December 18, 2016

The Tangible Value of The “Intangibles”

One of the important aspects of The Kanban Method is Class of Service (CoS). CoS is a risk categorization mechanism for any work item. We identify 4 Classes of Service – Standard, Fixed Date, Expedite, and Intangibles – depending on customer expectation, value and loss of business value identified as cost of delay. For this blog, cards that are classified as Intangible CoS will be referred to as “Intangibles”.
April 10, 2015

Tales of Lean/ Agile and Paired Sweeping in Bengaluru!

I was in Bangalore for a few days, in part to attend the Agile India 2015 conference.  The Sunday morning after the conference got done, I decided to go for a walk.  Instead of the picturesque Cubbon Park close by, I decided to go exploring the city.  In keeping with the Lean/ Kanban principles discussed at the conference, I decided to maximize flow – and turn in whichever direction the pedestrian crossings were open.  That immediately put me on Kasturba Road.  I thought fleetingly, “Of course, Kasturba Gandhi (Road) had to be next to her husband Mahatma Gandhi (MG) Road!”
July 15, 2014

Purpose – The Hidden Lever of Productivity?

(This is a series of blogs of my thoughts on the most important of human endeavors, Work and its associated things like Productivity and Processes. This is second in the series).
February 11, 2014

How do you use Kanban in a Fixed Duration/ Fixed Cost Project?

This is a common dilemma for teams wanting to use Kanban for 'fixed price, fixed cost" projects.  On the one hand, you have a business demand to commit up-front to a timeline and scope (and cost) to deliver a product; on the other hand, you have a promising tool – Kanban – that completely does away with any concept of time (or scope) bucketing but yet promises higher value and better quality to the customer.