Lindsay Velecina: 0:00

Music. Welcome to the scrum.org community podcast, a podcast from the home of Scrum. In this podcast, we feature professional scrum trainers and other scrum practitioners sharing their stories and experiences to help learn from the experience of others. We hope you enjoy this episode.

Dave West: 0:20

Hello and welcome to the scrum.org community podcast. I'm your host. Dave West, CEO here@scrum.org in today's podcast, we're lucky to be talking to ambarics about how they use professional scrum to help their customers in the challenging world of ERP in the manufacturing industry. This is an interesting topic, not just because they're talking about ERP and manufacturing, which is super cool, but because they're using Scrum and Kanban. Some people say they're opposites, but actually, I think we're going to see here today how those opposites are actually complimentary. And I've got two amazing people on the podcast to talk about it. I'd like to welcome Andre Bohn, consultant and project manager from ambarics. Welcome to the podcast. Andre,

Andre Bohn: 1:12

hello. Nice to be here.

Dave West: 1:13

Now. He's a project manager and consultant, but we're not allowed to talk titles here, so apologies for that, but he's just really just an expert person that can help us today. And then we're also got Alex Hart from one of our PSTs, who actually taught them Scrum and Kanban and then allowed magic to happen. So welcome to the podcast, Alex.

Alex Hardt: 1:41

Thank you for this invitation and this great podcast we create here.

Dave West: 1:47

We'll see how good a podcast it is, but yes, we've got all the ingredients for it, so I really appreciate that. It's great to have you both here. All right, let's start Andre really on setting the scene for our listeners. Let talk about the you know, what do you do? What's the company does? What does ambarex do? And and the sort of context for this work?

Andre Bohn: 2:12

Sure thing. Well, ambarex is, I thought long and hard about it, but I think in the essence, we are like an franchisee. We have our software developer who codes and develops the ERP software, and we are in the middle between our between the software and the clients who use the software. And though we have a high support focus, because our software developer does not do support stuff at all. We have to manage it. So we have always unplanned work, which is kind of hard. What we also do projects. We onboard new clients into our system. We manage everything around that, and we even have development part where we develop new features and adjust existing features for the needs of our clients. That's basically it. You can guess that these pillars have some constraints. You can't do everything, and you have to work sometimes with the project development team of the ERP, sometimes with the customer, and it's always shifting, and it's never quite as clear. Of course, it's not really franchising, but I think franchising and is like a close equivalent. So it's

Dave West: 3:40

a metaphor, you know, ultimately you are taking these things and representing in many different places. And the majority of your customers Andre are in the in sort of big German manufacturing. And those kind of customers, is that right?

Alex Hardt: 3:57

Mostly small and middle caps, like, yeah, no. Really big players, but the smaller ones,

Dave West: 4:05

yeah, which is, which is crucial, because they need to take advantage of ERP. And of course, they're part of a complex supply chain that, no doubt, is also using ERPs to manage, to manage the content and the work as it goes through. So, you know, you provide that, that service. And I think just to summarize as well, you've got changing requirements, you know, customers, the platform, lots lots of things, flu, lot very fluid, and lots of dynamic, dynaminism, as it were,

Alex Hardt: 4:40

that's right, cool. All right.

Dave West: 4:42

So, so let's actually talk a little bit about professional Scrum and Kanban as a solution. So here you are working with your clients. You know you want to do professional Scrum, or you're doing professional Scrum, and then you thought, well, maybe Kanban would help, particularly around. And unplanned work. So tell us a little bit about why you started work with Kanban and professional scrum combined.

Alex Hardt: 5:08

And barracks was always interested to work in an agile manner. We had in our small startup phase, like three people in the same room, and it was always like a co working session. Everybody had the same thing on the mind and stuff like that. But as we grew bigger and had more employees, the work got more and more fragmented, like we have new rooms. Not everybody is sharing the room. We had to open communication channels like somebody's in the home office and not on work. And therefore we and most crucial part why it became necessary to become more agile was we didn't inspect and adapt our processes for our employees, like it's when I joined, we were like eight people, and these eight people worked like the three people in the same room. Nothing else changed, and therefore I saw the need to improve. I saw the need to adapt, and that's where I pondered around with frameworks that can do that, and mostly the two big frameworks I got were like Scrum and Kanban. Every system has or framework, as you will, has trade offs, like, Sure, Scrum is really good in a project setting if you have projects, but it's maybe not so good in unplanned work. And Kanban is really good in at unplanned work, but not good for projects. So it was always digital to me, to me that to get those two together, and I thought long and hard, but it couldn't. Could not ever figure it out on my own. And so I sent there and pondered, what the hell shall I do? That's what that was when I got self learning day. We have those. We can ponder around and do something useful for the organization. And that's was, that was when I met Alex and his training on PSK. And I thought, well, that's excellent professional Scrum and Kanban combined. Those are the steps and the tools we need to implement a solution that works for us, because, as I outlined earlier, we have a complex work. We have always unplanned work items we cannot get ahead, and we have also project work. And this was like a true dream scenario for me to have finally something that works together. Maybe Alex want to speak.

