[HN Gopher] Milk Kanban
___________________________________________________________________
Milk Kanban
Author : ladronevincet
Score : 267 points
Date : 2025-03-15 15:32 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (brodzinski.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (brodzinski.com)
| bob1029 wrote:
| > In its original meaning, Kanban represented a visual signal.
| The thing that communicated, well, something. It might have been
| a need, option, availability, capacity, request, etc.
|
| > the system is self-explanatory
|
| I've always known of this as an "affordance" - An available &
| apparent interaction between an object and its user.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Everyday_Things
| ricardobeat wrote:
| There is definitely a connection there, but affordance is a
| concept specific to interaction design and something having a
| _physically_ self-evident purpose (handles, buttons, levers,
| knobs, etc).
| flail wrote:
| That's a great analogy!
|
| On the one hand, the context is different. An affordance, as
| you point out, signals _how_ we should use an item. In a way,
| it suggests a meaning. A kanban 's meaning is typically defined
| as the process (largely) is known.
|
| In the story about Milk Kanban, the index card is self-
| explanatory, but that's just an extra bit, to make the process
| more bullet-proof.
|
| On the other hand, if we generalize both examples, we land in a
| place where the design (of things, of processes) should
| _communicate_ how to act. I either _interact_ with an object or
| I _do my action_ within a process.
|
| BTW: The Design of Everyday Things is another great reading
| recommendation in this thread.
| renewiltord wrote:
| I like the trash bag bunches where the last three have a little
| tag on them that say "you're running low". Similar system. Very
| useful.
| uhoh-itsmaciek wrote:
| Or thermal receipt tape with a stripe of color near the end.
| hbarka wrote:
| Event triggers.
| CityOfThrowaway wrote:
| Another thing I really like about Kasia's milk system is that it
| is a zero-emotional overhead communication. Just take the ticket
| and put it on her desk, and all will be handled.
| devenson wrote:
| Depends how far away her desk is.
| woleium wrote:
| Yeah, I think i would make it "put this card in the reorder
| box"
| oniony wrote:
| And then they have to poll the reorder box every day?
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Yes, this is closer to subscribing to events, and more
| scalable.
| thorum wrote:
| Hm, you're right. I'm thinking a nearby Raspberry Pi with
| a camera facing the box. It uses an LLM to identify the
| box contents and send update messages to Kasia each
| morning. I'm surprised they didn't think of this already.
| mook wrote:
| NFC tags are pretty cheap these days, so tape one on the
| back of the notice and drop it into a box with a sensor
| at the bottom?
|
| (This is probably overkill)
| thinkingemote wrote:
| Put this card on Kasia's desk when the reorder box is
| full.
| WJW wrote:
| Technically that's not really a different problem than
| exists. With the current system, Kaisa has to poll her
| desk every day to see if new milk needs to be ordered.
| Depending on what her activities entail, maybe there are
| entire days when she's not at her office. _Some_ place
| has to be polled in any case, but we can choose the best
| place(s).
|
| In an extreme case where there's a 100-floor building
| with Kaisa's desk on the first floor, it might well be
| more globally optimal to have boxes every 10 floors being
| polled, instead of everyone having to move 50 floors on
| average to her desk.
| flail wrote:
| Appreciate thinking of problems that might have made it
| work not so well.
|
| Having said that, the office is a single floor. The
| grocery order is once every few weeks.
|
| There's quite some time flexibility in ordering stuff.
|
| There is plan B (buying a couple of cartons in a grocery
| shop on the same block).
|
| The system is scaled to what we need. And I don't say
| anyone should copy it blindly. If we talked about several
| floors, multiple coffee corners, etc., the flow of index
| cards might have required much more conscious thought.
|
| In our case, we need none of this.
|
| Also, continuous improvement (kaizen): start with
| something simple, then improve it. There's not much point
| in solving hypothetical problems with system design. Most
| of the time, we'd only be unnecessarily complicating the
| solution.
|
| Which (tongue in cheek) is half of the history of
| software development :)
| bdunks wrote:
| That's a very nice Kaizen of this Kanban. Very scalable.
| The office may not have thought of it yet.
| flail wrote:
| For all but 4 people, it's on the way to their own desks.
|
| I bet that when someone just drops the card on the kitchen
| table, someone else would carry it to Kasia. As far as I
| know, dropping the card has never happened.
|
| Nonetheless, the comment is spot on. If people needed to go
| far from their regular tracks, it might have been less
| reliable. Good system design means that doing the right thing
| is the easy/easiest thing.
| eacapeisfutuile wrote:
| First install truck horns, and have that go off for the dev
| being assigned a ticket.
| thuanao wrote:
| In other words, issue tracker todo/doing/done lists have nothing
| to do with kanban.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| They do if your "doing" list has a line on it that
| prohibits/allows more tasks to start
| ramses0 wrote:
| There's a field of study called "mechanism design"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanism_design
|
| ...you have to squint a bit, but I've taken it to mean
| influencing the behavior of unknown or mildly uncooperative
| participants.
