Making Work Visible

CONCLUSION: CALIBRATION

Never let formal education get in the way of your learning.—Mark Twain

Mountain View, California, September 2011

Following the first ever Kanban for DevOps class in Mountain View, California, a man sporting a kilt and long locks asked, “How do you integrate kanban with ticket systems without slowing down high-throughput Ops teams?” The man, whose name was Ben, wrote the question on a large, orange sticky note while standing at the back of the DevOps meetup room.

Now, looking at the orange note, which I saved, I remember that I didn’t know how to answer the question at the time. It’s as valid a question today as it wasin 2011. My response today begins with one comment and two questions: My comment is that any change, even ...