I’m coaching a cross-functional team working across IT operations, application support and development, using Kanban to manage everything larger than the most immediate support requests.
They already appreciate the importance of reviewing their work and process, so we’ve been trying to make this into Standard Work.
Our first attempt is the 30 Minute Review and Retrospective
Review (max 10 minutes total)
Look at every story completed this week, for each (so ~1 min per story):
- What did we plan to do?
- What actually happened?
- Why?
- What would we do next time?
Retrospective (max 20 mins total)
- What do we want to do more of, what do we want to change or stop? (5 mins max)
- Go round the group – what have we done for the improvement actions we committed to last week? (5 mins max)
- Look at Cumulative Flow, Cycle Time and Lead Time – what issues do we see, what actions can we take? (5 mins max)
- Go round the group – each individual commits to an improvement action for next week (5 mins max)
Based on the initial couple of goes at this process, 30 minutes is very very tight. This week I am going to run an hour with them, and although an hour per week is quite a large percentage of the working week, I suspect that the volume of Kaizen opportunities we are finding warrants it.
What’s your experience of introducing reflective practice within a Kanban environment?