|
| My main example of success was drawing a dotted line with a
| sharpie about 25% from the bottom of the water filter pitcher in
| the fridge (back with college roommates).
|
| Basically overnight, the probability of me finding the water
| pitcher empty in the fridge went from 50% to like 10%.
|
| The visual indicator (with only implied instructions) resulted in
| positive behavior changes.
|
| Related is "poke-yoke/kaizen" of "mistake proofing, continual
| improvement, and making problems visible".
|
| Being aware of these fields of study and their techniques can be
| applied to many areas in work and home.
| exitb wrote:
| It's an interesting idea, but I'm not convinced it's a good one.
| Office managers (or any kind of managers, really) are hired to
| remove a class of problems, so other people can focus on their
| job. This is outsourcing bits and pieces of your responsibilities
| to random coworkers. That being said, none of it is uncommon in
| modern corporate workplace.
| daveguy wrote:
| Kasia, the person who placed the note and requests its return,
| _is_ the office manager. Giving someone an easy visual cue and
| task for keeping things running smoothly seems like great
| office manager work and organization rather than shirking any
| type of responsibility.
| mystifyingpoi wrote:
| Agree. I dig the idea, really cool, but quoting the article:
|
| > it becomes a pain to check the cupboard with milk reserves
| every now and then
|
| If freaking _glancing_ into the shelf once a day (or more like
| once a week, because this milk has months of shelf life) in
| scope of full time office manager job is "a pain", maybe that
| office manager should rethink their employment there.
| analog31 wrote:
| >>> maybe that office manager should rethink their employment
| there.
|
| A near-universal feature of office managers is that they are
| continually rethinking their employment.
| daveguy wrote:
| Or maybe if putting a piece of paper on someone's desk for
| precise restocking is too much of "a pain" to the person who
| drank the milk, then _they_ should rethink their employment
| there.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I'm interrupted in the office a hundred times a day.
|
| It is guaranteed to happen that as I grab the paper and
| walk to the person's desk, something more important comes
| up as somebody sees me, and then I have a meeting, and the
| piece of paper simply isn't important enough to remember
| next to my other responsibilities.
|
| Employees are paid to do the work they're best at. It's a
| bad use of resources to have them tracking office supplies,
| emptying their wastebins, vacuuming their floor area,
| restocking toilet paper, or alerting the office manager
| when milk is low.
|
| For a tiny, cash-strapped startup they might have to do all
| those things, but generally it's not optimal.
|
| Edit: just to be clear and in response to downvotes, this
| isn't an ego or _self_ -importance thing. It's just the
| fact that when in conflict, it is genuinely more important
| _for the company_ for me to address an urgent technical
| issue, and show up to an important meeting on time, than to
| finish running across the office to drop off a post-it note
| about milk. I already never have enough hours in the day to
| do everything that needs to get done for my job, and
| everything is a question of prioritization. I 'm just
| trying to give a realistic perspective here, that we
| separate out job responsibilities for a good reason.
| analog31 wrote:
| We outsourced all of those things. The office managers
| are gone.
|
| There's no milk.
|
| Also, anecdotally, my dad worked at a place where, if you
| needed something to be plugged into an electrical outlet,
| there was a person whose job was do do that. And if that
| person needed tools, there was another person whose job
| was to carry his tools.
| abraae wrote:
| Decades ago my first real job was as an IBM engineer
| fixing computers at a heavily unionised timber mill.
|
| One of their many rules was that nothing could be plugged
| into any electrical outlet on site unless the device had
| been inspected and signed off by a union electrician.
|
| In a hurry to diagnose a problem with a printer I
| furtively plugged my non-approved oscilloscope in to a
| wall outlet. But then I inadvertently grounded a power
| line with the scope probe and caused a circuit breaker to
| trip somewhere on the main board. Shit!
|
| A pompous electrician appeared and told me they would be
| shutting down the entire mill (10K+ workers) while the
| union decided how to punish me for my rule breaking.
|
| It took much begging and pleading before he relented. My
| only leverage was that the printer was also used to print
| pay slips and he would not have got paid that week unless
| I fixed the printer.
| mlhpdx wrote:
| To each their own, but wow. In healthy environments
| people are paid to do what makes the team most effective.
| crazygringo wrote:
| But that's what I'm saying. An office manager makes a
| team most effective. A team that has to track a bunch of
| office maintenance tasks makes them less effective. Their
| team priorities should be top.
| metabagel wrote:
| Don't have to track it. Just have to put the slip on
| their desk.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Here are some things that are _not_ that in software
| teams:
|
| - managing your own calendar, meetings, memos
|
| - organizing transport and stay on business trips
|
| - tracking and later correctly filling in forms to
| expense the above
|
| - and yes, tracking supply of office consumables
|
| This and many, many more things have been dumped on
| everyone by short-sighted beancounting. Salaries of
| secretaries, graphics departments, finance people, etc.
