So what does phantom traffic jams have to do with WIP limits on Kanban for software development? Traffic density and variations in driver behavior - do you see a connection? Traffic density = feature backlog list; variations in driver behavior = variations in ETC of each feature in the backlog. If your backlog increases at a greater rate than you can deliver, this indicates that the traffic density is increasing and the risk of a phantom traffic jam increases. If a predecessor task took longer than expected, the duration on all future tasks will increase; i.e. all the successor tasks are sitting longer in the queue for their turn thereby increasing lead time.

Now, if I am driver stuck in such a traffic, I would like to know how long I am going to be stuck for and when might I expect to break free from the jam. This is where the Kanban board comes in handy. Let’s revisit the three main Kanban principles:

Visualize your work

Visualizing your work flow using a Kanban board shows which stage of development each feature is in. This is very helpful in seeing what the total backlog is and what work has been completed. A Kanban board can be very simple with just three queues - To do, Doing and Done, or as complex as outlined in the Agile Development Blog. If you are just starting out with Kanban, you might want to consider implementing a simple board. As you get better at it, you can add more complexities to it.

Limit your work in progress (WIP)

Phantom traffic jams will not occur if the density (number of vehicles on the road) is less than the road’s capacity. Reducing driver behavior variability will also reduce or eliminate the phantom jams. Limiting work in progress has a similar effect on your software development pipe. Limiting WIP to match your team’s development capacity helps ensure the traffic density does not increase the capacity of your team. The Kanban board will help you get to the right WIP limit as you become better at it. Without WIP limits you will continue to pile up partially completed work in the pipe thereby creating the phantom traffic jam. Adding to your WIP without completing anything just increases the duration of all tasks in the queue. If you are a product development shop, having a large duration (lead time) can significantly effect your company’s profitability.

Only start new work when an existing work is complete

The third principle – start new work only when you finish some existing work – also helps keeps the traffic density in your development pipe in check. If you take on more work then you can complete, you will quickly see the density of work in your development pipe increase and will become out of control.

Since software development is a creative process, there are times when you may need to put something aside when you are stuck and pick it up again later. Or customers may not be available for testing when you are done. For that you need a buffer - but adding more tasks to your queue without completing existing ones is a recipe for disaster.

It is going to take some serious effort to have people respect the WIP limits. People in your organization might say, “Do you expect developers to sit around doing nothing until the bottlenecks have been resolved?” WIP limits are designed to help people doing the work resolve the bottlenecks themselves - no one likes to sit idle. This helps develop a culture of ownership. Nothing motivates the management to help you with external bottlenecks when you tell them that you are sitting idle due to WIP limits. If you see backlogs increasing consistently even with WIP limits, that’s an indication to increase capacity.

So in conclusion, Kanban WIP limits are important to reducing lead times on your project. Keep the WIP low - start with two per developer - and see your bottlenecks become visible almost immediately on the Kanban board. Now if there could be some way to warn the traffic authorities of a phantom traffic jam in the making …

Visit Kanban for project management to learn more.

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Kanban Board Example

There is value in developing and delivering small chunks of features. These features being small can be developed quickly, thereby improving project delivery speed. For the uninitiated, there are a plethora of Agile tools - Rational Unified Process (RUP), eXtreme Programming (XP), Scrum and more recently Kanban. I was fortunate to be given the opportunity to improve part of our software development process - increase speed of service delivery without sacrificing quality. Kanban wins hands down. Why? Over 80% reduction in delivery times within two months.

Kanban - a pull system

Kanban is a Japanese term that literally means “signboard”. in its strictest sense, it is essentially a scheduling system that “signals” what to produce, when to produce and how much to produce. (And yes, you are right in assuming that it originated at Toyota.) If you work in a matrix organization as a project manager, you are well aware of the challenges of securing dedicated resources for your projects. If you do not get dedicated resources, you need all of your sales and negotiation skills to ensure resource availability when needed. On the flip side, as a resource manager, you are constantly juggling your resources on various projects - an optimization challenge.

