Over time, we created a toolbox from the methods that proved successful as well as a systematic way to use this toolbox: EAgLe.
Projects need decisions. Unknown or unclear decisions might lead to undesirable actions. False decisions can even derail entire projects. Clearly, this is not the case for all decisions but for the important ones that give a project direction. Given the importance of decisions, some thought should be given to how decisions are reached. Surprisingly, many…
Large user stories (features) may pose a challenge even for teams that are quite efficient in producing high-quality releases consisting of small-to-medium size user stories. By large, we mean stories that take a considerable time for specification and/or development (more than a week for example) or have a high degree of complexity. Oftentimes, the same…
Blockers, stale tickets, bottlenecks need to be managed regularly to establish flow. An obvious choice for such a flow management to take place is a Daily Standup. Due to the popularity of Scrum, its approach to conducting Daily Scrums has been adopted by many teams for their Daily Standup even those not using Scrum. Is…
The Pros Limiting parallel work is a means to improve (among others) efficiency of work systems. In the Kanban context such limits are called WIP (Work in Progress or Work in Process) limits. In case of Team Kanban for instance they are set at the team level for workstations (workflow steps). It is in Team…
Introduction Continuously improving a project will necessitate making changes (among others) to the meeting structure(s). Oftentimes, “new” meetings such as Daily Standups or Retrospectives are met with resistance due to their perceived cost while established meeting such as weekly (aka Jour Fixe) meetings are considered to be indispensable. An objective view of the costs might…
Introduction In 2024, the success of IT projects is still the exception and not the rule. This holds true besides the presence of many solutions such as Scrum, XP, Kanban, SAFe etc. I would argue that the sole focus on solutions rather than the problem(s) and the underlying “forces” does not have the desired effect.…
There are no interruptions of work. The changes will be implemented in parallel to the regular activities.
The changes generates little to no efficiency losses, because the employees can continue do work as usual and in their well-known environment.
Changes in many small steps give you the opportunity to incorporate what you have learned in the next steps and to make corrections if necessary.
Success along the way encourages to take the next steps.
Accepting the status quo as the starting point pays respect to the employee and their way of working.
The benefit which is gained from the steps before can finance the next ones.
In each situation we use the method which promises the greatest benefit.
The mixture gives you the possibility to use premium and industry-proven methods without dogmatic constraints.
Individual methods complement one another and in combination they have an increased effect.
The improvements are motivated by the targets and that increases the acceptance by the team.
Because of the agreement to objective, measurable targets before starting with the improvement activities the team has a consensus when an activity was successful.
With a higher transparency of costs and benefits the management supports of the improvement process is higher than otherwise.
“Thorsten’s [1] ability to quickly understand the organization, the product and our specific needs was a key factor in helping us to significantly improve our agile approach. After some concise, highly professional and fun hands-on sessions we were on our way and have been successfully using and will continue to use agile methods like Kanban and user story mapping in our projects. Thorsten is highly skilled in all aspects of agile project methods and programming and, on top of that, an amazing team member and fun to work with.”
[1] Thorsten Fink, Ph.D., CEO and Founder of Agile For Real
“Thorsten enabled the team to reach ambitious goals. He has been a decisive factor in the success of the project.”
“Thorsten’s Kanban expertise has been invaluable in the formation of our new support team. His training and in-context coaching were extremely professional and his recommendations could be put to work right away. The successful go-live in July 2015 is in parts his success.”
Reiner Bruttger
Head of Development & Architecture, Universum Group
R+V Versicherung AG
Commerzbank AG
UNIVERSUM Group GmbH
Deutsche Telekom AG
Dresdner Bank AG
DekaBank Deutsche Girozentrale