| are legible, therefore cutting them is a "big efficiency
| win". But their work does not disappear - it gets _spread
| out_ , distributed in tiny pieces to everyone else. Then
| you have specialists with 10x the salaries of
| aforementioned departments getting constantly distracted
| by work that is not the reason they were hired. And
| people are surprised that productivity doesn't track
| promised economic improvements, and that everything gets
| slow to build and expensive for "unknown reasons".
| metabagel wrote:
| Finish the one before you start the next.
|
| As long as you're holding the slip of paper in your hand,
| you won't forget about it.
| UncleEntity wrote:
| When I was in the army we had a simple system to
| determine who fell asleep on guard duty during training
| exercises[0], who was in possession of the squad leader's
| watch when everyone woke up.
|
| Nobody really took guard duty seriously when it was just
| the platoon spending the night in the woods and between
| the three squads plus 'radio watch' there was always
| bound to be someone awake the penalty for falling asleep
| was usually just being assigned to the next shit detail
| so this system worked quite well.
|
| I suspect this system is quite similar, if you want milk
| and the sticky note is on someone's desk because they
| can't be bothered to walk it over to correct person's
| desk because they are 'too important' then maybe people
| will start to question that person's true importance to
| the organization.
|
| [0] during our time in Saudi Arabia/Iraq _everyone_ took
| guard duty seriously and the leaders would make sure
| people were doing their jobs up to and including
| punishing people for petty infractions.
| crazygringo wrote:
| That's not a relevant analogy. In your example, staying
| awake during guard duty is your job and it's a proper
| responsibility. You _should_ be penalized if you fail at
| your job.
|
| I'm saying that tracking milk _shouldn 't_ be part of
| your job, because it's not a good use of people's time.
| None of it has anything to do with "importance". It's
| about what is best _for the business_.
| UncleEntity wrote:
| So... how is cafe latte "best for the business"?
|
| Would the business fail if the milk supply ran out?
| asjir wrote:
| In a 20-person office you'll pass by like 2 people on the
| way with the card, so it's not a problem. If the office
| was bigger, and it was a problem, you could just
| designate a spot for the card next to the pantry.
| mystifyingpoi wrote:
| I totally agree with you. I'm actually (despite
| downvotes) totally fine with bringing the paper tag to
| someone from time to time. My ego isn't hurt either.
|
| The issue is with creating random bespoke processes, that
| save maybe 60 seconds of work for that office manager per
| week, but now involve literaly every person in
| organization.
| nicbou wrote:
| Then don't drink milk. You have more important things to
| do.
| soerxpso wrote:
| The job of the person drinking the milk presumably has
| nothing to do with moving cards to people's desks. The job
| of the office manager is literally to keep the milk
| stocked. When keeping the milk stocked becomes a sidequest
| for every other employee (who have other jobs to do), what
| is the office manager actually doing? Bringing the card to
| the office manager's desk doesn't actually sound much
| harder than ordering more milk. Why don't we just have the
| card say, "If you see this card, order more milk" with
| instructions for how to do that?
| gus_massa wrote:
| > _Bringing the card to the office manager 's desk
| doesn't actually sound much harder than ordering more
| milk._
|
| Bringing the card takes 5 minutes, 10 if you include time
| to a joke like " _We are drinking too much milk, we
| should buy a cow next year._ "
|
| Buying the milk includes going to the shop or calling the
| correct provider. Not the provider you used until two
| month ago because they usually deliver the requests too
| late at 5:05 when everyone is going home. Are you paying
| with the company card or your card and get reimbursed or
| they have to send an invoice and get paid later? Does the
| invoice need a magic tax number? Ensure they security guy
| and the payments department know about this so there are
| no surprise. [1] [2] This looks like half on hour at
| least.
|
| When someone ask me to implement a trivial feature in
| software, I estimate "4 hours". Open the editor, find the
| correct file, take a look, make the obvious change, run
| the automated test, fix the obvious bug, cross the
| fingers, run the test again, [does it need new tests?,]
| write a nice commit message, google how "thoughtfully" is
| spelled, commit the change, close the editor, and it's
| done. Probably 2 hours, but I prefer to say for 4 hour in
| case there is a surprise.
|
| [1] How many milks? 1%? 2%? 3%? Which brand? This may be
| included in the instructions, but in the second week of
| December you may want to buy less, and if there is a
| discount you may want more.
|
| [2] Do you piggy back cookies or soap?
| CraigJPerry wrote:
| That's all the more reason to go event driven right?
