Join us in Middle Earth where wizards and knights battle the forces of evil using the power of the Six Great Rings of the Kanban Practices! Discover the power and the curses of the Great Rings. And then learn about the One Ring, the practice that rules them all, and that every victorious Kanban team must master.

A Ring for the AKCs in their towers of ivory,

A Ring for the AKTs in the halls of hotels,

A Ring for the KMPs working with their teams,

Two Rings for the Service Managers doomed to cry,

One for the Kanban coach under the sky,

In the Land of Evolution where Improvements lie.

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,

One Ring to bring them all and in the lightness bind them

In the Land of Evolution where Improvements lie.

Raising a big rock indicates you have no intention of tossing it.

It's not uncommon for organisations to undergo significant change and transformation by adopting a pre-determined solution, which is often ineffective because it oversimplifies the complexity of human behaviour and organisational maturity. As a result, it's possible for the system's performance to decline, leading to high turnover rates and, ultimately, a return to the status quo.

In this case study, we'll explore the underlying causes of this problem and examine how to determine when organisations are prepared to scale agility and implement a sustainable solution.

Whether you are a small startup poised for growth or an established enterprise seeking to enhance your competitive edge, this topic will provide you with the insights and tools to unlock your potential.

Startups need to be agile, customer-focused, and able to respond quickly to market changes. To achieve this, startups require an effective product management approach that can align business goals with customer needs. Kanban, a lean and agile project management methodology, can be a valuable tool for startups looking to implement an effective product management framework.

In this talk, I will share my experience as Head of Product for InDebted, and how I used Kanban to identify bottlenecks and improve the product development lifecycle. I will discuss the key principles of Kanban and product management, and demonstrate how they can be used together to create a streamlined and effective process for managing product development.

I will explain how I used Kanban to manage product backlogs, prioritize tasks, and ensure that product development was aligned with business goals. I will also share how I used Kanban to track product development progress and measure the success of the product. I will provide examples of how I used data from Kanban to identify bottlenecks in the product development lifecycle, and how I used this data to improve the process from right to left.

Through my experience and case studies, attendees will learn how startups can leverage the combination of Kanban and product management to accelerate their growth. I will cover topics such as creating a Kanban board for product management, identifying and managing workflow bottlenecks, and establishing a culture of continuous improvement.

By the end of this talk, attendees will have a clear understanding of how to use Kanban and product management to accelerate their startup's growth. They will leave with practical tips and strategies that they can implement right away, regardless of their team size or industry.

What if the Trojans lost the war because of bad flow management?

An introduction to the benefits of Lean Thinking and Flow to any team, this talk will inspect flow (or lack thereof) during the Trojan war, and help you reflect on opportunities to improve the flow of value delivery in your own context. 

We will build a parallel with this mythical story to explore 3 kinds of team contexts (and their associated level of emerging complexity) a provide you with killer tips to boost their performance:

• Product teams (Athenians) - Backlog of work is reasonably stable but we are unsure how to get it done
• BAU or Service teams (Spartans) -  New work emerges often but we know how to get it done
• Hybrid teams (Trojans) - We have a reasonably stable backlog AND new work emerges often, also we may know how to get some work done but there are still unknowns

Now, in Aurelien’s experience, most teams struggling with work management may simply lack an understanding of which kind of complexity they are dealing with, and how they could benefit from adopting a couple basic Lean tools.

In this interactive deep dive into real success and war stories, Aurelien inspires you to learn from the significant impact of flow on all aspects of our daily work, and shares pragmatic ways for any team (“Agile” or “Traditional”) to improve their flow embracing Lean Thinking and keeping Trojan Horses out of their walls. 

Walking away from this talk you will wonder, if only Lean Thinking and Kanban principles were known by the ancient Greeks, perhaps history would tell a very different story…

As we transition from the 4th to the 5th industrial revolution at unprecedented speed, delivery leaders face a daunting challenge: maintaining fitness amidst rapidly accelerating change.

The task of supporting Value Streams in becoming resilient and more humane - ones that are capable of enduring, adapting, and thriving, irrespective of how swiftly the landscape shifts - is a demanding feat.

This talk distils 12 pragmatic guiding principles that delivery leaders can leverage to significantly amplify their impact, helping Value Streams to navigate confidently through market shifts.

Personal Kanban is simple in nature. It has only two rules. But do you really follow those two rules and take advantage of this amazing personal time management process? 