This is a push system. Usually, symptoms manifest itself as resource contention, waits between steps, extended duration, resource unavailability when needed, overtime, and many issues that distract from actual work. The person screaming the loudest usually also gets the resources. In this system, you push to get work done through the pipe. As you will see, Kanban is a pull system. Work gets pulled by the people who actually do the work based on their availability.

Kanban - evolutionary and leads to continuous improvement

There’s a saying - people like change as long as it does not happen to them. Ask anyone on their view about change and you will get all positive things about it. Ask them to change, and you will hear all the reasons why it cannot be done. “I agree we need to change, but the timing is not right.” “Yes, but we are different.” “Oh, the company that implemented Kanban is a manufacturing firm. We are different”.

If you work in such an environment, getting enterprise-wide change that is revolutionary is excruciatingly painful and slow process. So you need to evolve. Of all the Agile tools out there, the only tool that helps you evolve is the Kanban process. Exceedingly simple to implement, you can be up and running with the tool in less than a week.

Kanban principles

Kanban can lay over your existing process and asks you to follow just three basic principles:
1. Visualize your workflow
2. Limit your work in progress
3. Only start new work when you have finished some existing work

I know this sounds crazy, but following these basic principles can dramatically improve your team’s throughput. How, you ask? Let’s look at each principle.

Visualize your work

This helps you see where the work currently is in your process. Assume work flows through the following stages: requirements, design, build, unit test, promote to QC, testing, approval, deploy. Visualizing your work will show in which stage each feature is. One look at your Kanban board and you will know where all of your work is. Visualizing your work will also help you identify wastes in your process that you can reduce or eliminate. It will also help you identify bottlenecks before they become raging fires.

Limit your work in progress

Multi-tasking does not exist. Period. You cannot work on more than one task at a time. So why juggle between five tasks and extend the duration of each, when you can complete each one sequentially and reduce the duration of each. Kanban prescribes work in progress at each stage. Your system throughput now is determined by the process with the least WIP limit. One of the early pioneers of Kanban, Henrik Kniberg, has put together this interesting Kanban cartoon that explains the WIP limits. Murphy exists and can strike anywhere at any time. Enforcing WIP limits creates idleness and creates a swarming behavior on the problem. So if you are not prepared to enforce WIP limits, be prepared for your improvement initiative using this tool to fail.

Start new work only when you finish some existing work

While exceedingly simple, this is again a hard one for people to comprehend. “What should I do if I complete my piece?”, is the common question. Here is what you need to realize that just because you have completed your work does not mean the customer got it. A work is only complete when your customer has received the product and is using it. By pulling in more work at this stage means you may not be available to fix bugs when needed, thereby increasing duration. So go test help with documentation, do whatever, but do not pull more work until some existing work is complete.

To reiterate, Kanban’s appeal is one does not have change the existing process. It can be implemented over the existing process. Once the team gets the hang of it, local improvements will follow. WIP limits act as a clog in the pipe. If the pipe is clogged, work does not flow through the system and the team will be forced to unclog the pipe before pulling new work.

If you are new to Kanban you might consider looking up the limitedwipsociety.org - a great resource for someone considering implementing Kanban.

Visit Kanban for project management to learn more.

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“Practitioner of project management services for a minimum of 6 months in a calendar year. This includes work in the project management office.”

5PDUs per 6-12 month period can be earned upto a maximum of 15 per CCR cycle.

I was a bit skeptical and wrote to PMI with this message:

“I have a question regarding claiming PDUs under the category 2H. My title is Project Lead and my job is to manage projects for our customers. I also have my PMP certification. The description of the category 2H says “Practitioner of project management services for a minimum of 6 months in a calendar year…” Please confirm, yes or no, if I have my PMP certification and I show up to work every day with the title of Project Lead, I rate 5 PDUs a year? Nothing else is required? Thanks”

And here is the reply from the PMI customer care:

“Yes. 2H is for working as a PMP. As noted in the guidelines for the CCR program, claims for the Category 2H professional development units (PDUs) are measured on a per-year basis. If you are submitting PDU claims under this category, please submit a separate claim for each year in which they were earned.”

