Modus Cooperandi White Paper: Kanban: Diversity and Optimization of Knowledge Working Teams

Announcing the publication of Kanban: Diversity and Optimization of Knowledge Working Teams – a new Modus Cooperandi White Paper.

Late in 2012, we conducted a Board Walk (a site visit where we meet with teams using kanban or Personal Kanban and help them optimize the board and the team itself) at a client in the United States.  There were 15 individual teams, each of which had its own individually designed boards. Each board had a unique value stream, work item types, policies, and methods for judging completeness and quality.

Both management and the teams were frustrated because they hadn’t yet found a board design that worked for the entire company. They were looking for standardization.

However, each of these boards were, in some way, optimized for each individual team. Each team had its own context and these boards related specifically to that context. Each team was also actively improving their boards on a regular basis – meaning that optimization was continuing.

This white paper contrasts many of these boards, showing the differences in design of each board and the ramifications of those variations.

A PDF of this is available for organizations requiring a bulk purchase. Please write.

Failure is an Option-Collaberwocky Episode 4

The Lean Startup movement has focused considerable energy in the message that we learn from failures. Small, easily recoverable, failures can be invaluable in the success of a company. However, many ignore failure and focus on success. Since success is a rarity and failure much more common, we limit our learning opportunities by that success focus.

However, many also do not understand how the scientific process actually works. We therefore tend to build experiments that are invalid.

In Episode 4 of Collaberwocky, Corey Ladas, Jabe Bloom, and I discuss thoughtful failure.

Speaking from Power in an Uncertain World–Collaberwocky Episode 3

Are you a manager trying to get by in a flat or agile company? Do you find the role of manager repeatedly maligned?

This is more than just “It’s lonely in the middle.” There are significant positive shifts in making the workplace more productive, efficient and effective. However, each of these shifts has been accompanied by changes in roles – and these changes are rarely clearly spelled out.

In Episode 3 of Collaberwocky, Jabe Bloom, Corey Ladas, and I discuss how to speak from power in this new uncertain world.

The Language of Management–Collaberwocky Episode 2

In this episode of Collaberwocky, Jabe Bloom, Corey Ladas and I discuss “The Language of Management.” It seems that different rungs of the corporate ladder come with different perspectives. None are complete and all have their own biases and areas of focus.

Further, many management theories give rise to a sort of class warfare between the different rungs. “My manager doesn’t understand me.” “The C-Level suite are out of touch.” “The people who work for me are idiots.”

Far too often, this causes the rungs to appear so far apart that people cannot even fathom having productive conversations. Corey, Jabe and I mull over these issues.

We recommend you watch this video full screen.

Introducing Collaberwocky – Collaboration Conversations

For years I have been trying to get myself to do an interview show. There was one problem – interviews are not very collaborative. After doing Lean Coffees for a few years and hosting Lean Camp Seattle last year, it became clear to me that conversation creates information – and that was compelling.

So we launched Collaberwocky, a series of conversations about collaboration.

This runs exactly like a Lean Coffee. We get together with a few participants, we build a kanban, vote on what we’d like to discuss, then we discuss.

The first five episodes are with Corey Ladas, author of Scrumban, and Jabe Bloom, CTO of the Library Corporation.

This first Episode is “Intentional Cooperation” in which we discuss creating teams and processes that intentionally foster collaboration.