I want to share how I've used Personal Kanban over the last 7 years as the Group Manager - Queensland for Elabor8. I have grown this office from myself to a team of 40 people in 2023. Personal Kanban has been integral in how I manage my day, supporting this business growth and it has created up to 60 days of increased productivity per year!

This talk will share how this is possible to create that amount of increase productivity, as well as sharing 3 different forms of how I've used Personal Kanban over the years. You'll leave with practical tips of how you too can increase your productivity dramatically.

A lean coffee session focused on helping promote deeper knowledge and usage of Kanban throughout Australia and it’s neighbours.

Perhaps through no one's fault but my own, the "expedite swim lane" on my teams' Kanban boards have been the first solid thing to appear, and the last to disappear. In seemingly breaking the laws of physics-I-mean-kanban, the swimlame then proceeds to wreak havoc on everything from flow, WIP limits, priorities to ultimately team sanity-I-mean-culture. In this talk I'm going to share various experiments I've run to get rid of the "expedite" swim lane, some with greater success than others - and my hope is you'll come along and share some ideas back with me too!

In an Organisation that has visualised the Operational Value Stream, it becomes imperative that measurements happen on all aspects of Output, Outcome and Impact. Organisations just need to define the Why and What; How needs to be decided by the Teams or People working on the ground. Setting the Vision and removng the bottlenecks, while keeping a constant check with right metrics allows for flow to be optimised for value delivery.

In the talk "Harnessing Kanban for Improved Developer Experience," we will focus on the intersection of Kanban, Developer Experience (DevEx), and the novel metric of KnowledgE Discovery Efficiency (KEDE).

DevEx is an all-encompassing approach to understanding the experiences of software developers, including their emotions, thoughts, and attitudes towards their work. DevEx is essentially influenced by three core dimensions: Cognitive Load, Feedback Loops, and Flow State.

The Kanban method, well-known in managing and improving knowledge work, is aligned remarkably well with DevEx dimensions. Its practices offer actionable strategies to minimize Cognitive Load, ensuring tasks are clear and manageable. Through its commitment to quick, quality feedback loops, explicit policy making, and collaborative improvement, Kanban enables short and quality Feedback Loops. Simultaneously, by focusing on managing flow, Kanban encourages developers to achieve a deep, immersive state of engagement, or the 'Flow State', vital for productivity and innovation.

KEDE, a metric we will introduce, quantifies the knowledge gap developers grapple with while undertaking tasks. It serves as an essential tool in measuring Cognitive Load and provides a valuable reflection of how efficiently developers acquire and apply knowledge in their work. KEDE's measurement capacity can also help identify when developers are in a 'flow state' and measure the speed and effectiveness of feedback loops.

We will delve into how the principles and practices of Kanban can aid in managing Cognitive Load, enabling Flow State, and fostering quality Feedback Loops. Moreover, we'll discuss how KEDE can serve as an effective measurement tool for these dimensions, providing actionable insights for organizations striving to improve their DevEx.
Join us in this talk as we unpack these ideas, aiming to provide a practical framework for integrating the Kanban method and KEDE metric to enhance the Developer Experience in your organization.

In this session, we will delve into the key findings from the Value Stream Flow Report, a pioneering study designed to answer the essential questions raised by Value Streams Leaders as they become more flow-aware and accelerate their continuous improvement journey.

This research, the first of its kind, was sparked by the desire to define what 'success' looks like in Value Stream Management.

The report is an in-depth comparative analysis of 214 Value Streams spread across 11 industries and four continents, harnessing over 130,000 data points. Our aim was to answer key questions about Lead Time, Fitness Level, Levels of Variability, Flow Efficiency, and how Value Streams allocate their capacity. In addition, we divided our data into four performance categories—Elite, High, Medium, and Low Performers—to provide a nuanced understanding of these metrics.

We are confident that these insights will serve as a valuable benchmark for Leaders striving to improve their processes and Value Streams.

This case study examines a local government organisation in NZ that provides services to a smaller division. This smaller division had several outstanding pain points that were not getting the required focus. The relationship was strained, and frustrations on both sides were high.

We were called to provide management services and remove all outstanding pain points. This talk walks through that journey and how we started to separate the people from the problem and were able to resolve all pain points and foster a better working relationship between the two organisations. It also shows the challenges we faced, what we did to overcome them.