A presentation given by to the APM Planning, Monitoring and Control SIG and guests at the University of Warwick, Coventry 2015. Mia Nordborg, Projectplace – Multi-tasking makes you stupid. Our brains are not developed to multi-task, and doing so can destroy brain cells. That’s why Kanban boards should limit the number of activities you have in progress.

1. Mia (Maria) Nordborg | Director of Customer Relations | marian@projectplace.com | @mianor
Lean, Agile and Kanban

2. Agenda
About Projectplace
Management – Shaping of human behaviour
Lean & Agile
Kanban – a collaboration trend
Summary

4. 151,054
registered users
Over 1 milj
Founded
as one of the world’s first
SaaS companies
1998
number of projects
in people-centric
collaboration
Pioneer
uptime
99.97%
Average service

5. Project
management
& execution
Team & task
collaboration
Document
collaboration

6. Projectplace
A history of computer supported
collaborative work
The Speech Act Theory - a theory that describes how
people cooperate using language
It was the original core in the early Projectplace System.
It has inspired us to understand that it is important that
all involved in a project can follow what is happening,
all individual actions and all the commitments people
make to each other

7. Management = shaping behaviours

8. Use role-model leadership, instructions and core values with good
examples to activate behavior you want (20% of behavioral shaping)
Give positive feedback on the behavior you want to have more of (the
other 80%)
Ignore behavior you do not want (it will decrease over time)
Be very cautious with negative feedback (it will make people
unmotivated, defensive and insecure)
Shaping behavior

9. Our brains are hard-wired
to coordinate behavior by
positive intermittent reinforcement
New knowledge about
how to shape human behavior

10. Lean, Agile & Kanban

11. Do you use Lean or Agile principles
in your daily work?

12. Lean, Agile & Kanban
› Efficiency = to increase or maintain perceived customer value with less work
› Self-organized teams: The ones who execute the work should be the ones
planning it
› Control through transparency
› Continuous improvement
› Workflows should be visible for everyone
› Kanban-inspired visual management tools
Nonlinear Management (NLM)
Management techniques and strategies started to appear
more than 30 years ago.
Examples: Systems Theory (CAS), Concurrent Engineering, Toyota Kaizen, Lean Production
Important values and principles within lean and agile

13. in Projectplace
› Working lean is all about reducing waste
and adding value
› Communication
› Visual management tools
› Standardization
› Kaizen - Continous improvement
› Jidoka, rätt-från-mig/kvalitet/Stoppa vid fel
Lean

14. Agile - Responding to change
What most people think What successful people know

15. Divide and conquer

16. Sprint – a chunk of time
Peaceful and focused work for the team Estimates and updates for the stakeholder

17. Lean, Agile and Kanban are spreading from production
and product development to many industries and business areas

18. Are you resource efficient or flow efficient?
it is all about customer value
Result
AB
CD
AB
CD
AB
CD
AB
CD
result result result
Unit a Unit b Unit c Unit d
Result

19. Kanban boards,
The next big collaboration trend
?How come

20. The danger of multitasking
Many people take pride in how well they multitask.
But new research suggests some big downsides to it:
› Multitasking increases the chances of making mistakes and missing
important information and cues
› Multitaskers are also less likely to retain information in working
memory, which can hinder problem solving and creativity
› We think we can – but it is simply impossible neurologically
› Causes cognitive impairment
› Can lead to people making objectively poorer choices, choices they
later regret
If you want to read more about this:
To learn more about Organize Your Mind, Organize Your Life, visit the Harvard Health Publications website.) Dr. Paul Hammerness and Margaret Moore,
authors of Organize Your Mind, Organize Your Life, a new book from Harvard Health Publications.
www.psychologytoday.com

21. Kanban
board
› Visual signal – a card
› A ”pull” system
› Culture of continuous improvement
› Visualisation of work and teams progress
› Flow – stop starting, start finishing!
› Success through collaboration
› Enable customer value through continuous delivery
What is a
?

23. How can
digital Kanban boards
help your organization
achieve success?
Efficiency
Empower teams –
gain control
Self-organizing
teams
Transparency
Limit WIP
Customer
Satisfaction

24. Visualization & Transparency

25. Visualization accelerates learning
and the ability to prioritize
Kanban visualizes work and limits work-in-progress
Limiting our work-in-progress helps us complete what we start
and understand the value of our choices
Visualizing work allows us to transform our conceptual and
threatening workload into an actionable, context-sensitive flow
(we see what we are doing)

26. Ability to self-organize
is the key to high-performance teams
Psychological projection onto the visual cards
makes uncomfortable feelings easier to
handle
The board is a natural gathering point to
discuss issues, solve problems and learn
The kanban board makes behavior clearly
visible

27. Group psychology and modern behavior science can explain why!
Collaborative planning reinforces efficient
project behavior
I see ...
... therefore I
can commit ... ... and deliver!

28. › Dragging a card to the second column on the kanban board
communicates that you have commited and started to do
something. It increases accountability and reduces procrastination
The Zeigarnik effect promotes follow though
› Dragging a card to the last column, representing finishing a task,
reduces cognitive load and perceived stress
The psychological tendency to remember an
uncompleted task rather than a completed one

29. Transparency provides management
control with less overhead
Control through transparency
is a key principle within Lean
and Agile

31. What kind of collboration tool
should you choose?
Well it depends on...
› Start out with a simple solution
› Make sure it can grow with you

32. https://todo.projectplace.com

33. Thank you
Mia (Maria) Nordborg | Director of Customer Relations | marian@projectplace.com | @mianor

34. excellence in collaboration