Agile Project Management with Kanban | Eric Brechner | Talks at Google

There's a way to organize your work, stay focused, avoid mistakes, and be hyper-productive that you can learn in five minutes using sticky notes and markers. It's been used by Toyota to make cars, by Xbox to build software, and by individuals to maintain sanity. It’s called Kanban, and Eric Brechner, an Xbox development manager, has been using it with multiple teams for the past four years.
Eric’s new book, Agile Project Management with Kanban, has a quick start guide, with illustrations and online spreadsheets to get you productive fast. Other chapters help you estimate work, meet deadlines, deploy results, evolve from Scrum or traditional Waterfall, and integrate Kanban into large projects. Attend this talk in person, and you’ll create your own Kanban board, applying this simple technique to the work you do every day.

[@jos783]

7 years after and still one of the best talks 👌

[@Iamolivialondon]

absolutely loving this, especially how Eric has used the KanBan method whilst answering the questions to gain an active understanding of it... BRILLIANT

[@bonybai]

Best introduction to kanban i have come across. No nonsense, just do it. And still providing lots of in depth through answering the questions. Make sure you listen to the complete question section. Great!

[@pnalos]

(Watched six years after posting, been doing Kanban for >2 years, haven't read his book) This is delightful and refreshing. Well worth the hour to watch. We do a lot more than was presented here, and I like that, but I also gained from this video. Thank you!

[@hassaansadiq2651]

WAOOOO. Awesome talk. Thanks a lot Eric Brencher. You did the best and most practical explanation of Kanban.

[@albertstein7433]

Your example of letting the stakeholder put the deadline task to the board on their own, by transperantly understanding which task is really the next priority is brilliant!!!!!!!!

[@samiraslan5737]

This is really insightful. I learned a lot in this lecture. I loved the example he used at the beginning of the session when he converted the questions into Kannan. Thank you very much ❤️

[@AlishaAFoster]

love that answer at 50:00 about big complex tasks & splitting research/breakdown/create design docs into their own separate items...i tend to think about splitting that stuff into separate boards, but it really can be all under one.

[@LearningToCodeAndDesign]

Every time I watch Eric’s talk I learn so much!

[@buffalosoldat]

I wasn't expecting such a great talk, seriously! This guy is amazing and entertaining to watch. I just feel sorry for him that his audience seems to have a stiff stick up in their asses and are not as cool as that dude is.

[@Andrewtmcb]

This guy is my friends dad and was also a professor of mine in grad school. I assure you he is as cool as he seems. Awesome dude.

[@patmull1]

"This is how you prioritize. It's not hard... It's stickies and you move them around." They sounded to be almost offended by how simple he made it lol. But that is the problem of a lot of knowledge that is spreaded about Agile. People are making it so hard and complicated and often absolutely unnecessary. But it's the area where software devs, college professors and project managers meets together, so no wonder they are doing everything to make from those simple ideas abslolute nightmare full of pretenious talks. Thanks god there are no statisticians and bitcoin traders involved in this...

[@dmytroprokopenko1472]

Very straightforward with low overhead, going to implement that in my team

[@dasraja4479]

Great talk. My only observation is, related to the suggested process for estimation. A big assumption is that, the complexity of the work more or less similar . In software development context , IMHO , that’s highly Unlikely. And another point I want to highlight is organization culture. MS is ahead of the game in that area compare to other companies. That makes things significantly different.

[@miklc8537]

Great presentation, great questions, great answers. Thank you.

[@SrividyaNatarajan]

Wonderful unique session Eric.... Great!!!

[@toysforever7393]

I like the examples in the end with waterfall and scrum teams switching to kanban :)

[@tunbakyu]

Brilliant... so brilliant.. easy to understand. So hands on! :)

[@ChaunceyGardner100]

excellent kanban talk. love the the way you presented it Eric. Very engaging.

[@thomascurro1405]

Excellent Quality Talk. Getting So much knowledge on kanban boards. This guy is amazingly gifted

[@sundersingh9508]

Zksjhahahaagga

[@TheLongboarder77]

Great for 'known' task management but not sure i have a clear of how continuous improvement informs the process and how creativity can flourish in designing great. No one framework is a panacea for the challenging work of building great digital solutions.

[@gbpraveen77]

Good stuff... clears up your mind about Kanban...

[@GiveMeAnOKUsername]

I think a good estimate of a backlog item depends on doing a breakdown. But for several items in one go, the WIP limit would prevent this. I suppose you could do a separate Kanban for estimation alone.

