KANBAN AT VISOTECH In Search of the Essence of Value - KANBANCASESTUDYSERIES
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KANBAN AT VISOTECH
In Search of the Essence of Value
KANBANCASESTUDYSERIES
“W hat is your end-to-end flow for creating value to your customers?” Klaus asked
Christoph once again.
It was proving harder to answer than Christoph had expected. He had already explained what
he did on a daily basis as a project manager. But how to determine precisely which part of it
was valuable and what was the specific flow to generate it? That’s what Klaus was insisting on
exploring.
The project manager was puzzled. His task had been to just take the necessary steps to steer
work assignments. Why should there be any particular flow and how would that help anyway?
The year was 2011.
Since then, Christoph has learned to define a project as a concept that would eventually bring
revenue to the company and an improvement to the client. To learn what is going on with each
project, all he has to do is enter the Kanbanraum - the Kanban room (Fig. 1).
Five Kanban boards, one resource allocation board and two dozen plastic tubes filled with
colored plastic balls to track time spent on all company activities – the Kanbanraum paints the
full picture that Christoph would need as Head of Project Management at Austrian company
Visotech.
For the past two years the Kanban Method has spread like a virus through the company. This
is the story of a business that found its true form to suit function through the visibility of kanban
systems and the questions raised along the way.
Background
Visotech was established in the see as collusive behaviour – the result another in order to reach equilibrium,
outskirts of Vienna in 1999 as a of vertical bundling. Now millions of working with a commodity, which by
software shop by Johannes Puller EU citizens were paying too high a its nature is difficult to store and has to
and Wolfgang Eichberger. In the first price for the commodity. be available on demand. With various
few years of its existence, the small So in the early 2000s, the EU producers, using both coal and natural
company created software products passed legislation aimed at liberalizing gas as input resources, with multiple
for various industries. One of the first the market and creating conditions energy trades happening all the time,
developers on board was Stefan and for competition. The big energy a lot of data would need to be at hand
one of the industries Visotech aimed at companies would no longer be allowed to make critical decisions and to avoid
was the energy market. to be producer, seller and owner. The mismatches between the output and
By the beginning of the 21st century, processes of electricity generation, the necessary input.
the European energy market had trading, transmission, distribution, and The need for software systems to
started undergoing a lot of changes. supply/sales were finally broken up and operate such a complex market was
In the decades before, coming out separated. evident. Visotech just happened to be
the Second World War, local energy The immediate effect of this at the right place in the right time. Its
markets had been established as unbundling meant that in order to product Periotheus had been designed
natural monopolies. Producers of perform essential activities such with the goal to communicate, organise
electricity had been responsible for the as scheduling, switching, enabling and visualise all the data exchanges
entire energy value chain all the way to and disabling of energy as well as happening on a daily basis in the
the end consumers. exchange of meter readings, billing and energy value chain, including energy
This model had been believed to invoicing, sophisticated ways for data trading. With the legislative changes
be the most efficient way to allocate transmission and handling had to be creating an exciting new opportunity,
electricity production. But the natural invented. Visotech decided to drop all other
monopolies had created what the The stakeholders would have products it had been working on and
European Union institutions came to to constantly transmit data to one focus purely on the energy market.
–2–
The Development Problem productive. Assignments, in fact, took its steps and individual tasks with the
a lot more time and the quality also facilitation of a Kanban board. The
By 2008 the development team
suffered as a result. In the context of transparency creates conditions to not
had grown to six people and the level
the energy market, each feature has to simply follow the progress of tasks but
of sophistication of the product had
be of utmost quality. The off-chance also to see the big picture in order to
helped Visotech acquire a substantial
of a defect escaping into production make necessary changes to the process
number of clients. The bigger the
has to be avoided at all cost since any and improve delivery. In addition, the
product got, the larger its scope
error can result in millions of lost method parses the work into smaller
became.
revenue or wasted energy and natural tasks, which are easier to monitor as
“We had hundreds of cases in the
gas supplies. To mitigate this risk, the they progress.
tracking tool at the time,” Stefan says.
Visotech developers and management Christoph also thought that smaller
Deciding which tasks to pick up
were spending ever more time on tasks would help creating the diversity
next was frustrating for the developers.
complicated and relentless testing and the developers craved. As smaller tasks
Tracking down what people are
reviewing. are completed faster, task switching
working on was very difficult and time-
consuming for Johannes. Knowing would decrease and as a result the
when they would be ready – virtually quality would increase. It seemed just
impossible.
