General impression
Day two of the Lean Kanban Central Europe 2011 (#lkce11) conference was very good as well(read about day 1 here). I had some very hard session selection decisions to make.
Day two also introduced a Kanban system for the lunch buffet. To prevent the lunch process to come to a complete stop, as it did on Monday for some (not me as I was early), a fixed number of Kanban tokens was handed out as people entered the lunch room and was collected as they left. This kept the process flowing. Great process improvements!
Sessions
Keynote
John Seddon
John Seddon was entertaining as usual. He talked about 95/5 rule described by W. Edwards Deming and the importance to change the system and not the people.
He also talked about the importance of eliminating hand offs and focusing on the total lead time and not on individual steps in a process.
Work specialization and standard work is not a good in systems with with high variability
Manager are obsessed with managing cost. When you manage cost you make them higher. Manage value!
We also got the usual John Seddon Lean tools bashing. And some on agile
Agile is doing the wrong thing faster
We don’t track utilization, we track availability as this is useful if you want to make a sale
Growing Pains and Remedies. Using Kanban to affect and embrace change from R&D to production
Chris Young, Dan Brown
I had the great fortune to dine with Chris Young at the Gala Dinner and we spoke quite a bit about the things he and Dan presented in this experience report. But I did really enjoy it anyway.
They talked about the challenges of how to synchronize the work between different teams from different companies and different countries. They also talk about how they improved as they focused more and more on quality instead of focusing on throughput.
If you want to improve throughput you should forget about throughput and focus on quality
If you are bored in the daily standup raise your hand. Lots of hands means you take the current discussion off line
Chris also told a interesting story where he had to visit the hospital and get some stiches. After 3 hours of waiting he got examined but was asked to come back the next day so he didn’t have to wait so long to get his stiches. The day after there was a suture clinic that would do sutures in batches in a very efficient way. But what about Chris total waiting time!?
Igniting change in 20 teams within 6 months. An experience Report from Sandvik IT Services
Johan Nordin, Christophe Achouiantz
This was the highlight of the day. I would say this session was close second to Kent Becks session on day 1. Sorry Michael Burrows I had to place you on third 
Johan Nordin and Christophe Achouiantz talked about how they have introduces Lean ideas and Kanban to 26 teams at Sandvik. The session was very well crafted with great visuals and the presentation was well rehearsed and went very well.
They presented how the used A3 reports to build buy-in from management and how they used that buy-in to introduce 26 teams to Lean and Kanban through a one day Kanban kick start.
They tried not to push the ideas and concepts to the teams but shaped the path for the teams and then they let the teams pull help from them as the teams needed it.
Great session!
You find the slides here
4 Pecha Kuchas
Markus Andrezak
Arne Roock
Jim Benson
Yuval Yeret
The Pecha Kucha format was new to me so I just had to go and see how it was. Four talks with 20 slides that show for 20 seconds.
Markus Andrezak talked about democratizing Kanban
Arne Roock about 10 ways to improve your Card Wall
Jim Benson on what food he has eaten the last year or so!!??
Yuval Yeret about limiting the number of polices in process. Slides
Interesting format with mixed results.
Build it and they will come
David Joyce
David Joyce introduced us to some of the Lean Startup ideas by describing his experience from Jalipo.
At Jalipo they did all the right things if you would look at it from an Agile implementation perspective. They built a high quality product on record speed using all the right Agile tools. They only had one problem: There where no customers who wanted to pay for the product!
Maybe Seddon was right:
Agile is doing the wrong thing faster
Interesting subject but the format was a little to slow for my taste.
Why Kanban fits the Jimdo company culture
Fridtjof Detzner, Sönke Rümpler
Interesting session. But for some reason I did not get engaged. They are using visualization and Kanban throughout the company and it really works for them.
Take a look at this great video
How Agile and Lean changed my Organization
Bernd Schiffer
Bernad taled about how IT-Agile use Lean ideas and Kanban in their business. This felt more a regular session than an experience report.
At IT-Agile they are using the ideas from Daniel Pinks book – Drive
They have 20% days
They have tried to eliminate all explicit rules and are using purpose and transparence so everyone can make their own decisions that are appropriate in their situation. High trust environment that creates motivation and a desire for mastery.
Keynote
Stephen Bungay
I unfortunately had to leave in the beginning of this keynote. Stephen was very entertaining and came across as a cross bread between the stereotype of a British officer from the second world war and Mr. Bean. I loved it!
For the short time I could listen he talked about the history of modern management and started to touch on how some military management has taken a different approach.
I’m sorry I couldn’t stay.
Summary
This was over all a very good conference. It get’s a 5 of 5 for Return On Invested Time from me. I only wish I could have been able to go to all the sessions! Good work!
Here are the conference is summary by Ceren Meissner!
Hakan Forss's Blog 