|
| If the milk needed replenishing more often, maybe polling the
| shelf makes more sense - hey the rate of consumption is
| higher today, I'll re-order early. That high throughput
| optimisation doesn't really shake out if you're always just
| waiting for the replenishment event to fire.
| ctm92 wrote:
| If its only milk, then this polling might work. But might be
| also coffee, printer paper, pencils, whatever and you end up
| doing nothing else than checking shelves all day
| flail wrote:
| Wow! This escalated quickly.
|
| In this whole sub-thread, I see quite a lot of signals along
| the lines of: - that's someone else's job, I shouldn't be
| bothered - I'm doing valuable work, others should make it easy
| for me - (all sorts of) managers are to make some problems
| inexistent for me
|
| I'm not saying that's all in the original thread, but I read
| such sentiment.
|
| So here's something that we do that may be unusual.
|
| We respect everyone's roles and work. As much as Kasia wouldn't
| jump on a project as a developer, none of our developers would
| take her seat and handle all the stuff she deals with daily.
| Heck, she routinely helps people dealing with all sorts of
| paperwork that, especially for foreigners, are major pain in
| the butt. Which is "funny" because it's just "simple paperwork
| anyone could do."
|
| And before someone throws at me that anyone can order milk
| online, that's like a hundredth priority or something like
| that.
|
| Anyway, starting from a place where we all respect each other
| and everyone's work, dropping an index card on someone's desk
| on the way to one's own is a non-issue.
|
| I acknowledge, though, that in an environment where people
| don't respect others' work because whatever (they have a less
| prestigious role, they're paid less, etc.), folks may totally
| perceive that a problem.
|
| And yes, establishing such respect is so much harder than
| making sure that milk is in a frigging cupboard.
| mystifyingpoi wrote:
| Wow, 3.2 _and_ 2% milk available in the same office? Where do I
| apply?
| meindnoch wrote:
| Cigarette rolling paper comes in a flat pack, from which you take
| the papers one by one, like a box of Kleenex. Towards the bottom
| of the pack, there's gonna be an odd-colored piece of paper,
| after which there still gonna be 10 pieces left in the box. The
| odd-colored paper tells you that it's time to buy a new pack, but
| you still have 10 cigarettes' worth.
|
| Edit: found a photo of this phenomenon on r/antiassholedesign
| https://www.reddit.com/r/antiassholedesign/comments/cfndfa/g...
| dhosek wrote:
| The practice of having a slip that read "Five leaves left" was
| where Nick Drake got the title for his first album (somewhat
| eerily recorded five years before his death).
| locusofself wrote:
| One of the best albums ever IMO, just finished the excellent
| biography that came out a couple years ago by Richard Morton
| Jack
| y33t wrote:
| I've begun to notice the number five a lot. I was reading
| Tammy Wynette's wiki page the other day and noticed that it
| appears quite a bit -- born May 5th (5/5), married five
| times, dead at 55. She also collaborated with the KLF, a pop
| group from the early 90's which also had an unusual number of
| fives to do with them (as well as 23's...2+3=5? Oddly, Tammy
| has a memorial highway in Missippi, MS23). Which brings me
| back around to Nick Drake. One of the members of the KLF now
| runs a small web store which mostly just sells his books to
| do with his post-KLF career, but they also sell overstock
| Nick Drake album tuck boxes which are designed to hold all
| five of Nick Drake's albums.
|
| https://www.alimentation.cc/product/tuck-box/
|
| Not sure what any of this means, but it's weirding me out,
| like the universe is winking at me.
|
| Edit: just noticed that I responded to your post five hours
| after you posted it.
| cameronh90 wrote:
| One of the episodes of The Simpsons I saw as a kid that had a
| surprisingly large impact on how I think was where Willie had
| cameras in all of the bathrooms to monitor if they needed the
| toilet roll changed: "That roll of towels is nearin' its end!
| She's on double red stripe!"
| kaffekaka wrote:
| I absolutely did read this in Willies voice.
| ctm92 wrote:
| Receipt paper rolls also have this: When the roll is near the
| end there are pink stripes, telling the cashier to have a new
| roll nearby as the printer is about to run out of paper
| xbryanx wrote:
| SimpleHuman trashbags do the same thing. When you pull the 5th
| last bag, it has a big tag reminding you to order more.
| polishdude20 wrote:
| Certain dog poop bags have this but they have a sticker about
| three bags left that says "three bags left"
| throwaway7783 wrote:
| I think this is now a common pattern. Simplehuman trash bag
| boxes have a tag that says "you are running low", on the 10th
| (or so) bag from last.
| ruraljuror wrote:
| My first thought as well. Simplehuman, whose products and
| designs I admire, also include QR codes to reorder on the
| reminder and a refrigerator magnet included with the
| trashcan.
| jldugger wrote:
| I just put a few at the bottom of the trashcan, so when the
| box runs out I still have some time to buy a new supply.