A Resolution what the developers needed.
The tasks were ambitious in scope In 2009, Christoph Rissner, the Johannes liked the idea of a visible
and sometimes took months for Head of Development, heard about the board. Physically moving pieces of
completion. Struggling to cope with the Kanban Method from his friend Klaus paper that represent individual tasks
many parallel tasks and without a clear Leopold. as they get a step closer to being
prioritisation, the developers ended up “Everyone was wondering how completed sounded to him like a nice
doing what was universally thought of we could improve our situation and way to know what’s going on.
as a solution: they multitasked. when Christoph came back inspired “Having a to-do list on a digital
“I think we did it also because we got by Kanban, it was not hard to convince document somewhere was never his
bored by working on the same thing for us,” Stefan says. thing,” Christoph Walch says.
extended periods of time,” Stefan says. The method, Christoph explained, Christoph Rissner, Stefan and the
But as it is well understood by now, was based on visualizing explicitly rest of the developers sat down and
constant task switching was in no way the current process of work through designed the board with five columns.
Figure 1 - The Kanbanraum.
–3–
They took all of their tasks from the for. Providing this information proved
difficult for Johannes. Even though he
“Everyone was
bug tracking system and created tickets
for them. The big ones they broke up had the visibility of the development wondering how we
into smaller pieces, which was meant
to ensure that no one would get bored.
Kanban board, the task completion
rate varied tremendously as it
could improve our
Little by little, delivery time improved depended on the very communication situation and when
and the team decided to start releasing with the clients involved. The client
with a set frequency - every three driven integration was no longer just Christoph came back
months. development work, but also involved inspired by Kanban,
It was a commitment. The effects a lot of coordination and negotiation
became evident soon after. The over the phone and in person. it was not hard to
company began acquiring more “It might be done next week, or
next month, or maybe next quarter,”
convince us.”
and more newcomer clients into the
developing energy market. The need Johannes would tell his clients. with the internal development. After a
for project managers to oversee those With more clients, the amount couple attempts, it became evident that
clients and for technical support of client-specific work increased the team would not be able to design
engineers to help them with issues and chaos began creeping in again. the system by themselves. Christoph
was becoming obvious. So the two Johannes decided to assign one person Rissner knew exactly who to call.
departments were created. from Development entirely for the “We have been visualising our work
The clients of Visotech were integration with the hope that would with the aid of the Kanban Method
positioned at all the various points of improve the situation.
principles you told me about, but I
the energy market. In those specific “I think it quickly became think we need your help now, Klaus.”
roles as producers, traders, operators unbearable for him,” Stefan says.
and sellers they had their own specific So Johannes assigned two more
needs. people to the task, prompting The Kanban Coach
“Periotheus was always built on the formation of what is now the “Why are we all here?” Klaus asked
the notion that it must allow for a Integration Department. the four people that sat in front of
lot of adaptations and integrations “We began working within our own him. He had arranged with Johannes
without running the risk of breaking,” group, separate from Development,” and Wolfgang to come for a two-day
Christoph Walch elaborates. Murat Gürol says. workshop to help them create a kanban
Visotech had made a clear promise But still the problem wasn’t system for the Integration Department.
it would serve its users fully and resolved. Since there was no visibility But before he could help them do that,
provide for any need that may have for Johannes on what people were he needed to understand why they
arisen in the complex energy business. working on, it was difficult to say wanted that Kanban board in the first
Encouraged to give suggestions, more when something would be ready. It place.
of the clients made individual requests. was difficult for the project managers By 2011, when he got the call from
Some could sensibly be added to the to steer the process. In the end it was Christoph, Klaus had been involved
general product and used by everyone, proving impossible to know whether with Kanban, teaching classes and
but others were too special and the most important features for the coaching teams throughout Austria,
context driven. They required a lot of clients are being worked on and South Germany and Switzerland
additional information and back and whether the deadlines would be met. via his small consulting company
forth communication. Yet, regardless So it was quite natural to then turn LEANability. The change management
of the nature of the requests, a promise to what people knew had helped the method was already helping many
was a promise and had to be kept. teams, but for the method to work,
first time around - Kanban.
it needed a very clear understanding
“We tried to outline the steps,
about its purpose from those who
but because of the back and forth
The Integration Problem wanted to come onboard with Kanban.
communication it was more difficult,” “They were pretty open to me and
Eventually providing the desired Murat says.
features turned out to not be enough. very determined to succeed, is it was a
Incorporating all the scenarios that nice difference from the usual skeptical
The clients wanted to also know when
external communication necessitated looks that I get as an external coach,”
they could expect what they had asked
was not as clear cut as it had been Klaus says.