Andre Bohn: 8:07

The interesting thing is, I would say so in the class we teach, so you do professional Scrum, and then you add as a complimentary practice, can one and they didn't have this Scrum, and then mixed it directly for themselves. And they never saw companies that I would say they did, doing 100% Scrum. Andre and his team is also not doing it, but they're on the way to get out of the framework. What happens to improve what they are doing. And in the end, I think it's about getting the most out for yourself and not applying scrum by the book, because it's told so,

Dave West: 8:53

yeah, it is interesting. So I was the person that brought in professional scrummor kanban@scrum.org and the reason why I felt quite passionately about the need to combine Kanban and Scrum, or to provide these complimentary practices, professional Scrum, or I guess if you were a kanban shop, the complementary practices of Scrum to Kanban was because what I saw was a lot of organizations were wrestling with unplanned work in sprints. You know, they were, they were wrestling with how to make things more transparent, and they were wrestling with how to make, you know that what metrics and decisions about improvement of both the product and of how they work, using metrics to using data to drive that, and they were really challenged with that. And that was my motivation to work with Daniel vacanti and Yuval Yvette to people that I'd met on my journeys around the world, around that were really good at Kanban, and bring that into. Into scrum.org so it's really, really great to hear that it had some benefits. So tell me a little bit interesting to hear. You know, what was the sort of essential things that you got out of using professional scrum with Kanban Andre?

Alex Hardt: 10:19

Can you? Can you put your question a little bit more precisely, please? Yeah,

Dave West: 10:24

okay, let's do that again. Okay, so tell me a little bit you know, how you use those practices. What practices stood out? Was it all around flow? Was it all around managing that transparent, you know, sort of like visualization. Is it about WIP limits? What really were the key things that you took out of that training and applied in your organization?

Alex Hardt: 10:51

Yes, the main thing was the Edit transparency with Kanban board. Previously, everybody had his own work, but it was never formalized. Like, these are the things I'm working on right now. It was all hidden behind our support tickets and our system, but it was never clear. Like, those are the things I'm currently working on right now. Those are the things that I'm planning to work on and etc. So the first and the biggest thing was we had an formalized way of putting our work together to share it with everybody else. Now, even if I'm ill or if I'm on a vacation, everybody knows what's on my plate. Like, that's the first and the biggest positive change you can It's phenomenal, phenomenal with our sprint planning, we previously took like, two hour meetings to get everything together, because everybody forget, forgets everything like and oh, I remember there was something I wanted to address. And now we have a formalized way of sharing our work together, and so we can look at our board and we see what stuff is happening, what does not happen. Where do we need to address some things? Is it our client that's lacking? Are we lacking that's great, and we're down to like, maybe half an hour for the sprint planning, with that alone sets like a real benefit, and the other one is work in progress, or the limits of work in progress. Previously, we basically started everything. There was a request from the client. As soon as it get in, we wrote an email, yes, we can do it maybe, maybe not. But now we are more precoious with that, because not everything can we cannot address everything at once. There has to be, like a CO or somebody has to wait, and we have now more focused on finishing things than starting things. And this is like an eye that was an eye opener for our team. And, yeah, that's basically the most important

Dave West: 13:29

part. Yeah, yeah. So I just want to and Alex, you're obviously much smarter than me about these things. But before, Alex, you add a little bit, I'd like to just that work in progress thing. So I remember I was on me and Yuval and Daniel did a little bit of a road show when we first brought this out. And so I visited lots of people and presented these things. And the biggest thing that I saw with all these quite good professional scrum implementations was they had so many things in progress, and there were so many invisible cues, you know, where things were done, but they weren't done because they're waiting on something else, and there was something else, and there's this cluster of work that was kind of like messy, and that any one moment exactly, if you let's hopefully go On vacation, not on sick, but you sort of missed. It was really hard. It was very reliant on people. And I think that's one thing that I that resonates really well from your description. Andrea, Alex, you know, you're the expert here talk. You know, is that these are unusual things, or is this what you would expect after somebody went on a professional scrum Kanban class.