| islewis wrote:
| I recently noticed that there was a "Time to order" message
| written on the outside of the cardboard core of my saran wrap.
| The visibility to the core became clearer as the wrap was
| consumed- giving both a sense of urgency, as well as not
| letting you forget. I thought it was pretty clever.
| 7bit wrote:
| > The tricky part is that when you don't drink milk yourself, it
| becomes a pain to check the cupboard with milk reserves every now
| and then to ensure we're stocked.
|
| If checking the milk reserves once a day is too much of a pain
| for a person hired as an office manager, the person should self-
| reflect on his/her choice to take the job.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| What if there are eight floors with two pantries each, four
| types of milk, five other drinks, plus seven different snacks
| that need replacing. They'd spend the entire day peeking at
| fridges and cupboards.
|
| This is why in places like I just described, you often have a
| shortage of particular items; the checks happen only every so
| often and usually by multiple cleaning employees. On the other
| hand, it's also exactly why Kanban came to existence, to solve
| a very similar problem in manufacturing.
|
| This particular example feels weird because your job is not to
| drink milk, but in theory it should work and allow you to have
| just-in-time replenished stock for everything.
| 7bit wrote:
| Typically you combine that with other householding tasks. If
| you don't visit the kitchen or pantry daily as an office
| manager, you're doing something wrong. And walking through 8
| floors with 2 pantries doesn't take that long either. I don't
| really think expanding o. The example makes a better case for
| the article...
| jrootabega wrote:
| While this can be mitigated somewhat by keeping backups on hand,
| the card helps because it gives you a convenient record of
| needing to restock, which you can just drop somewhere you know it
| will be used. Even in personal life that might be a good idea.
| Dropping an empty box of pasta or dental floss on the ground also
| serves as a convenient reminder, but it's harder to do with a can
| of tuna.
| mariocesar wrote:
| It's a shame that some comments in the original post are so toxic
| and unwelcoming. There are plenty of empathetic people on HN.
| Well HN is welcome if at least when the topic isn't website
| standards or a page failing to load in some commenter obscure
| browser.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| > When people say Kanban, they tend to think of a specific set of
| practices. Whiteboards & sticky notes (both almost universally
| virtual).
|
| When _software developers_ say Kanban, they tend to think of
| whiteboards. For anyone who works in manufacturing they would
| have thought about replenishment first. It is completely
| ubiquitous anywhere where taking something from a location
| signals a need for replenishment.These days it is often
| virtually, where an ERP sees an order taking something below some
| level, triggering purchase or manufacture of a replacement.
|
| I understand the literal translation of Kanban is 'coloured
| badge' btw
| eikenberry wrote:
| I've worked on multiple Kanban software dev teams and a
| whiteboard never came into play, vs. the scrum or extreme-agile
| teams which loved them. Kanban seems more about having tickets
| organized into a priority ordered queue of tasks.
| flail wrote:
| That is an interesting observation.
|
| The first two (and I would say key) practices of Kanban (as a
| method) are: - visualize work(flow) - limit work in progress
|
| So I wonder, how did these Kanban teams visualize work
| exactly?
|
| Now, I don't say the whiteboard (virtual or physical) is the
| only way to do it, yet it's almost ubiquitous.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > I've worked on multiple Kanban software dev teams and a
| whiteboard never came into play,
|
| Most teams don't literally use a physical whiteboard, they
| use some software that represents the whiteboard.
|
| Do an image search for "Kanban board" and you'll get a mix of
| physical whiteboards and software dashboards that imitate the
| same columnar style.
|
| Though one thing about software development practices is that
| names have become nearly meaningless as people have adopted
| different variations. I worked at one company recently that
| proudly bragged about their "agile methodology" but also
| demanded everything be planned 6-9 months in advance and made
| a big deal about tracking metrics for sprint accuracy and
| failure to complete tickets on time (including too early!).
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| So in terms of SW development would that mean we have slips
| saying "Only 5 Tasks left, come up with new ones"?
| pdpi wrote:
| Only 10% disk space left. Peak memory usage at 90% available
| RAM. $CRITICAL_PACKAGE version update has been available for
| 2 months.
|
| Once you see the pattern, it can be used all over the place:
| Pre-programmed proactive reminders for all sorts of upkeep
| chores that you don't want to spend mental bandwidth on.