So if you are a certified PMP and have a related title, you automatically get 5PDUs per calendar as long as you have that title. That’s 15PDUs per CCR cycle.

Now I just have to work on the remaining 45.

For more information on PDUs and how to retain your PMP certification visit www.pdutips.com.

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Passion

Founders build a culture around the word “Passion”. The team is built around “Passion”. Pixar, Apple, Microsoft (once upon a time), Nike - the list, while finite, goes on. Go back in time to the start-up years of these successful businesses. You will find that the founders were passionate in their area of work. Pixar is no different. Ed Catmull and Alvy Ray Smith put first things first by establishing Pixar with a very clear vision and communicating that vision to its employees. They also sought out self-motivated individuals to work at Pixar. Self-motivated individuals bring with their a passion to go a good job and are necessary for the development of high-performance teams. Passion breeds innovation.

Long Term Goals

With the economic roller coaster ride we have had over the last year and half, it should come as no surprise that businesses need to have a long term goal. The goal should not be dictated by the stock price in this quarter or the next. Tying a CEO’s compensation to stock prices is myopic as we have just learnt. At Pixar, “it’s never been about cheaper [and] faster … It’s about creating for the long term … they go through great lengths to ensure that its culture can support new ventures and still remain true to their values.” With long term goals you are not concerned about short-term failures.

Team

I do miss the days when I was part of a team. Teamwork in big business has come down to working in silos or at the most working towards furthering your own department’s goals. Section 1 of Innovate the Pixar way has this picture where the “can do” attitude is having to fight with “that will never work” attitude. I thought it aptly described today’s corporate world. More often than not, you will find the corporate world littered with “that will never work” people. They sap your energy, the team’s enthusiasm and morale. Don’t let such individuals get to your team. It’s fun solving the “perceived impossible” problem and to constantly challenge the status quo. A high performing team collaborates and is necessary for innovation.

Risk

The “that will never work” people are risk averse. They are also CYA (cover your ass) people. They expect all the answers before they move. They are very uncomfortable with uncertainty. Innovation by definition has a certain amount of uncertainty associated with it. Will it always work? No. But because you failed, you are a step closer to success. “Try, fail, learn and try again. If you get it right the first time, it’s probably not very innovative.”

Bill Capodagli and Lynn Jackson have gone a great job in highlighting Pixar’s culture in the book. I was once involved in a strategy planning exercise and the subject of culture was not even broached when problems and issues were being discussed. Your company’s culture drives growth and innovation. Culture is driven foremost by the company’s leadership and in the processes and systems they create.

To summarize, “Innovate the Pixar way” offers an interesting insight into how the business is run. It also offers tips on how you can implement some of the ideas in your business and grow. In Pixar director Pete Docter’s words, “Prototype … Try … Learn … Try again. Prototype … Try … Learn … Try again. Prototype … Try … Get the picture?”

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A reminder: Any opinion on this subject of NB Power sale is solely my own based on my research and information I could gather online. My commentary on this topic does not reflect the opinions of any organization I am involved with.

North American Electric Reliability Corporation - NERC

Let’s start with the North American Electric Reliability Corporation or in short NERC. NERC ensures reliability of the bulk power system in North America. It develops and enforces reliability standards, and monitors the bulk power systems. NERC is self regulatory and is subject to oversight by the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and government authorities in Canada.

NERC works with eight regional entities across North America to improve the reliability of the bulk power system. These eight entities account for virtually all the electricity supplied in the U.S., Canada and a portion of Mexico.

Northeast Power Coordinating Council - NPCC

The entity responsible for New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, PEI, Newfoundland & Labrador, Ontario, Quebec, New York state, and the six New England states is Northeast Power Coordinating Council (NPCC). NPCC delegates authority from the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and by a Memorandum of Understanding with Canadian Provincial regulatory and government authorities. One of the goals of NPCC is to facilitate attainment of fair, effective and efficient competitive markets.

