There is no WIP limit for the waiting column, but the tasks in this column are continuously reviewed at the daily meetings with the aim of making sure that they are progressing as soon as possible. The row at the bottom is marked “Muut” which is a Finnish word and means

“others”. This row is used in case someone outside the core team takes part in the project work. In that case they may participate in the daily meetings and use this row.

Another option is that the team members track the external participants’ task progress and visualize it using this row.

When working with the board it is important that all team members have the same understanding of what the different statuses of the tasks mean. There has been discussion and learning in the beginning regarding for example when a tasks status is

“waiting” and when it is “approval”. Although the concept of artifact transparency has

not been introduced, the coach acknowledges its importance and has kept this in mind when coaching the team. The board is only effective as a communication tool for the team if all team members understand it the same way, in order to prevent misunderstandings it is important that the team members discuss the tasks as they move them on the board, and question the choice of column they are placed in if needed.