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| Right, if we see the future we should tell others about it.
| One we see the milk will be stinky soon, tell someone about
| it. :-)
| anymouse123456 wrote:
| The central idea is that traditional manufacturing (and
| software) environments attempt to PUSH work through the
| system. This leads to tons of unintended consequences that
| ultimately sacrifices quality _and_ throughput. Not only
| defeating the purpose of applying the pressure, but also
| (sometimes) destroying the reputation of the organizations
| that do it.
|
| The observation of the Toyota Production System, was that we
| should make quality non-negotiable and then observe the
| system that emerges.
|
| We let the system PULL work through it, rather than
| attempting to PUSH. In this way, we can make observations and
| improvements without applying negative pressure (that results
| in waste) on any given work center. Raw materials are only
| released into the process when the previous batch has nearly
| been consumed, regardless of some manager's desires.
|
| The insight of early Agile practices, was that we might be
| able to use Stories as a metaphor for Raw Materials and the
| system we're working within converts those raw materials into
| something valuable to the customers and/or business.
|
| There are a number of good reasons this metaphor doesn't fit
| perfectly, but one of the biggest ones is that while both
| manufacturing and software development can be creative
| processes, software development represents a much higher
| percentage of creative work than operating a cell in a
| generally well-defined production process.
|
| The Kanban boards in Software Workflows were originally
| intended to make visible the actual throughput of a team, and
| help us resist releasing new stories into production if the
| team hasn't yet digested the previous set.
|
| I've definitely seen environments that use these tools with
| little to no comprehension as to where (or why) they came
| from and I suspect that has become more of the norm as I've
| withdrawn into my own little corner of the universe.
|
| If any of this sounds interesting, I highly recommend the
| book, "The Goal"
| jimnotgym wrote:
| Definitely recommend "The Goal", it is fascinating to see
| its influence on "The Phoenix Project".
|
| I would also offer a recommendation for any jaded hacker.
| Go and work for a manufacturing company. Seeing real world
| problems solved by lean experts and process engineers is
| fascinating. See Kaizen (Continuos incremental improvement)
| in action in critical systems, systems where a mistake
| can't be reverted easily and the consequences are huge. See
| them manage complexity. It is a real education.
| flail wrote:
| "The Phoenix Project" is basically "The Goal" rewritten
| in the context of software projects so that people would
| pick up the ideas easier instead of dismissing them as
| the "unrelated context."
|
| The authors never hid their intentions on this one.
|
| BTW: both are great reading.
|
| Also, the grand idea described in Goldratt's The Goal is
| the Theory of Constraints (ToC). While Kanban (as a
| method) draws from it with the limiting WIP practice,
| these two don't overlap that heavily.
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| Makes sense to me that everybody should be aware of all
| POSSIBLY ANTICIPATED features/stories as soon as they
| exist, because you can then avoid doing work that later
| stories would contradict.
|
| I'm not sure if I can see a negative consequence for
| having more stories "on the board". Physically of course
| the board might get full, but we use computers these
| days. That doesn't mean spend all your time planning and
| none implementing, but if you realize we will most like
| need a given feature in the end we should not hide that
| realization from the team.
|
| An error (or oversight) in specifications is much more
| costly than an error in design or implementation, is the
| old Waterfall mantra, which I think is true. But Agile of
| course might not agree with that.
|
| Maybe it would make sense to carry some kind of "Plan for
| the Future" throughout the process. Be aware of the
| anticipated features even though they are not fixed into
| the "plan" yet.
| switchbak wrote:
| > I suspect that has become more of the norm as I've
| withdrawn into my own little corner of the universe.
|
| I often wonder what happened to the early grass roots agile
| community. I know I've withdrawn into my world too, I
| wonder how common that is?
|
| I often feel like we've taken steps backward from where we
| used to be. Not sure how much of that is just my latent
| curmudgeon though.
| anymouse123456 wrote:
| I ejected from the craziness and slipped into a quiet
| little, inexpensive corner to work on things that trigger
| obsession.
|
| So far, it's gone pretty great, we'll see how long it
| holds!
| flail wrote:
| People who genuinely want their teams/organizations to
| improve didn't disappear.
|
| However, the labels under which they operated were taken
| over by the certification business. So, "grassroots"
| people either don't care about the labels at all or they
| invented their own.
|
| By now, Agile is an empty buzzword. Unless someone
| explains what they mean by that, it means nothing.
|
| Same with Kanban, by the way.
| michaelhoney wrote:
| the pull/push distinction is excellent, thankyou
| lotyrin wrote:
| It's closer to "sign" or a bit more specifically "signboard".
| flail wrote:
| That's true. The notion of what Kanban is differs between
| knowledge work (stemming mostly from software development
| adaptations) and manufacturing.
|
| Since my context is primarily IT I made some simplifications
| when describing the context.
|
| Admittedly, the principles are the same. However, because of
| the differences in the nature of the work, different areas are
| stressed. A notable example is how differently "removing waste"
| is considered between IT and manufacturing.
|
| Anyway, yes, whiteboards and sticky notes are staple artifacts
| of software development/knowledge work context. "Old-school"
| (since it started decades earlier there) manufacturing is much
| more creative with designing visual signals.
|
| On the other hand, knowledge work typically handles uncertainty
| and variability of work way better. That stems from a different
| type of process (more creative, less repeatable) and unique
| nature of each individual task.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| >On the other hand, knowledge work typically handles
| uncertainty and variability of work way better.
