The Archives

Kanban Man!
Kanban: “Just set it and forget it!”
05.25.08 | Permalink |
Late last year I set up a kanban system for a Yahoo! India team. They had lots of little features and bug fixes to work on, but they didn’t know how to organize it all to get it done. Scrum wasn’t working well because the nature of the work was too dynamic.

Armed with blue painter’s tape (imported) and post-it’s (imported too) I worked with the lead developer & producer to set it up. I briefly discussed the principals that makes the system work: reduce WIP to increase throughput, use the post-it’s as a signal to begin work.

Time for team indoctrination. The lead engineer explained the system to the folks on the team.
1. The producer/product manager will queue up ‘things to do’, limited to 5
2. The developers will take the top items from the top of the queue
3. When the developers are done, they will be placed in the ‘dev done’ slot
4. Then the testers will pick up items from the ‘dev done’ slot and test them
5. When the ‘thing to do’ is done to the tester’s and producer’s/product manger’s satisfaction, it’s ready to release.
I sat back and just watched it unfold. Every few weeks I would go by and I’d stop in to see how things were going. The system was just like a machine; it was systematically pushing features & bug fixes through the team in a very transparent way. The tech lead moved to another project and the kanban system kept working. A new product manager came in and the kanban system kept working.

Ron Popeil sells a Rotisserie & BBQ Oven with the tag line, ‘Just set it and forget it!’ My Aunt ordered the machine. The first thing that you see when you open the box is (I’m paraphrasing from memory) “WARNING! While the slogan may be ‘Just set it and forget it!’ it doesn’t mean you can leave the machine unattended at any time. As with any kitchen appliance involving high temperatures, you must take caution.”

This team, did not literally ’set it and forget it’. But it was a system that worked very for them with few modifications. They were largely in maintenance mode and were tasked with fixing bugs, making performance improvements, fixing production issues and making incremental improvements.
Viva Agilista
Joe: The Camp Counselor
03.16.08 | Permalink |

I was interviewed by StickyMinds for their Iterations newsletter.

“The last thing I’d describe my work as is ‘process support,’” says Joe who at any given time, looks after seven to ten teams across multiple locations of his company. “I feel more like a camp counselor.”

StickyMinds Iterations: Keystone People
Innovation & You
Hack Day India
11.30.07 | Permalink |

Hack Day India was awesome.

Hack Day is an event where programmers (and even those who can’t) come together to build cool stuff over 24 hours. Yahoo! supplies the venue, food, entertainment and the all important WiFi connection. After 24 hours every hacker gets to be in the spotlight and show off what they built.

Putting together the event was a whirlwind. So many people from Yahoo! mobilized to put the event together and we got a lot of help from the Taj Residency and Karpe Diem Entertainment.

Starting the night before, our IT staff got to work, setting up the networking gear to transform the 1st floor of the Taj Residency into a super-wifi, 20Mbs hotspot. Rock. The setup continued through the night and by morning we were ready to go.

The hackers were greeted to a huge open-space scattered with Hack Day India beanbags that they got to take home at the end of the event. Everyone was excited about that. Christian Hielmann and Shivku Ganesan from Yahoo! along with Ragu Rau from Adobe gave a few talks before the hacking started. Bradley Horowitz kicked-off the hacking.

With that, the hacking began! People quickly formed into teams and got to work. Hacking lasted through the night. Sid DJ-ed through the night, people took breaks to play the Xbox and the Wii. Caffeine spurred us on. Some of us couldn’t hang on and managed to grab a few zzs.

One thing that amazed me was the willingness that everyone had to help each other out. The people really made the event. Cheers to that!

Bradley Horowitz kicks off the Juding. I announce the judges. The first few hacks.

“The 9″, Maria Sansone, _hacks_ up the winners.

A few other posts on Hack Day India:
http://shouryalive.com/blog/winners-at-yahoo-hackday-india/
http://d.hatena.ne.jp/i_ogi/20071006/1191685755
http://srinix.wordpress.com/2007/10/09/yahoo-open-hackday-awesome-event/
http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/10/08/Yahoo-holds-Open-Hack-Day-in-India_1.html
http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/oct2007/gb20071011_261426.htm?chan=search
http://www.livemint.com/2007/10/15234610/Tuesday-Post–Hack-marathon.html
http://yodel.yahoo.com/2007/10/11/usa-hacked-europe-hacked-asia-hacked/