Andre Bohn: 14:46

So it happens not every time, or let's say not so often, that they really got noticed, that people start implementing what happens after this class, and what happens in Andre's case, was a huge success. I would say that. Happens, not every day. Mostly the challenge is for students, I think, in the class that do not have the real authority to change things. And that was a real benefit of Andre and his team, that he has a project manager, let's say, the lead of the team, and the small size of the team, and he had a direct conversation with his executive who could change the environment for the good happens. The thing that whip limits are too high. I think we see this everywhere, also in our personal life, not only in business. That is totally normal.

Dave West: 15:42

Yeah. Sorry. So I'm laughing, because, as we're speaking, my slack is like crazy where there's like seven different things running in parallel. So no, I don't, I don't believe that Alex at all. I don't suffer from that.

Andre Bohn: 15:58

Can imagine. So, so limiting the VIP, from my experience, also often is a challenge, because people like and tend to start on work on everything. And for a lot of teams that I know and I work with, this is most, the most important, but also the most challenging thing to tell people like Andre said, finish first before you start something new. And how they achieve this what I get out with the conversation that I had with Andre. So it was less that they explicitly limit, limited their whip. It's more what Andre said they focused on the work item age, so they took care to finish things before starting something new. So, and I think this is a good approach that is less rigid than, let's say, Okay, now the WIP limit is, I don't know, five, yeah. And then creating an environment where people change their behavior. And let's focus on finish things and then starting things. And let's see what we can do to finish and get the work item H down. And that, I think, also satisfy Andre your customers when they get their stuff sooner, in a more predictable way, isn't it

Alex Hardt: 17:29

exactly right? I think most of our customers didn't recognize any change because their expectation was always it's was done yesterday. But besides that, we saw huge, huge improvements. One thing that the Kanban board made transparent was quiet tickets. Many times somebody sends in a request and never touches back on their own, and if you're not well structured or have policies around it, you would never notice that there was something laying dormant and not getting addressed. And the canvas board for our for us, helped us to identify those tickets or support cases and wrestle with them and get in touch in a productive manner. Yeah, and even then, when we asked directly and needed feedback on something critical, even then, we got horrendous item ages. I think if we would not have had an Kanban board or a kanban approach, those tickets would have never seen the light of day, like they would have lain always dormant in our backlog, but got never addressed. And so I think it's really a change, because everything that's in progress is in progress. And you can even not guarantee that it's with a low item age, but you can guarantee that you work on it, and I think that's a huge part. And I think in the long run, those changes our customers will notice, yeah,

Dave West: 19:23

yeah, I agree, Alex, you've got something to add.

Andre Bohn: 19:27

Yeah, I wanted to add. So Andre is a smart guy, not only consultant and project manager, but also some kind of developer also. And the nice thing that they had so they Kanban board, let's say also kind of their sprint backlog is a combination also with the work item H, so chart, so you can see the work item H, and they have some kind of traffic light system implemented in their Kanban board. And they also see the age of the items. Directly in their Kanban board. That's a very nice thing. So that is even more visualization in a direct way. I would say, instead of having two boards and charts that you need to flip and check all the time,

Dave West: 20:14

yeah, it's funny you say that as well, because Yuval, when I did this road show, the technique that he used was he used a banana skin. And he said, every item that you put on is a banana and it has a skin sitting there. Because, I mean, I I don't do this at home, but I remember when I was a student, you know, you'd find a banana skin somewhere around your your your apartment, and you be like, What the heck happened here? But the these things got brown and yucky and slimy after, after a while, it's so much. I'm glad you implemented that that technology, rather than using bananas, which, which, yeah, a bit of a waste of good bananas, hey. So that that's awesome. And just to lean in a little bit, you said, well, most customers didn't notice it. It's funny that they'd have noticed this if you hadn't got this right? Isn't that they're sort of like, it's almost like a hygiene factor, in terms of, if you don't have these practices in place, you get escalations. You get unhappy customers. You get those sort of like those fire moments where everybody has to work over the weekend because customers expectations were different to your expectations, and suddenly there was a moment where you realize that, do you have you seen, perhaps some improvements and in that long term. Mean you already an awesome company, but now you're an even better company, right?

