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#ChefConf 2014 Workshop Spotlight: Kanban

Lucas Welch | Posted on | awesome chefs | ChefConf | community | DevOps | events

Continuing our blog series highlighting each of the #ChefConf workshops and the unique learning opportunity they each present, today’s post puts the spotlight on Dragos Dumitriu’s “Introduction to Kanban for IT Operations and DevOps”, which will focus on helping people and teams in operations roles develop a new perspective and a new mindset that is easy to learn.

What kind of mindset? Dragos explains, “Imagine you’re in a large conference room and need to move 60 chairs from one side to the other. Do you try and stack and move all 60 at once? No, you move a couple at a time, as fast as you can. Less work in progress shortens the time it takes to get things done, improves quality, and reduces rework. This is one of the lean principles used in Kanban.”

If you’re wondering if this training is for you, here are a few questions to ask yourself:

–        Are your customers saying your team takes too long to deliver?

–        Do you have a growing backlog with requests months to years old?

–        Are people with critical skills not available when you need them?

–        Do you feel like priorities are changing all the time?

If you’ve answered ‘yes’ to one or more of these, Kanban can help your team improve in these areas. Dragos continues, “Ten years ago, David Anderson and I began experimenting with the application of lean processes to software engineering and later to IT Operations. Today, Kanban is being used worldwide to identify and eliminate constraints and waste while improving workflows for knowledge workers.”

By the end of this full-day workshop, you’ll know how to balance planned tasks with break/fix issues; how to deal with interruptions; understand causes and costs of delay; see the value of having cross functional teams and how to minimize impact from unavailability of critical resources.

Wow.

“Introduction to Kanban” is sure to be a hugely beneficial course. Included in the cost is a PDF copy of David Anderson’s book Kanban, Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Business. Getting familiar with the book content will maximize your time during the course.

Register for “Introduction to Kanban” today and learn how to apply Kanban solutions to IT Operations and Maintenance situations from one of the method’s pioneers.

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