[@pastpianist]

The main issue I see with all these methodologies is around the creation of the tasks. With the way it's described here, if my org has a massive project that's probably going to take like 8 dev months AND has a due date, then you are effectively needing to do incredibly detailed task breakdowns (in order to get each task to be ~1-3 days of work based on his recommendation) for the entire project up front. That's the only way you're going to be able to tell if you have a chance at hitting the date. around the 1:00:00 mark it was a bit of a gross oversimplification of how how this would work for a large org which was a bit disappointing.

[@arduiscane]

This was a much more simplistic view of Kanban than Andersons take and that's both good and bad to me. I think it could get more people to buy in and it can act as a quick start. My concern is Kanban also has a cultural element to it that requires additional concepts like Kaizen and the value of Slack. I also agree with some comments about the simplistic response to estimating. I agree that as you build trust, you will improve rate of delivery and customers will loosen their grip I have seen it happen. On the flip flop, leadership will always want information to base ROI and investment planning into, and that includes rough estimates and pushing teams to make market deadlines. All in all though, great introduction!

[@Liopot68]

Peter Boyle explaining project management. Brilliant!

[@ZaidDesignsTV]

Funny...

[@teamhood]

Made years ago, still great today!

[@jti107]

fantastic! looking forward to trying this with my team

[@rajadas6432]

This is awesome and this is how it should work. Unfortunately, not every company is MS. To make this happen the team must be empowered, staffed with right skillsets and transparency is celebrated. Otherwise it become another top-down heavy 'process'.

[@youRube2007]

How does this apply to physical product development projects for consumer products like Power Tools, Sporting Equipment, Commercial HVAC equipment... i.e. things that require physical prototyping, multiple phases of lab testing, production line start up, marketing campaigns, production labor training...Typically 2 years to get to a first shippable unit out the door to a customer.

[@blahdelablah]

Toyota was the first company to use Kanban. If you can develop cars using Kanban, I don't think it'll be a problem to use it for developing power tools.

[@parrisgjerde9212]

How does one coordinate validation with the task breakdown? Seems there could be a lot of dependencies where revalidation would be required.

[@followufollowme]

"Management is to Heidegger as the sophists were to Plato, a simulacrum of philosophy and rationality." -Baptiste Rappin This video confirms it pretty much.

[@jjaaxx11997733]

For in house development work, where you have indefinite availability of resource, it seems easy to do Agile/Kanban. But for consulting companies where availability of consultant is limited and customer is adamant about the expected delivery time and budget being fixed and unchangeable, how do you communicate the cost and schedule in each meeting?

[@skylvid]

Love Kanban.

[@robbyriverside]

I want to work for this guy. Seriously.

[@gautambajekal238]

@Eric - YAAT (Yet Another Awesome Talk). One suggestion. Use Fibonacci numbers for estimation so that any estimation errors are covered

[@vytautasalisauskas6059]

The last part about large scale sounds as SAFe, just with less structure.

[@arghamaz]

This is great👍

[@kjames705]

I am not a software developer or a project manager. Just an everyday Joe trying to get things done at home and work. I have developed my own system combining Eric's Kanban, David Allen's GTD, and many more other systems that I have tested and finally, I have a solid, agile system that works for anything, anytime. Let me know if anyone wants it.

[@MrRedstonefreedom]

Sure. Do you have a quick description?

[@MikeBozart]

great info. thanks.

[@DiogenesVitali]

How to estimate and define the product roadmap in a team that is starting. We are talking about high level features and you don’t have data about team velocity per sample. How would you handle this?

[@astatine0085]

So, with this method, you don't need to allocate bandwidth time for unexpected (bugs, etc.), you just re-prioritize what can be re-prioritized.

[@browncapitalist4884]

He didn't convince the audience well on estimations and handling due dates. At the end, he skipped the whole topic with "We are not doing estimations anymore because my team is darn good". It was an interesting presentation. But he skipped the very question I was looking for without a convincing answer.