–4–
He gave the participants, including and day out for many months and The most important thing was to
Wolfgang and Christoph Walch, some assumed it should be easy to make the make work explicit for everyone to
theory about the Kanban Method work process explicit. But the various see. Seeing the workflow and how it
and then moved to what he believed scenarios still confused them. went through the system allowed for
was the essence of any business and They assumed everything was conclusions if it was performed in the
where Kanban held its true potential important until Klaus stopped them smartest and most efficient way or not.
- determining the most valuable thing and questioned those assumptions. In Seeing the work and the policies that
that the company does. a way, he was preparing them to start surround them was a starting point
“We had a long discussion about the seeing the Kanban board not simply to initiate conversations about the
difference between working on tasks as a status report of the way things are, importance of each task and how it
and generating value for the customer. but as a vision how they can be done contributed to what was considered of
I wanted them to understand there is a better. value.
big distinction between the two,” Klaus After the first day the board was Above all, the employees of Visotech
says. a mess. But they did not give up. On understood that value was not created
It took them a while to define value. the second day they picked up from efficiently when work is passed on
It took them even more time to come where they had left off the day before. from one department to another
By the end of the second day they blindly. It is a common effort and a
to an agreement on the end-to-end
came to a common understanding failure to understand that created
flow of creating that value to their
and agreement about the flow that unclear specifications that impeded
clients. What they came up with was
constituted valuable working. The first efficiency.
that it’s not about the individual efforts “My purpose as a coach was to get
ever Kanban board of the integration
of boxed departments. It is about them out of the habit of just working
department was ready with twelve
making one common effort to create columns, a backlog and an input queue without paying too much attention and
well-functioning systems, which serve (Fig. 2). get them into a conscious and mindful
the demanding needs of the complex In retrospect, those two days were state where they could differentiate
energy market. tedious and difficult. “It took us what was meaningful,” Klaus says.
Next they moved onto designing almost two days to talk about how
a kanban system for the integration. work works,” Murat says. But going
Murat and his two other colleagues through the process had set in motion
had been tackling their tasks day in a company-wide understanding.
Figure 2 - The first ever Kanban board.
–5–
The Journey Continues management were being added to
it. Each new version brought new
“My purpose as a coach
The idea of value puzzled Christoph features and fixed defects. But the was to get them
Walch in particular. How could
project management contribute more
clients of Visotech were worried that
each new version of the product could
out of the habit of just
purposefully to it? affect something else in the system. working without paying
“I think initially we had seen
Kanban as a board on the wall that
“We could not make them switch
to the new version and we wanted
too much attention
helps us monitor how tasks progress them to feel comfortable and and get them into a
in general, but after the workshop I
started looking for more concrete proof
confident,” Stefan says.
That comfort had a price though
conscious and mindful
we were doing a good job,” he says. - each version that a client was state where they could
It elevated bottlenecks that when
addressed could improve how fast
using had to be constantly and fully
maintained. Massaging older versions
differentiate what was
Visotech delivered and how well it met of the product had become just meaningful.”
its deadlines. as important for Visotech’s clients
Christoph Walch was not the only as innovating it. Visualizing and about the first Project Management
one whose mind was restless after managing that complexity became of board.
Klaus had left. The developers quickly the essence. That meant even more In the Kanban community that sort
came to the conclusion that the way projects between the teams. of board is known as a Portfolio level
their board was designed did not give That was not the only external one, which is particularly helpful for
a clear view of the valuable pieces of complication the company executives who need an overview of all
work. experienced. the company’s activities.
“We do not just develop features To design the board took a few
“We figured out that we switch
for our product, but we also have iterations. Yet, this time it was easier,
between tasks all the time in the Care
support cases, quality improvements, because the project managers had
and Roll out columns because tickets
and others. We figured that when you learned to look for the steps that create
got stuck for approval by external
have a multitude in the same column, actual value.
figures,” Murat describes.
it is very difficult to get an idea of the “We decided to indicate the effective
The problem appeared throughout
distribution of effort towards quality,” development or integration work that
the swim lanes that the team had
Stefan says.
outlined: Support; Short term; Mid is performed just in one column -
Soon the development team
term and Long term development of Doing. There was no need to copy the
changed their board and their mindset.
