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Thursday, November 14, 2013 - 2:15pm - 3:30pm
Kanban
AT8

The Kanban Pizza Game: Maximize Profit by Managing Flow

The Kanban Pizza Game is a hands-on simulation designed to teach the core elements of a kanban system—visualize the workflow, limit your work-in-process (WIP), manage flow, make process policies explicit, and improve collaboratively. Join Brad Swanson as the proprietor of your very own pizza shop to experience how kanban helps eliminate bottlenecks, minimize waste, and keep up with customer demand—all while competing against other teams for the title of “Pizza King.” Find out if you can really improve throughput and profit through the sometimes-counterintuitive practices of single-piece flow and limiting WIP. Finally, Brad relates your experience back to the software world to show how kanban can be an evolutionary path to lean-agile development. Whether you are a novice seeking to learn kanban in a memorable way or a seasoned practitioner looking for a great simulation to teach kanban to others, this is the session for you.

Brad Swanson, agile42

Brad Swanson is a senior agile coach and vice president at agile42. He started his software career at age ten on the Apple IIe and is now a Certified Scrum Coach with seventeen years of experience in management, project and program leadership, product management, and software development in both start-ups and large companies. Brad has led agile transformations using XP, Scrum, and kanban at many organizations across the US, Europe, and Asia. He has deep experience with agile software development, starting with eXtreme Programming (XP) in 1999.

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