7 Habits, Getting Things Done and now, Personal Kanban

I started practicing and finding Personal Kanban an answer to many years of frustration in looking for a time management system that allowed me to manage it rather it managing me.

How I started with Kanban:

Each year, I take one subject matter that I am going to concentrate on. I started doing it many years ago when a friend of mine told me he took one president every year and read about him. He is getting to an age now that he should be getting close to finishing.

In the latter part of 2009, I had become intrigued by Kanban and how I could use it for managing work flow and especially work in process. Trying to use a Value Stream Mapping process with sales and marketing people was a huge hurdle that I could not get over. The theory of the Kanban was closely related to Value Stream Mapping  and through the use of post-it-notes I simply transferred a Value Stream to a Kanban board. I assigned numerous values from a budget perspective to the number of clients/prospects in a pipeline and so on. People seemed to understand that approach must better. As a result, I made Kanban my 2010 project of the year.

I have to admit, I did not get as far with it as I wanted. I was unable to attend a David Anderson workshop or pick-up a Lean Software Kanban client but I was able to learn a great deal about it and further engrained it into my Lean Marketing teachings. In fact, my next book, Marketing with PDCA has a chapter on Kanban.

However, these efforts led me into working with it on a personal level and that is how I became familiar with the Personal Kanban teachings of Jim Benson & Tonianne DeMaria Barry co-authors of Personal Kanban. In fact, the podcast Kanban too simple To be Effective? with Jim Benson led to others.

David Anderson, author of the recent book, Kanban appeared on the Business901 podcast and added 50 minutes of Kanban discussion. David covered a lot of ground in this discussion and answered a lot of questions for me that his book raised. David is a thought leader in managing highly effective software teams. He is President of David J. Anderson & Associates, based in Seattle, Washington, a management consulting firm dedicated to improving leadership in the IT and software development sectors. Related Podcast: Kanban, could we call this podcast anything else?

Bandit Software is the maker of an electronic Kanban tools for Lean Software and Systems development teams called Lean Kit Kanban. Related Podcast: Lean Kanban lessons from a Software Developer

Eric Landes is an Agile  Project Manager who has been using Kanban for software development since 2007. He has worked with Scrum, XP and other agile methods for over the past 5 years, and has been managing software projects for over 10 years. Eric has his own blog, Corporate Coder which can be found at http://EricLandes.com. He is also a frequent contributor to http://developer.com. Related Podcast: Scrum + Kanban = Agile Discussion with Landes

Though this was not directly related to Kanban, one of my favorite podcast all year was Creating Flow with Don Reinertsen. Don Reinertsen is president of Reinertsen & Associates, a consulting firm specializing in improving the product development process.  I have followed Don’s writing for many years and recognize him as THE leading expert in the field of Flow. His writings are insightful, packed full of information and readable. When editing the podcast, I could not bring myself to cut hardly a word out of it.

Each and everyone gave me a deeper appreciation for Kanban and it has been a great experience. This Tuesday I will have Patty Bielderman of Layers of Love discussing how she uses her Personal Kanban in her Nonprofit and in a grade school classroom. The following week, I will host Pascal Pink and the discussion of his use of PK as a Strategic Collaborator.

P.S. Personal Kanban by Jim Benson & Tonianne DeMaria Barry was just released.