|
| I am not sure that is true, they are very different but I
| wouldn't say one handles it better.
|
| One of the factories in involved in builds to order on a
| short lead time. We produce 2500 machines a day, from a wide
| range with many configuration options. There are various sub
| assemblies that have to be built first. On any given day
| there will be shortages on various components, meaning we
| can't build what we want. There will be quality issues with
| materials meaning reworks and changes in process. There will
| be design up-issues to address material changes, firmware
| problems, or customer demands. There are 400+ people to
| coordinate. This is all done whilst still shipping 99.9%
| within the lead time. We don't know anything for certain
| about our demand in 10 days time. It seems much more complex
| and adaptable to me than when I ran a software team
| flail wrote:
| I failed to explain.
|
| In the ideal case, in manufacturing, we repeat the same set
| of tasks to manufacture identical goods.
|
| In software development, we have the same stages
| (development, code review, testing, etc.), but every task
| going through the workflow will be different. Depending on
| how these tasks are defined, the effort, interdependencies,
| etc., might vary wildly.
|
| Both types of work, of course, will have variability
| related to the complexity of the process. And that
| variability will be correlated with the size of workflow,
| people and/or machines involved, etc.
|
| It's just the knowledge work adds another dimension. By the
| way, that's why, in knowledge work, we rather talk about
| accepting variability instead of controlling it (which was
| the focus in Lean Manufacturing).
|
| I recommend Don Reinertsen's work on that, since he worked
| in both contexts. While his book (Principles of Product
| Development Flow) is not an easy read, it's absolute gold.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > I understand the literal translation of Kanban is 'coloured
| badge' btw
|
| Kan Ban - Kan "look at; watch", Ban "board; plank".
|
| For the Japanese word,
| https://ejje.weblio.jp/content/%E7%9C%8B%E6%9D%BF has "Kan Ban
| - signboard; billboard" (and also "hoarding", "draw;
| attraction", and "closing time").
| Kwpolska wrote:
| The system seems inefficient, as the sticky notes look the same.
| So Kasia has to go to the cupboard and check what to buy.
| jason_oster wrote:
| Solution: The specific brand is written on the back of the
| card.
| pavon wrote:
| They probably want to check anyway to see if anything else is
| getting low (or ran out because a note wasn't delivered) to
| decrease the number of restocking orders placed. The notes just
| help indicate when an order needs to be placed earlier than
| expected.
| flail wrote:
| The order typically runs with not just milk but all the
| supplies. It's just the "going out of milk" trigger happens
| most frequently.
|
| And yes, using different kinds/colors of cards for different
| kinds of milk might have been an improvement to consider. It
| would, however, make the system more complicated. Was it me,
| I'd start with a simpler design and iterate only when I saw
| the need.
|
| It follows the rule of thumb: make it as simple as possible.
| greatgib wrote:
| The milk example looks very stupid in my opinion.
|
| Something more efficient would be something like this:
|
| - there is a closet in the kitchen with extra supplies: milk,
| sugar, ...
|
| - Kasia goes in the kitchen once per week to do the inventory of
| remaining supplies. If items <= 1, then she order new extra items
| for each low in quantity supplies...
| carreau wrote:
| I feel like you are confusing "more efficient" with "more
| convenient for me when I use milk because I think the secretary
| is my maid".
| greatgib wrote:
| more efficient and convenient for both in the end. Imagine
| the burden to have to put a postit on all products, to manage
| them on your desk, to stack them and remember to count them
| to reorder. Also because you will not pass your order item by
| item, like just ordering milk and then sugar 2 days later...
| carreau wrote:
| I love how you are not even realising that behind the
| oatmilk ticket is written "last oatmilk", the behind the
| half and half one is written "only 3 half and half" behind
| the foo ticket "foo down to f(frequency of foo use)", and
| the person now now only need to go through the tickets at
| the end of the week (or if more than N tickets).
|
| I will let you ponder if you need to reticket all, or just
| the reordered product, wether a stack can have multiple
| ticket (a white one say 5 from the last and one red one two
| from the back know wether you need an urgent order) etc...
|
| And whether or miracle, if you don't receive any ticket a
| week that you don't need to reorder !
|
| It's amazing how if that was expressed in term of resource
| allocation, reference counting, tagged pointers, scaling
| heuristic, garbage collect... that would click in people's
| mind, but many are incapable at abstracting because they
| feel they are beyond this.
| darkwater wrote:
| Which is exactly what most spoiled children^W^W tech workers
| think of them, unfortunately.
| jonahx wrote:
| Your proposal probably _is_ an improvement (though there may be
| some reason it 's not feasible in this case -- no closet in the
| kitchen, etc), but calling the original idea "very stupid" is
| quite the ungenerous overstatement. It's still clever, still
| works much better than not having it at all, and is only
| slightly less efficient that what you're proposing.
| pfix wrote:
| Why is this more efficient?
| jonahx wrote:
| Batching.
