Kanban your way to breakthrough profitability

Charan/ July 19, 2014/ Agile/ 0 comments

Kanbans are an unbelievably simple way to improve throughput. It does not require you to begin with significant change which most process improvement initiatives do. It helps you experiment within your span of control and learn through those simple non-threatening experiments.

Transforming from waterfall to agile

Charan/ January 12, 2013/ Agile/ 4 comments

Introducing agility into traditional systems development processes is never easy. Firstly, you have got to want to change. Secondly, you need to have a vision of what to change to. Finally, you need the tenacity to forge ahead in the face of stiff resistance. It is usually the third that is the most difficult journey to undertake. The hardest part

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How to implement critical chain project management across the enterprise

Charan/ March 27, 2012/ Agile/ 8 comments

I have frequently been asked – how would you actually implement Critical Chain project management? But before I get to that, why would you want to implement critical chain? If you work in an organization that follows traditional project management practices, it is likely that critical chain project management may appeal to your PMO. You can most likely follow the

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Flow in traditional project management process

Charan/ March 4, 2012/ Agile/ 0 comments

Traditional project management works this way: Charter the project – include scope, ROM budget and ROM timelines Create a business requirements document. All requirements needs to be documented upfront and signed off by the customer. To me this is a contract that says what we will deliver. Architect then designs the solution. S/he provides technical specification to developers. Somewhere along

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Portfolio management using Kanban and Critical Chain

Charan/ January 1, 2012/ Agile/ 3 comments

Happy New Year to all my readers My first post of 2012. 2011 has been a very interesting year. Back in October Mike Burrows (PositiveIncline.com) and I briefly communicated on how Kanban could scale to manage project portfolio. I particularly liked his post “Kanban in its portfolio context“. Now, if you have been following my blog or have been at

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Kanban saves the day

Charan/ December 5, 2011/ Agile/ 0 comments

I was brought in to deliver a project on-time with less than 2 months remaining. While the project scope and deliverables were clear, getting to the solution was not. R&D was required to get some of the features delivered and that was expected to take up a significant amount of time. The team was cross functional and dispersed – from

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Forget project post-mortems, predict project failure

Charan/ October 13, 2011/ Agile/ 1 comments

The buffer penetration line crept up with renewed intensity. Worse, this was the second week it remained in the Red zone. My earlier conversations with the powers that be did not appear to help. Developers were being pulled into higher priority tasks. But now I had data. A week of people unable to work to the plan meant the project

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Making Kanban work in matrix organizations

Charan/ October 10, 2011/ Agile/ 3 comments

  “Having allocated developers to the project and ensuring that they knew what needed to be accomplished, I was feeling very good about the project. After all, we had commitments from the team. Over the next few days, however, I realized that the team was not able to work on my project at all. Other high priority work demanded their

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Speed up project delivery using Critical Chain

Charan/ September 28, 2011/ Agile/ 1 comments

We talked about the following issues (On estimating project tasks) that prevent projects from completing on time: Milestone Management: Working to meet task deadlines or milestones Parkinson’s Law: Work expands to fill (and even exceed) the allocated time Student Syndrome: Negotiate safety into tasks (by extending the deadline) and use the safety upfront. Scramble towards the end to get the

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