Kanban System Design

Kanban’s greatest strength is that it models anything because it is very flexible. However, unlike Scrum, there is no base recipe to start from. The adopting organization must make every decision regarding how it will implement Kanban. Construx helps teams define a Kanban system and create a Kanban board that will work for their unique needs.

Workshop Activities

This engagement is conducted with teams that will adopt Kanban and includes the following activities:

• Construx teaches our one-day Kanban Essentials course to ensure a shared understanding of Kanban.
• A day of coaching with each team to build their Kanban system, including descriptions of deliverables, workflow, exit criteria, work-in-process limits, and metrics.

If desired, Construx will return and work with the teams to address concerns and continue the improvement efforts.

Outcomes

At the conclusion of this engagement, the teams will have:

• A shared understanding of Kanban.
• Their Kanban system and Kanban board.
• An initial set of metrics to use to monitor and improve their workflow.

Duration

This engagement lasts for three or five days depending on the number of teams participating.

Audience

One or more teams that want to adopt Kanban or are interested in improving their current adoption. Appropriate leaders within the organization should also attend.

About this course

Knowledge transfer is more than just on-the-job training. It is also replicating the expertise, wisdom and tacit knowledge of critical professionals into the heads and hands of their coworkers. This workshop shows experts how to organize knowledge into manageable chunks, teach that material, and then make sure the information was received. It also shows simple ways to leverage different learning styles, and teaches mentors best practices for staying in touch with apprentices and transferring their knowledge while still getting their regular work done. The tone of our workshop is straightforward, get-it-done advice that has been tested and refined in the real world.

Benefits

• Define roles in the knowledge transfer process to clarify expectations and encourage buy in—for better coordination, prioritization, and communication between the manager, the mentor and the apprentice.
• Explain the “big picture” to mentors, apprentices, and their managers—to improve their ability to make good decisions and increase consistency in product or service delivery
• Complete and execute a Skill Development Plan—for a 50% shorter ramp-up to productivity and a way to ensure ongoing consistency within a team or division
• Transfer knowledge and improve relations across generational and learning style boundaries—so that recent hires and the most senior employees can work together more effectively
• Provide quick but rigorous verbal tests that ensure wisdom and tacit knowledge have been transferred—to measurably increase bench strength in even the most challenging technical domains
• Show how to make knowledge transfer a part of your culture—for a consistently ready workforce

Who Should Take This Workshop

This workshop is useful to all technical professionals, including their team leads and managers. It is for anyone at any level of your business who is responsible, either formally or informally, for transferring knowledge and bringing other employees up to speed while still getting their job done. Apprentices attend so they can learn how to drive their own learning and prepare to be next-generation mentors. Managers will learn ways to support their team and hold them accountable for knowledge transfer results.

Professional Development Ladder Implementation

Construx’s Professional Development Ladder (PDL) provides structured career pathing for software professionals. We freely offer five different career paths. These career paths work well for some companies. Others need a custom PDL that meets their unique learning and development requirements.

In the PDL Implementation workshop, we’ll design a Professional Development Ladder and a set of career paths specific to your organization. The career paths enable focused professional development that grows staff capabilities much more quickly than ad hoc work experience. The precise guidance also helps attract and retain talent. Because career pathing improves skills in software best practices, domain knowledge, and technology knowledge, organizations deliver projects and products more successfully.

See Construx’s Career Pathing for Software Professionals white paper for more details on the need for and importance of professional development.

Workshop Activities

During the workshop, we will work together to:

• Create a unique set of career paths for your organization, including the capability levels and knowledge areas necessary for progression.
• Map the career paths to the current HR titles.
• Determine the desired level of knowledge area customization.
• Decide on a rollout strategy.

Outcomes

At the conclusion of the workshop, you’ll have:

• A Professional Development Ladder overview that captures the specific knowledge areas, capability levels, and knowledge area detailed changes that will be made. The overview summarizes the career paths and shows how they progress.
• A customization plan to complete the detailed design work for remaining knowledge areas, including which key influencers need to review it, work assignments, and a check-in plan.
• A rollout plan that outlines a strategy for deploying your professional development program.

Duration

The PDL Implementation workshop typically runs for two days.

Some organizations conduct two workshops. In the first, leaders of the organization agree and align on the overall structure, guidelines, and goals for the professional development program. In the second, the group chartered to customize and deploy the PDL makes fine-grained decisions and creates a rollout plan.

Program Increment Planning Review

Program Increment (PI) planning is an important event in the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe^®), a scaling framework that helps multiple Agile teams synchronize their collaboration and delivery. Bringing together a hundred or more people for a 2 or 3-day event is a significant investment for any organization. The investment should result in a plan for the next 8–12 weeks, including PI objectives, team objectives, and a program board.