Bulk Power System

Bulk power system refers to an interconnected electrical system comprising of generation and transmission facilities across large distances. Transmission companies deliver power from the generating stations to a geographic location. Bulk power systems differs from local power systems in the sense that the local systems are the transmission lines that deliver power to your house or business. Distribution companies deliver power to your residence and place of business. The adjacent image shows the breakdown of power generation capacity by the type of fuel used in North America.

Today, the bulk power systems are designed to meet customer demand in real time power cannot be stored. As power is generation 24/7, it is consumed. This means that as power demand fluctuates throughout the day, variable power needs to be brought onto the grid when demand rises and taken off the grid when demand falls. Think for electricity generation as fixed power plus variable power. Typically, the fixed generation plants will be hydro, natural gas (at today’s rates) or nuclear since they are the cheapest to operate. If demand increases and the fixed plants cannot meet the demand, the variable power stations are fired up. Variable plants are typically use fossil fuels (oil and coal) since they are the most expensive plants to operate. (check out Efficiency NB site for more information)

Back to NPCC. NPCC is a membership driven organization. It has two types of membership: General and Full. General membership is voluntary and is open to any organization that has an interest in the reliable operation of the Northeastern North American bulk power system. On the other hand, Independent System Operators, Regional Transmission Organizations and Transcos are expected to be Full members of the NPCC. Full members are subject to compliance from the NPCC.

There are five Reliability Coordinators within NPCC:

1. Hydro-Quebec TransEnergie
2. Independent Electricity System Operator
3. ISO-New England Inc.
4. New Brunswick System Operator
5. New York Independent System Operator

Some of the Transmission Owners are (as it relates to our region):

1. Hydro-Quebec TransEnergie
2. Nova Scotia Power Inc.
3. New Brunswick Power Transmission Corp.

Hydro Quebec and NB Power are also players in the generation and distribution business. This brings us to NBSO.

New Brunswick System Operator - NBSO

New Brunswick System Operator (NBSO) is a non-profit organization whose primary responsibilities are to ensure reliability of the electrical system and to facilitate the development and operation of a competitive electricity market in New Brunswick. Here is what NBSO’s mission is:

To plan, direct and operate an effective integrated electric power system by:

• Maintaining reliability and adequacy of electric power to the Maritimes area
• Achieving an open competitive market that optimizes net economic benefit

Being members of NPCC also means that, they have to follow the following:

“The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has required that each U.S. public utility that owns, controls or operators facilities used for the transmission of electric energy in interstate commerce create or participate in an Open Access Same-time Information System (OASIS). The purpose of OASIS is to provide access Transmission Customers through an electronic medium with relevant information regarding available transmission capability, prices, and other matters to enable them to obtain open access non-discriminatory transmission services from transmitting facilities. FERC regulations also require each utility to implement standards of conduct to functionally separate transmission and wholesale merchant functions…”

What this all means is that all electric companies’ (NB Power, NS Power, Maritime Electric, etc.) in this region falls under the supervision of NBSO.

Here is some additional reading on NBSO’s activities:

• Open Access Transmission Tarriff - OATT is an important concept to understand.
• Standards of Conduct
• NB Electricity Market Participants - This page has a good graphic representation of all the players in the NB electricity market. You may also want to follow the additional links on the page for more understanding.

So the summarize, the NB Power transmission grid is one of the most important grids in the Northeastern North American sector. It ensures power can be distributed from/to Newfoundland, PEI, Nova Scotia, Maine and Quebec, and further along to the New England States. Additionally, the transmission companies are regulated to ensure that any generating company will have access to transmit the power at prevailing fair market rates without discrimination. This means that if you and I decide to start a power generation company, NB Power will have to grant me access to its transmission lines at prevailing market prices.

Armed with this background, you should be in a better position to understand the implications of the terms and conditions outlined in the MOU. We’ll talk about the specific terms and conditions on the MOU in my next post.

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