[@guipedr]

He talks about it. But he doesn't give the necessary attention to the topic, the "Breakdown" is crucial. you need to breakdown your tasks in similar sizes (i.e estimation of 2 days for each task / stickie), then it's easy to calculete your thoughput and work with bigger estimations and handle your schedule and due dates. They call it Little's law. Average Throughput = Average WIP divided by average cycle time. So if you know the number of cards you have and historically long it takes to complete them, you know the average time you need to get stuff done. Yeah, there's stuff that is in your backlog that hasn't yet proceeded to that first "Breakdown" planning phase, so you have two choices. Get together with the team (a lead developer/technical professional alone could do) and do a quick estimation (mental breakdown of big card in a quantity of smaller 2 day ones) based on experience or proceed with this on your kanban, put on your breakdown/analysis column and do it with a little more patience and assertiveness with the team.

[@SeanBarrett666]

The laugh at 52:08 👍

[@veronicaolivares9150]

sound great :)

[@veronicaolivares9150]

How can I help my country that is Peru to make quicker decitions? And correcting mistakes faster in order to be a first world country? Using Kanban and Scrum. I want the health system to be the best of the world and integrate Traditional Chinese medicine into the SIS (Sistema Integral de SAlud)

[@YounesKeraressi]

love this guy, thx for the introduction to Kanban, people cant event laugh to the funny's statements what a weird audience..

[@jasonfanclub4267]

Google: Gives a talk about project management with Kanban Also Google: Doesn't want to integrate Kanban Features into Keep and/or Tasks

[@adhi_r]

potential premium feature/product

[@jasonfanclub4267]

@@adhi_r I think they use Write, Smartsheet and Asana internally so I have no hope for any good project management tool by Google

[@yousefalfarhoud3255]

is it applicable for all types of projects or just software ?

[@SaifKhan-mz5hz]

all

[@Feliztividad]

❤❤❤❤❤ thanks!!’

[@veronicaolivares9150]

Thanks G-D for Kanban

[@DanielLiljeberg]

Number of stickies per day feels a bit crude though unless you know the size of the stickies. Moving 10 stickies a day when they average 30 min to complete would not mean your team would do ten stickies a day if the contents of them took three hours to complete. I decided not to post this because "perhaps a followup would address this"... It did. I get the idea, but still feels a bit crude and finding a "universal size" to break things down into could probably be a bit of work depending on the environment. But sure, over time it would most likley even out.

[@Cenot4ph]

this works over time your team is working on a specific project or product similarly how people are wasting their time doing estimates that are always wrong. This process cuts down on useless activities

[@DanielLiljeberg]

@@Cenot4ph Well it could be argued that the work of breaking down tasks into similarly sized bits in order for them to have a similar effort attached to them is akin to estimating. You look at the task, decide if it's roughly the size your tasks usually are (estimate the effort) and if not break it down. I think the main thing, no matter your approach, is to know and clearly communicate why you do it. If that is clear to everyone I'm sure a plethora of approaches could work well for different teams.

[@crot10]

Hi I'm an RTPO we partner with SAFe and I run a full portfolio RT 50+ people globally. I found this useful as a simpler explanation of kanban and I bought your book so I can improve the Program level of the train. My headings are obviously different because they are all all discovery items but what is important is that they run in parallel with the Scrum teams in our PI. I have plans to add additional team to the RT in then coming months and I'm going to give them the option to be Scrum or Kanban. I just have two questions: 1) Is there a ebook version 2) Do you have any recommendation to how to create a split in the columns in Jira. Being a global team there is no wall board.

[@arduiscane]

I know this is from a year ago, and Id be curious how it's going. I work in an org where teams have been asked to work in SAFe, but the org never adopted any of the practices. Were you able to pull together an ART level Portfolio Kanban? Was it difficult to get buy in ?

[@DavldLangner]

Lohnt sich!

[@MartinLichtblau]

Doing Scrum without KanBan... why would you do that in the first place?

[@veronicaolivares9150]

Thank you for aharing

[@veronicaolivares9150]

Sorry for sharing

[@veronicaolivares9150]

nICE CLASS :)

[@labworx]

thanks for the vid, just one remark! whats with the white sox LOL

[@najuste]

It goes well with a german surname...

[@matthiasmoser6096]

The book might be very thin and full of information, but he never mentioned the font size! xD

[@gstabel]

Big problems and open ended at 50m 45s, very interesting

[@veronicaolivares9150]

Wip limit would be like deadline?

[@veronicaolivares9150]

Ship online? great :)

[@GarikTate]

Can you make those double columns functional in Jira?

[@noklat4482]

You can make equally named swimlanes. It would be a crude solutuin, be very usable. Alternatively, you can use a single swimlane where issues are given labels like refine v sprint-ready, awaiting-review v in-review.

[@cookielover1213]

Can you use this for pharma companies and drug development?

