The Kanban track invites 1 hour presentations on the theory and practice related to WIP limited pull systems and their organizational, cultural, and economic effects and impacts in the software development lifecycle and product and project management. A range of presentations is sought from novice to expert level presenting Kanban 101 through to advanced topics. We are specifically looking for material covering areas such as: accelerated high maturity; use of metrics for ongoing improvement; metrics for executive and management reporting; Kanban in the PMO; quantitative management like statistical process control; Kanban and Scrum/XP; Multi-tiered Kanban; Kanban across multi-dependent teams, large programs and enterprise scale; and use of classes of service and other risk management techniques.
The Lean Product Development track covers the application of lean methods to the development of products that have a significant hardware component. Ideally the projects will have the combined challenge of hardware and software. They will be significantly smaller in scale than projects covered by the System Engineering track. We are particularly interested in how companies deal with the challenges of making overall WIP visible, driving down batch sizes within their processes, accelerating feedback cycles, managing non-homogeneous workflows, and reducing coupling between hardware and software workstreams. Since, unlike Lean Manufacturing, Lean Product Development is rapidly evolving area of practice, we expect to cover implementations at different levels of refinement. This will enable us to provide conference attendees with a multifaceted perspective on these methods.
The Lean Management track invites 1 hour presentations on the use of Lean as it relates to organizations with software development groups. This track will cover using lean at all levels in an organization: strategic, operations, and tactical. We anticipate session submissions covering topics such as business value, portfolio management, cost of delay, governance, metrics and motivation, organizational development, systems thinking, decision frameworks, risk management, the role of leadership and management, visual controls, coordination of teams with Lean flow, education, and required Lean competencies throughout the organization.
The Media and Games track invites 1 hour presentations, case studies and experience reports on the usage of Lean Thinking and Kanban tools within the Media and Games industries.
Can you time-box creativity? Have Agile methods not been a good fit for you within these industries in the past?
The Games industry with its phases such as concept, pre-production and production, often require lots of specialization, resulting in hand-offs in the workflow. We are interested in where Lean Thinking and Kanban tools have been applied to increase predictability, transparency and optimization of the production of complex games.
The Media industry often have a much wider range of demand, and need to be responsive and make small changes that happen in very short timescales. We are looking for speakers to spend an hour sharing their specific field experiences applying Kanban or more general Lean Thinking within this industry.
While much of the recent interest in Lean has been at the team level with Kanban, the true promise of Lean / Kanban is using it to drive the business needs of the organization. This track will present experience reports of large scale Lean/Kanban initiatives. Topics may include experience with beyond budgeting, driving an organization from a financial perspective, integrating business and IT, large scale Kanban experience reports, amongst others. The focus of the track will be how Lean can help guide solutions to the business needs of the organization.
The Visualization track invites 1 hour presentations on the use of techniques, models and examples to compose kanban board visualizations. We are interested in submissions of those who have experienced activities of mapping team work or organization information in physical or electronic visualizations, making not only the work itself visible, but eventually other informations about the work or the work environment as well. We are looking not only for examples of kanban boards in common or unusual designs but also for the exercise of techniques, methods and patterns that enabled teams and organizations to model their boards. We also welcome presentations on theory and practice about the effects of visibility and transparency in social or management aspects of teams and organizations.
The LSSE 2011 Risk Track is aimed at highlighting how Lean Software & Systems approaches can be used to manage risk or foster entrepreneurship and innovation across the strategic, operational and financial aspects of an organization, commercial or government. We are inviting for consideration presentations that can demonstrate how LSSE in practice has transformed the risk profile of an organization, e.g., changed the perception of risk in an organization, say by helping the perception of risk from something that creates fear and apprehension to one where risk is seen as a way to create market or governmental leadership. In addition, we are interested in how LSSE affects the risk management process itself. Finally, we are seeking presentations that discuss the risk of implementing LSSE in an organization, and how they can be successfully addressed.
Software-intensive systems are built to satisfy a set of requirements that dictate performance, availability, security, compatibility with other systems, and the ability to accommodate change.
Architectures also improve opportunities for reuse of software components. And, with careful planning, reuse of an architecture can lead to the creation of families of systems, which in turn leads to new organizational structures and new business opportunities. Planning for productive use of a system over a long time period is difficult. Changing conditions in markets, technology, the economy, and the political landscape can reduce a system’s utility. How can organizations manage an uncertain future by planning for system evolution in a way that optimizes ongoing system usefulness?
Architecture represents a critical core competency for organizations that build or acquire software-intensive systems. More and more high-performing organizations are taking steps to ensure that their organizations use architectural practices that lead to a positive development outcome, and that their staffs have the appropriate skills and knowledge to put the power of software and system architecture to work for them.
The CMMI & Multi-modal Process Implementation track invites presentations on using various modes (e.g., CMMI, lean, agile practices, ISO xxx) together in pursuit of performance improvement. Preference will be given to content combining CMMI with Kanban, however other SEI tools and non-Kanban lean approaches will not be dismissed out-of-hand. In particular, we’re interested in how you’ve combined improvement modes, not just made the modes tolerable of one another. What’s less interesting are examples of particular practices that are “compatible” or “interpretable” to “fit into” one or the other body of work. For instance, it’s much more interesting when CMMI and Kanban are combined to create beneficial results, rather than how you might’ve warped a Kanban flow into a pre-existing CMMI improvement system. On the other hand, if you were able to bring either CMMI into a Kanban space or vice-versa and were able to gain unrealized or unexpected synergies, that would be most exciting. In general, we’d like to see how (and what) you saw beyond the practices of either CMMI and/or Kanban/lean, and drew benefit from them. Demonstrable achievement of particular CMMI ratings are not expected. Talks may be targeted at any knowledge-level audience.
Implementing LEAN in production is relatively easy because the product is tangible and the flow is visible. You can detect waste from: over production, inventories of work in process, defects, movement of products and people, and so on. In the development environment, it is similar, but instead of dealing with products and manufacturing flow, we deal with engineering data creation and flow. The problem is that it is difficult to see the data, because it is buried in the documents, computers, but most of it is invisible because it exists inside people minds.
In a project that requires interfacing with other external systems and a number of sub-systems which may be designed by different functional departments; the most important project information is hidden in the interfaces among all those domains. This information will be revealed only if all the parties of those domains integrate in a structured way and analyze the project, (LPD Workshop). If not, this information will surface later during design / production in an uncontrolled manner, generating errors and defects, which will cause schedule delays, rework, or even the re-development of projects.