Establish a delivery rhythm

Kanban - Chapter 8

Delivery rhythms in agile software development

projects• Mostly fixed delivery rhythms (2 weeks

e.g.)• „Timeboxing“: Defining a backlog for a

fixed period• „Heartbeat“ argumentation

Resulting problems• Hard to build a backlog which fits exactly

in this fixed period• A backlog gets pressed into a fixed

period• At the end of the iteration, there is

mostly time left or not all tickets are finished

Kanban uncuples• Kanban separates prioritization,

development and delivery• Kanban uncouples cycle time and

prioritization rhythm

Delivery costs• Coordination costs

• Marketing, Sales, Training• Transaction Costs

• All costs for delivering software to the customer (deployment, shipping)

• Effort depends on the business model

Increasing the Delivery Efficiency• How to calculate the Delivery Efficiency?

• Delivery Efficiency in % = 100% x (Total Costs of the release - (Coordination Costs + Transaction Costs)) / Total Costs of the release

• How to optimize the efficiency?• Increase the delivery rhythm• Reduce Coordination and Transaction

Costs

Defining a delivery rhythm• You should know the delivery costs

(easy) and the value of the delivery (not as easy)

• Every team member must know that delivering a software generates costs, which should be reduces as much as possible

• The team shall make decision from these data about the delivery rhythm

Increasing the delivery efficiency

• Reduce transaction and coordination costs

• Establish modern software development and deployment tools and processes

Reduce time to market

Generate more value

Fixed delivery rhythms or spontaneous

deliveries?• Continuous and reliable delivery rhythms builds confidence and reduce coordination costs

• Short delivery rhythms can make sense if transaction and coordination costs are low

• The higher the majority level of an organization is and the more confidence exist, spontaneous deliveries can be an option

Conclusion• Timeboxing can cause inefficient work in agile software

projects• Kanban uncouples delivery from development cycle time

and prioritization rhythm• Delivery costs consist of coordination costs between

internal and external parties, and all costs • Increase the delivery rhythm and reduce Coordination

and Transaction Costs• Define a delivery rhythm• Reduce transaction and coordination costs and establish

modern tools and processes• Reduce time to market and generate more value