[@wilmerkaplan1309]

Sure you can. The method was originally adopted from supply chain management to software development, but it's been years since it strated to spread to all industries. We use an online Kanban Tool - kanbantool.com to manage a large estate rentals porfolio. Works like a dream.

[@PrasenjitBaisyaBkp]

Yes - we can. I work for Johnson & Johnson and we are using Kanban in core areas in our Technology Services organization.

[@veronicaolivares9150]

I am already waiting for More than a year for a process to finish

[@veronicaolivares9150]

ya man, you always need to have your por siacaso :)

[@veronicaolivares9150]

In Peru things take forever

[@pmisconsultinglimited3684]

anyone notice this presentation discusses: task/work breakdown; estimating; tracking; dependencies; due dates; etc and a lot that needs to be done and captured that is not on this board - also said "all we have is the kanban board - no spreadsheets etc. ". Something really does not stack up with this statement.

[@OttawaGuy]

It doesn't stack up because you have to let go of your traditional waterfall constraints and let the kanban board and the the agile process be free of some of the items you listed. Don't try to put a lot of management overhead on an agile project, or you'll fail... For instance - task/work breakdown is done by getting stickies decomposed to the same timeframe for effort. Estimating is done the same way. Tracking dependencies is done with sticky note management. Due dates are integrated by figuring out your pace and adding/removing team members accordingly (or reduce scope).

[@veronicaolivares9150]

we need plenty tracking for goverment

[@VolkTron]

👍

[@veronicaolivares9150]

And they should work for a goal that is reach out, do not recieve any payment unless they do what they promise

[@ruslanfadeev3113]

Expected a punchline around 2:00

[@samarendrakumarsinha8898]

IT SHOULD BE A FIRST HOME

[@askcraz111]

Check out www.my3dfolder.com - See how Kanban board is literally folded in to your everyday life!

[@PaulERose61]

did he say con bon?

[@iluvcakes19]

Paul Rose that's how I pronounce it

[@MrUncleHermit]

Sounds more like Agile Project Delivery rather than Agile Project Management.

[@trevor4835]

THIS MAKES ME WANT TO SCOOP UNDER MY NUTS AND TAKE A BIG DEEP WHIFF OF WHAT I'M COOKING DOWN THERE. GREAT VIDEO

[@veronicaolivares9150]

What do you think of Udemy?kzbin.infovideos?view=0&sort=dd&flow=grid

[@brazorf999]

Kanban Police, arrest this man he talks in math

[@janeknox3036]

Eric seems to function as the product owner here. He decides where and if items go in the board. When and how do they specify the work items? He doesnt cover that. How do they size work items and how accurate are they in sizing them? How do they claim to forecast if they dont know what problems may come up? He sounds like he doesnt actually do development, he hand waves so much. I get the feeling he is overstating his success and that there ar many issues he doesnt mention. Executives like to make it look like they are responsible for every success and innocent of every failure. I dont know what they actually contribute.

[@kdhlkjhdlk]

Traditional waterfall? What org on the planet is using waterfall? The moment it was named it was a strawman example.

[@xq_nemesis]

Think construction companies or other sectors that don’t necessarily do software development.

[@Mitchellkirstie]

He should have had slides.... LOL

[@samarendrakumarsinha8898]

WE DO IT IN EXCEL ANYTHING BETTER SIR

[@veronicaolivares9150]

Deadlines, not only for shipping. Due date for vaccines

[@veronicaolivares9150]

If they do not produce, then out :)

[@veronicaolivares9150]

Due date for covit end

[@veronicaolivares9150]

Goverment very slow, I want to wip them...LOL

[@ftnsco]

Mehh

[@ArvinBuising]

It's just scrum with extra steps.

[@miguelangelsimonfernandez5498]

Lovely but absolutely chaotic and thus less useful.

[@piotr_zarycinski]

Kanban is not Agile

[@joseperez1464]

Another snake oil salesman, can’t do anything without at least an approximate cost in mind.

[@rbp365]

Microsoft papa thinks he is smart, probably Google kids are already doing it

[@ChatGPT1111]

Says a guy who probably lives in his mom’s basement. He’s leading Microsoft “kids” already and it’s the Google kids that are probably in the audience.

[@leonrai2899]

wtf is wrong with the audience?

[@kingkompany5908]

It seems forced and over elaborate. Unimpressive.

[@dekonfrost7]

Listen its not worth listening to