Kanban’s Passage to India – with David Anderson!
Between Dec 16th and 21st, we had the pleasure of hosting David in India to meet a few key customers, Digité/ SwiftKanban employees, as well as host a local meetup in Bangalore (or Bengaluru!). We also took the opportunity to do several things – formally launch SwiftKanban for the India market, start the Limited WIP Society – India chapter and host a dinner with some key industry leaders that allowed them to have a closer interaction with David. It was a great experience for both us and David!
January 14, 2013
While Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) has become a topic of great discussion for middle-management, especially in Engineering organizations, it has largely remained a discussion on application/ software development and tool-chains. Advantages to Developers and Engineering managers have been highlighted, however, the crucial business benefits that ALM has the promise to deliver to the organizations have yet to be clearly understood and espoused. So that these can become the very basis for effective ALM to be established and for the business benefits to accrue.
Thanksgiving each year is a big occasion for our family and friends – to get together and eat, drink and be merry – and of course, be grateful for what we have! Yet, right before that, during the days leading up to it, there is a sense of angst that builds up as one question occupies the hosts’ – and the rest of the people cooking (we always do it Potluck) – mind – “What shall be the menu for the Big Day??!!” While the thought of getting together and eating, drinking and being merry is everyone’s top priority, it is the what we will be eating and drinking that becomes the biggest factor in whether we will be merry or not!
While Kanban is an evolutionary (non-disruptive) change management process, the fact is that it requires a change in organizational and management practices and behavior that can be daunting. The best place to begin that change is at a personal level. We are deeply honored to have Jim Benson – the father of Personal Kanban – write a guest blog for us that emphasizes precisely that and helps you get started! Since Tonianne and I started writing about ![10-Factors-that-Impact-your-Kanban-Board-Design1[1]](https://d112uwirao0vo9.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/5-Factors-that-Impact-your-Kanban-Board-Design11.png "Digite Blog")
Last week I showed you how my example blogger friend manages his blogging and life using Kanban. So lets dig a little deeper, How do you do this yourself based on last week example? Why are you writing your blog? For fun? To put your thoughts down on virtual paper? To gain a reputation as the best carpenter in the neighbourhood? Our blogger from last week uses the blog as a means to an end. He wants to enhance his professional reputation, and get invited to lecture on his subject.
We recently concluded our Annual AsiaPac customer meet – DigiConnect 2012, connecting our AsiaPac based customers in a highly interactive event that provided us a perfect opportunity to hang out with our customers, and for them to meet/ network with their counterparts and share ideas/ best practices around the implementation of Digité Agile ALM suite of products. The audience was a mix of our varied customer base, from our very first customer in India, KPIT Cummins to L & T IES. The Engineering and Technology services giant and a recent addition to our marquee customer list!
I’ve been asked on more than occasion how do I keep up with my blogging. So I’ll let you in on a little secret. I use Kanban. Now, you may find this hard to believe, but I find that Kanban can be used for almost anything. Kanban is a powerful tool, that helps you see what you need to get done, and how to control the load, both of which make sure that you get things done, and deliver value quickly. Well, when we don’t have a lot to do, and you’ve got stuff to blog about, there’s usually no problem. 
At a training session in Kitchener Waterloo, Canada. I was asked how to visualize and handle cycles in a Kanban board. The images below show a way to do it as a physical board and on an electronic board such as Swift Kanban. Tickets within a cycle move from left to right, from one column to the next until and cycle back as many times as necessary and once done they move to the Done column at the the end of the cycle. Note that columns inside the cycle can contain their own Done columns.