Done well, PI planning mitigates risks, achieves alignment between teams and with leadership, and exposes and resolves dependencies. Done poorly, it is a frustrating and expensive event—participants walk away wondering why the company spent so much time and energy on it.

Construx can make your PI planning activities as efficient and effective as they can be.

Engagement Activities

Construx’s PI Planning Review includes the following set of structured events:

• Review and analysis of work products from the previous PI
• Review of value streams and the Agile Release Train (ART) to ensure alignment and efficiency
• Interviews with key staff, including the Release Train Engineer (RTE), architects, product managers, and technical influencers
• Observation of your PI planning event
• Review and analysis of the feedback for your PI planning event
• Creation of a report highlighting recommended improvements
• Discussions with your RTE and key staff about the recommendations

Outcomes

After the engagement, you’ll have

• A summary of strengths and gaps in your current PI planning process
• Specific, prioritized recommendations for improvements

Other SAFe-Related Services

Construx can also support your SAFe efforts with these services: helping organizations adopt SAFe, SAFe courses, facilitating your PI planning event, a Scaling Scrum course, and customized scaling consulting.

Contact us for more information on PI planning support or any these offerings.

Standard Estimation Procedure

Many organizations struggle to estimate their projects effectively. Late surprises, canceled projects, or projects that seem to slip continuously are common symptoms of poor estimation. Construx believes that software project success can be the norm. Good estimation practices are required for such success.

Construx will help you build an effective estimation process that has the following attributes:

• Multiple estimation points occur throughout the life of a project.
• The estimates include ranges, not only fixed points.
• The estimation ranges decrease as the project moves forward.
• There is an incremental commitment to at least one side of the “Iron Triangle”: feature set, schedule, or cost.

Engagement Activities

The following activities occur as part of developing a Standard Estimation Procedure:

• Software Estimation course (two days). This course ensures a deep understanding of the whys and wherefores of software estimation. The team learns what options exist for introducing better estimation practices.
• Software Estimation Process workshop (two days). In this facilitated workshop, the key players and stakeholders agree on how and when estimation will be done for your organization’s software projects. The process includes measures on performance. The workshop results in the core content of an agreed-upon estimation process.

This engagement is often followed by customized estimation training throughout the organization or by providing staff access to the estimation courses in Construx OnDemand.

Outcomes

At the end of this four-day session, you will have:

• A shared understanding of the estimation practices your organization will use.
• A set of points throughout the project lifecycle when estimates will occur and a description of which estimates techniques will be used.
• Agreement of all key players on the new estimation process.

Audience

The key players in determining how estimation should be done in the future in your organization. This group should include people that will create and consume the estimates.

Resources

Curious about what a Standard Estimation Procedure is? Contact us for our Standard Estimation Procedure practices paper.

About this workshop

Problem Solved

Many teams struggle to deliver value early and frequently. Teams often work on what is easiest, lowest risk, or most familiar because they just don’t know who all their stakeholders are and what those stakeholders value.

The first Agile Principle says “Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software”, but even Agile teams can fall victim to delayed or inadequate value delivery. Maximizing velocity and delivering lots of story points doesn’t guarantee delivering lots of value.

Workshop Approach

Teams that use Value-Driven Delivery create stakeholder value early and often, based on the answers to these three simple – but not easy – questions:

• Who are your stakeholders?
• What do they value?
• What are you doing in the next two weeks to add value to your stakeholders?

This information permits teams to sequences and prioritize work to maximize value delivery, and then track progress based on value delivered rather than via time and resources expended, story points delivered, etc.

Workshop Activities

During the workshop, we will work together to:

• Generate a complete, validated, prioritized list of the stakeholders for the team’s work
• Create quantitative, measurable stakeholder value statements
• Create a Landing Zone for the team based on the ‘vital few’ stakeholder values that truly define success vs. failure
• Generate and evaluate design ideas against stakeholder values to ensure the chosen design elements are necessary and sufficient
• Update and reorder backlogs and plans based on value delivery

Outcomes

After the workshop, the team will have:

• A complete list of stakeholders
• A quantified list of stakeholder values
• An explicit success definition (Landing Zone) for their work
• An understanding of whether the existing design ideas are necessary and sufficient to deliver what stakeholders really want
• Work that is sequenced according to stakeholder value delivered
• The ability to track progress based on stakeholder value delivery

Duration

Value-Driven Delivery workshops typically run 2-3 days, depending on scope and detail desired.

Audience

This workshop is appropriate for teams of all sizes that are using traditional, Agile, or hybrid development methodologies.

Get in touch about this workshop.