Alex Hardt: 21:47

I think so it's hard to tell, because we never we, I never lived in a life or in a company or a timeline. So to say where we did not implement it. Therefore, it's hard to say, but I think gut feeling it's better. We have less escalations. We are more transparent about our workload. We can totally say to our customers or argument with it. Like, sure, we can do this thing, but somebody else has to wait. Which should it be? And usually that's like an fair point, please finish the worked items first. Like, those are also benefits of it.

Dave West: 22:40

Yeah, I love that having those open conversations with stakeholders, and particularly the stakeholders that write checks, is perhaps the best and the most valuable thing you can possibly do. I think it's awesome. All right, so I could talk about Kanban and professional scrum for hours, but I guess what our listeners would really like to know. All right, so our listeners are listening to this podcast, obviously, and thank you for your time doing it, and they're thinking, that's great. What can I do? What should I do next? What should that be? Andre what would you tell people that haven't combined the power of professional Scrum and Kanban together?

Alex Hardt: 23:28

Well, I think there's no real downside in doing it. That's that's the first part. It's not professional Kanban or Scrum. It's professional scrum with Kanban, and it complements each other, I think. And even if you don't have the means to do it fully and fully well, which would be perfect. I think starting it is also good enough. Start with limiting your work in progress. Work on less things start to be more transparent, and benefit from more transparency. Those two steps alone are worth a lot, and honestly, start there. That's that would be my first thing, and then figure it out from there, like it's already thought out, what you have to do, what you can do, how you measure it, how you define it, and stuff like that. Though, nobody nothing has holds you back to put it that way,

Dave West: 24:42

that's awesome advice. Make it transparent. Start getting that whip so it's really transparent. Start looking at aging, and then use that as the basis to be continuous improvement. Alex, anything to add?

Andre Bohn: 24:57

Let's say somehow the unfair advantage of. Andres team, I think, is the bonds that they had in their team and the small size of the company, and also that before they already had this kind of team spirit and teamwork, I think that made a lot things for them easier implementing this. And yeah, there are a lot of good frameworks, Kanban, Scrum, combining scrum with Kanban, in the end, it's about the people and the great work that they're doing. So if you have awesome people, there are a lot of good things that they can use and show their awesomeness.

Dave West: 25:37

900% agree it gives this is and to be honest, that's true of Scrum in its most basic level. It is all about amplifying the power of people, or, as Ken say, amplifying the stupidity of your team. Ken scuba the CO creator of Scrum, and he just used it to make bad team decisions really, really transparent. I hoped that they would then fix those decisions, and Kanban really is just the same. So thank you, gentlemen for sharing this, this awesome story, with our listeners. I'm inspired to sort of go back to my own backlog and my own work with my team and actually spend a little bit more time thinking about aging. It is funny, and you may have seen this as well Andrea, that over time, you sort of forget you put these practices in, and then, you know, time aging starts to affect the process and you forget about them. So I'm definitely going to go back and think a little bit more about some of the things that are on our backlog, and ensure that with we're keeping an eye on some of those aging things. So I appreciate that that really, really does help me and but Thank you, Alex Andre for joining us today on the scrum.org community podcast.

Alex Hardt: 27:07

Thanks for having us.

Andre Bohn: 27:09

Thanks Dave for inviting us. Great.

Dave West: 27:12

And for the listeners, there's an awesome case study that you can have a look at that if you haven't got time to listen to our Dorset tones online, and we connected to this, to this podcast. So today you heard from Amber edX talking about how they use Scrum and Kanban together to really manage the complexities of dealing with stakeholders and customers in a in a system that's always improving and getting better, combining that power of product based development with Scrum, with that flexibility that Kanban provides us with, I guess if there was one sentence that sums it up, that really is the best practice, Let's start finishing and stop starting. I think Andre did a really good job describing that. I instantly thought, t shirt, let's start finishing and stop starting. How many times have you started something without actually really finishing the thing that you were on before? It's great that sage advice here that you heard today on today's podcast. So thank you for listening. If you liked what you heard, please subscribe, share with friends, and, of course, come back and listen to some more. I'm lucky enough to have a variety of guests talking about anything and everything in the areas of professional Scrum, product thinking, and, of course, agile and maybe a little bit of Kanban today. Thanks everybody and Scrum on

Lindsay Velecina: 28:46

Welcome to the scrum.org community podcast, a podcast from the home of Scrum. In this podcast, we feature professional scrum trainers and other scrum practitioners sharing their stories and experiences to help learn from the experience of others. We hope you enjoy this episode. Bye.