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| In the office I worked it was never an issue that we were out of
| milk. It was that people brought in their own milk cartoons and
| put them in the fridge, so others could have milk too. Nice.
| Thanks to whoever brought it!
|
| But then nobody removed that cartoon from fridge so it started to
| stink, and remained in the fridge still. Then no-one in particual
| was eager to tackle the bad smell, it definitely was not their
| job.
| ramses0 wrote:
| I implemented the "three sticker rule" at my office. Every
| Friday, put a neon dot sticker on _everything_ in the fridge.
| Instead of putting a fourth sticker on anything, throw it out.
|
| Because "anyone could do it", it usually ends up that "no one
| does it".
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| Sounds good, "THREE STRIKES AND YOU'RE OUT".
|
| But would it not mean that sometimes you had 3 weeks old milk
| in the fridge? :-)
| zopa wrote:
| > And it's a healthy wake-up call when someone who knows close to
| nothing about our fancy stuff designs a system that we would
| unlikely think of.
|
| I can't tell if the author asked Kasia how she came up with the
| idea? For all we know she's doing an MBA in the evenings and just
| wrote a paper on the history of just-in-time manufacturing in the
| Japanese auto industry.
| crusty wrote:
| Is there even a Kasia, or did the author print out that note to
| establish her invented character just for the benefit of her
| blog's narrative? Does it really matter?
| flail wrote:
| Oh, there is a real Kasia. Although she's a person of many
| talents, I would be genuinely surprised if she spent evenings
| studying Japanese management methods.
|
| The solution she designed, however, is as if she already knew
| all of that part of the MBA program :)
|
| Which shows how significant parts of these methods have roots
| in basic awareness and perceptiveness to how the work gets
| done. Lean/Agile only codified some of these good practices.
| Unfortunately, they also petrified a lot of specific
| techniques. But that's another story.
| kimlopez wrote:
| Hi
| layer8 wrote:
| This is a form of artifacts as reminders:
| https://pim.famnit.upr.si/wp/?p=288
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| I don't know much about kanban but doesn't this basically create
| work for others to bring the milk paper back? I can see how this
| works and is efficient in a way, but it removes the work for the
| person to monitor the milk stock.
| weaksauce wrote:
| sure it creates some work for someone that is invested in
| getting more milk for their coffee. hardly onerous and removes
| a lot of daily checking for the purchaser.
| flail wrote:
| If we look at it from the systemic perspective, the goal is to
| have enough milk at the office just in time.
|
| Balancing the tasks between different actors within the system
| is a different concern.
|
| If 30 seconds of my time saves someone else 10 minutes, it may
| be a good tradeoff, even if my time costs a few times more.
|
| On one of the most effective teams I worked on, there was a
| tech lead who would throw himself into a role based on the
| team's needs based on insight from a morning daily. Most of the
| time, he played his strongest suit (back-end). However, there
| were days when he was helping with the most menial front-end
| tasks (he wasn't super-effective at that) or testing (same).
|
| Was he efficient? If we look at him in isolation, then no. But
| because his work helped to remove bottlenecks and unblock the
| team, the whole team was more effective thanks to him.
|
| What is interesting in some of the discussion threads here is
| how people look at the process effectiveness in a completely
| reverse way. Sometimes, they focus on their individual
| efficiency as if they were able to deliver value
| singlehandedly. Individual efficiency doesn't mean much.
|
| A typical example would be a developer who's super efficient,
| but there's no one to do a code review (or test or whatever)
| just in time. By the time they get a list of issues to fix,
| they don't remember the context, they wrote so much more stuff
| relying on the things that they need to redo, etc.
|
| Their efficiency would mainly be regarding coding in isolation.
| While the effectiveness would be measured in what the team
| could release/deliver to the clients.
|
| As per Drucker's famous quote: "There is nothing quite so
| useless, as doing with great efficiency, something that should
| not be done at all."
| smusamashah wrote:
| > It should be as simple as possible (but not simpler)
|
| I have seen this phrase a number of times. What does it mean?
| askvictor wrote:
| Any simpler and it would not be effective for it's intended
| purpose?
| smusamashah wrote:
| Oh! So 'any simpler and...' was the next statement being
| implied by 'but not simpler' in this phrase. I can make sense
| of it now.
| flail wrote:
| There is a level of oversimplification beyond which the
| solution stops serving its purpose.
|
| If this discussion board was just a shared doc in which
| everyone could write, that might be a "too simple" solution.
| Basic control over one's writing is what we expect in solutions
| such as this.
|
| With Milk Kanban, it might have been just asking people to tell
| Kasia when they take the last carton. Would it be a simpler
| solution? Yes. Would it work? Well, I guess there is a reason
| why we do have these index cards.
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