Agile Detention: introducing Kanban by writing lines

Photo by Nikhita S on UnsplashYou are looking to introduce Kanban but you don't have 2 hours ahead of you to play a getKanban or one Kanban Pizza Game ?

Agile Detention is made for you: it only lasts about fifteen minutes!

I invite you to discover this little workshop to use without moderation! 🙂

Good reading ! 😉

Material

What is good with this workshop is that you need very little material:

• Whiteboard, Paper board sheets
• markers

The principle is simply to have 2 writing spaces to be able to live the experience live! 😉

Introduction

Let's start with a bit of Story Telling:

I invite you to return to childhood, especially in primary school. Do you remember?

I leave a few seconds, the time that people can visualize some elements of this period. There are a few nods most of the time.

Did you ever make mistakes in class?

Smiles are usually drawn on the faces 😛

Do you remember the punishments that were given most of the time in these contexts?

The object here is to await the punishment consisting in writing a certain number of times a sentence imposed by an authority (teacher, supervisor, etc.).

What techniques did you use to complete this task? What techniques do you remember?

The answers here will usually be:

• I write line by line – the whole sentence and I connect
• I write column by column – the same word repeated vertically

Which do you think is the most effective? The most relevant?

Let's check! 😉

Note: You can also sometimes discover the youthful inventiveness of your participants:

• I attach several pens together so I can write several sentences at the same time
• I write with both hands at the same time
• …

We will of course leave these options aside to focus on the first 2! 🙂

In the heart of the workshop

Instructions

I then invite 2 people to volunteer to experiment:

• one writing each sentence in line: we will call it (A)
• the other each word in column: we will call it (B)

The sentence I give is:

I will not chat in class

Note: the sentence is of little importance, you can choose the one you want! 😉

I then give the number of times this sentence should be written, choosing a sufficient number so that it goes to the bottom of the sheet: 25 for example.

I make sure one last time that the rules are well understood and I launch the activity.

Animation

As the participants write, my gaze naturally falls on (A) who writes the entire sentence, line by line.

(B) on his side works a little on his knee bends by writing his first word for the 15th time! 😛

After a few sentences written by (A), usually between 3 and 5, I allow myself to intervene by saying:

I think I was a bit harsh on you, 25 is a bit much,

I think you can stop at 10 after all!

At that moment, we can observe a few smiles in the audience but above all a first disarray from (B): he understands that he will not finish these last 15 lines and therefore that he has made an effort for nothing!

After 1 or 2 more sentences of (A), I return to the charge by saying:

Besides, all in all, I don't think I gave you the right sentence.

I'd rather you write: Gossiping is disrespectful.

Note: I obviously choose a new sentence that does not fit into the previous sentence structure! 😛

Second confusion of (B) who most of the time stops writing, not knowing what to do with what has already been started.

(A) on his side can simply finish the current sentence and then continue with the new one without any problem.

I then quietly stop the workshop here and we begin to discuss what has just happened! 🙂

Results obtained

What are the links with Kanban?

If we go back to the origin of Kanban, we necessarily go through the box of Lean:

Satisfy the customer, while respecting the employees, by limiting waste in all its forms.

The workshop only taking into account a single person and not a team, we can base ourselves on the practices of Personal Kanban:

• View

Seeing is fundamental in Kanban, moreover the term is often translated by “label”, which corresponds well to a visual object.

I could only recall here the famous triptych of Visual Management:

Seeing together is not only with the team but also with the client because it allows us to learn (collaboration, production capacity, needs…) and to make the right decisions together.

• Restrict

Many teams say they do Kanban but only implement the Kanban board, corresponding to the first practice View. Even if the gain from this first practice can be enormous and sometimes sufficient in a team, I think that the real lever for action is in limiting the work in progress: working on fewer things at the same time means keeping the control over its production system.

Stop Starting, Start Finishing

Conclusion

Agile Detention is a workshop that I particularly like because it is short and allows rich and interesting exchanges. The debriefing is obviously fundamental, but like many Kanban workshops, the learning is quite direct and does not require far-fetched explanations.

Let's keep it simple, no frills 🙂

Do not hesitate to share your experiences of the workshop with me because to try it is to adopt it! 😉