During the last week I took a course in Kanban (Jedi level mind you well) a Crisp in Stockholm. Giving the course was David Andersson, more or less the father of Kanban for software business as I understand.
If you don’t know anything about Kanban (as I didn’t) then this article by Henrik Kniberg is a great introduction. Also keep your eyes open on Info-Q for a complete book on the subject with some great case studies.
I think that the course was really good and gave me some deeper understanding in Lean-thinking. There are some simple but powerful tools in there; visualization (put it up on the wall!), give room for the value-adding things in your process and minimize waste, root-cause analysis etc.
Kanban itself is not really that hard to grasp (thank God!) but it’s like any game; the rules are simple but mastering it takes a lifetime.
I also felt a need to pick up the Lean thinking that is underlying the thoughts of both Scrum and Kanban.
Also I am not that worried if it’s called Scrum, Kanban, XP or Lean anymore. It’s just more tools in my agile toolbox. I’ll use them when needed. The trick is to know when…. That is being smart.
I am sure that I will get back to Kanban several times in here.