Neuroscience and Kanban

Visual Management with the brain in mind

About Me

• Team lead at Chillisoft

• MSc in Software Engineering

• Neuroleadership Certificate

• Not Canadian

Context

• The challenge of delivering and managing

Breakdown

• The Brain

• Neuroleadership

• Agile and Lean Principles Review

• Neuro-Kanban Experimentation

The Brain

A quick overview, I promise.

The Brain

• Limbic System

• System 1

The Brain

• PFC

• System 2

The Amygdala Hijack

Back to Normal Programming

Linking Neuroscience to Agile

• SCARF• Jenni Jepsen on “The Neuroscience Behind Why Agile

Works”• She states why David Rock’s SCARF model is behind Agile’s

success.

• http://www.scarf360.com/ • http://www.infoq.com/interviews/jepsen-why-agile-works

SCARF

• S - Status• C - Certainty• A - Autonomy• R - Relatedness• F - Fairness

Agile and Lean Principles Review

What is Agile

• Agile is one of the big buzzwords of the IT development industry

• Put simply, agile development is a different way of managing IT development teams and projects.

10 Key Agile Principles

1. Active user involvement is imperative

2. The team must be empowered to make decisions

3. Requirements evolve but the timescale is fixed

4. Capture requirements at a high level; lightweight & visual

5. Develop small, incremental releases and iterate

6. Focus on frequent delivery of products

7. Complete each feature before moving on to the next

8. Apply the 80/20 rule

9. Testing is integrated throughout the project lifecycle – test early and often

10.A collaborative & cooperative approach between all stakeholders is essential

What is Lean Software Development?

• Adapted from the Toyota Production System

• The term lean software development originated in a book by the same name, written by Mary Poppendieck and Tom Poppendieck

7 Lean Principles

1. Eliminate Waste

2. Build Quality In

3. Create Knowledge

4. Defer Commitment

5. Deliver Fast

6. Respect People

7. Optimise The Whole

Kanban Board Principles

• Visualize workflow• Limit work-in-progress• Pull work from column to column• Monitor, adapt, improve

Board Flow

Kanban Board Principles

• R2L-4-L2R

Board Flow

Information Radiators

Defer Commitment vs Complete Each Feature

• 70/30 rule

• Eisenhower task matrix

Delivery Expectations

• Stanford Prison Experiment

• Honesty is Accuracy

Sticky Refactoring

• The process of extracting the delivered value from a sticky.

Defining Value

• Autonomy

• Finding Rabbit Holes

Fluffy the Scrum Slayer

Principles of ABD

• Honesty is Accuracy• Your board must always reflect reality no matter how

much it sucks!• Sticky Refactoring

• Love your Technical Debt• By loving it you care about it, when you care about it

you make sure it is taken care of.• Red Bins

Our Real Boad

Thank you! Questions?

Social Media:

● Twitter - @tmfrisinger● G+ - https://plus.google.com/+TravisFrisinger