2. Who are we?
Rajsekhar Janaswamy
Two decades in IT, multiple roles across product and service organizations,
currently focus on enabling high performance
Mahadevan Periaswamy
2+ decades IT, spanning both product and services in various roles.
Current interests include Agile Program Management, Agile-Lean Consulting/
coaching, Leadership and Gamification
4. What our session is
about
The startups in India grew 300 times in the last 9
years
Quantum jump in startups to more than 90,000
with more than 100 unicorns
Today we are going to talk about startup’s, their
unique circumstances and challenges and how
Kanban can actually help them be successful
5. Challenges of
Startups and
Early Stage
Products
Limited resources: limited financial resources, manpower,
and infrastructure
Uncertain market demand - Trying to find a problem
solution fit and Product market fit
Competitive landscape - Differentiating the product and
establishing a unique value proposition
Funding and investment: Securing funding for early stage
products
Team Churn: Attracting and retaining skilled and dedicated
team members
Scalability and growth: scaling up production, managing
increased demand, and expanding market reach
Marketing and distribution: Building awareness and
reaching target customers
6. Why do Startup’s fail?
CB Insights, a venture capital database, did their homework based on
101 startup post-mortems
7. Is this only limited to start up’s?
Over 30,000 new products introduced every year, and 95 percent
fail. (Harvard Business School – Prof Clayton Christensen)
The failure rate of new grocery store products is 70 to 80 percent
(University of Toronto - Prof Inez Blackburn)
8. How to address? Some current models and
tools
1. Lean Startup
2. Lean Canvas
3. Business model canvas
4. Value proposition canvas
5. Jobs to be done
6. Wardley mapping
7. UnFix
8. ….
9. Irrespective of the models,
operational Hiccup’s do exist
• Prioritization and tradeoffs
• Frequent Start Stop
• Resource churn
• Alignment across groups
• Trying / Starting too many things
10. Fixing operational chaos using Kanban
Kanban practices that we are all aware of
1. Visualize
1. Limit WIP
2. Manage flow
3. Make policies explicit
4. Implement feedback loops
5. Improve Collaboratively, Evolve Experimentally
11. How can Kanban help address
the chaos?
A set of Minimum Viable Boards
12. Startups, like Star Trek are a
journey into the unknown
Quick decision making is the key for success and sometimes survival
13. Information Flow: OKR’s for Alignment
OKRs provide clarity, alignment, and
focus for teams and individuals, enabling
them to work towards common goals and
drive organizational success.
14. Information Flow: Alignment and making
tradeoffs by Visualization of OKR’s
Swimlanes
Columns for Key
Results Across Units
Reporting Metrics
Priority Markers in
relation to the
importance to OKR’s
Colour coding for work
items based on
organizational units
17. But the question is which key result does it
impact?
● which KR does the new idea impact?
● what is the impact of this idea on
every other group?
● which activities do we
start/stop/continue/replace?
● who else needs to be in this
conversation?
18. Information Flow: Individual activities can
further be tracked in their individual Kanban
Example for Marketing function
20. People Flow Radar - How engaged are our teams/functions ?
• People motivation and ability
make the real difference
• Information radiators can be
very useful to sense this
• Example - A Spider chart
representation of people
motivation and ability
• Data is collected from team
members on a periodic basis
21. Pattern and the Pill
Failure Modes Operational Hiccups /
Causes
Potential Solutions Pill
No Market Need - 42% Trying / Starting too many things
Prioritization and tradeoffs
● Hypothesis Validation Kanban
● Information flow / Alignment
kanban
Ran out of Cash - 29% Alignment across groups
Trying / Starting too many things
Prioritization and tradeoffs
● Information Flow/Alignment
Kanban
Not the right team - 23% Resource churn Ego ● People Flow Radar
Outcompeted - 19% Prioritization and tradeoffs
Frequent Start Stop
● Hypothesis Validation Kanban
● Information Flow/Alignment
Kanban
22. The Minimum Viable Boards for Captain Kirk
and Team
Hypothesis flow Kanban Functions Operational flow Kanban
Information flow Kanban People flow Radar
23. Conclusion/ Summary
1. Operational chaos will exist no matter
which frameworks are used
2. Applying Kanban principles such as
Visualization, WIP limits and Explicit
policies can reduce chaos
3. The MVB’s can optimize cash burn
