It has been a long time in the works, but Clinton Keith’s article on kanban systems for game development is finally up. It is an excellent description of the why and the how of organizing a process for content-intensive development. Clint has managed to do something which I previously thought improbable: setting a takt time pace for development activities.
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Matt Wynne | 13-Nov-08 at 6:10 am | Permalink
That’s a great article, one of a growing band that explain how a Kanban system can be looked as an evolution beyond scrum.
The point on the first page about moving from Scrum to lean during the later stages of a production ‘project’ resonated with my own experience: This was exactly how we found our way to lean – I just got sick of having to flush out the tanks every two weeks, run an exhausting planning day, then fill them up again. Once you have the team flowing, why would you want to make them stop?
I still think retrospectives are important to give a rhythm (though I’m starting to understand that Takt can do this too) and also to help promote a kaizen-focused culture in the team.
I’ll be talking at the forthcoming XP Day conference[1] in London about my experiences in ‘jumping the gap’ from Scrum to Kanban while at the BBC. Looking forward to it.
[1]http://www.xpday.org/