new features. steps that were already present on the
The first was the introduction of
Christoph Walch wanted to better other boards,” Christoph says.
horizontal swim lanes, which would
manage the multitude of projects The board of the project managers
differentiate between that variety. They
and resolve all impediments. The was designed to have an Upcoming
introduced an Expedite, Dedicated,
integration department was in column, which was for the preparation
Support, Regular product development,
constant contact with the clients but of all necessary information. When all
Important quality improvement and
Cosmetic improvements. They kept could not deal with the delays. Clearly that was compiled, the ticket would
the columns as they were: Ready the role of a project manager had move along to Ready for propose,
for taking; Development; Waiting become more critical. To deal with it, Propose, Waiting for acceptance and
for review; Review; Waiting for Christoph and Johannes decided it Ordered. The Doing column came
acceptance; Acceptance, but also added was time for the next Kanban board next where the big project ticket
an additional one, Documented. It was in the Kanbanaraum. would stay, while either development
the first time documentation appeared “I did not see a point in outlining or integration would break it down to
as an obvious value creating activity the steps I took, but rather the steps smaller tasks and transfer them to their
that deserved to be on the board. a project went through, from the boards. After completion, the ticket
“A detailed description how our moment it was first conceived all the would bemoved to Done, Roll out and
product is used is of the essence for our way to being delivered and paid for Go live. There was a check list on top of
clients,” Stefan says. by our client. That was the end-to- each column, which helped determine
Periotheus was getting complex end flow Klaus had been relentlessly if a ticket was ready to get to the next
and more subsystems such as Risk asking about,” Christoph explains step.
–6–
Figure 3 - The Resource Planning Wall divided in columns for each month and swim lanes for
Development, Integration and Technical Support.
Among the Kanban boards in the Christoph learned to always include for improvements. Up to this point,
Kanbanraum something else was born. some slack in his planning. But it was the support group had used a simple
The mastermind of planning - the not just to forecast for something digital tool to organise all the cases that
Resource Planning Wall (Fig. 3). taking longer than expected. came their way.
“The reason for this board was “We have this rule that resources “Within our team we knew well
that we needed a visual tool to get the can be planned for a maximum of what was going on but the others
longterm view of our resources, which 80 percent. The rest of their time is had no visibility,” Robert, one of the
we did not have with our Kanban for meetings and collaboration as technical support engineers says. The
boards,” Christoph Walch says. well as learning and improvement order of taking support cases and
The planning board felt at home in opportunities,” Christoph continues. dealing with them was not established
the Kanbanraum. Christoph would Serving their clients was important, as a set policy.
allocate time slots for each project but constant learning was as important. “In the digital tool, which no one
based on the estimations he received. On the integration board, Murat and could see, I could easily rearrange the
Christoph and Johannes could finally his colleagues decided to make an tasks and not take the next in line,”
give a very clear and precise ETA to indication for when a particular person Robert says.
their clients. will not take a task. It would be because The backlog also included support
With a new big picture view as well they know the domain all too well and cases, which originated from inside
as a zoom in on the specific effort, it would a good idea to have someone the company. Colleagues would drop
steering the multitude of concurrent else experiment and investigate it. by the room of the tech support, give
projects became much easier for Robert a case and leave. Robert would
Johannes, Christoph and the rest of make a note of that and put it in the
the project managers. Whenever a task Room For One More backlog eventually. But in the mind of
would bump into some impediment, To represent the entire value stream the tech support team what mattered
especially delayed feedback from the in the Kanbanraum, there was just the most were the external support
client, a project manager would put a one more board missing, that of the cases. Value, after all, was directly
black magnet on the project ticket and Technical Support team. It had always serving the clients.
do everything necessary to resolve it. been the source of most suggestions
–7–“Why do you think a request that Once the board was put up, they One of the new practices that tech
came from your colleagues is automat- decided to have the backlog accessible support initiated was a dailt fifteen
ically of less value,” Klaus asked Robert for everyone to see when their case minute stand-up meeting. “The other
and his colleagues. would be taken. “It was our desire colleagues had been doing those for a
The coach had come once again to to be open about our work so no while. Once we started having them, I
help with the creation of the technical misunderstandings would occur,” immediately began enjoying the chance
support board. With a complicated Robert says. to spread knowledge and get at least a
workflow, a lot of communication With a more sophisticated explicit little involved with each task. It gives a
with the clients and varying tasks such process and definitions of “done” for wider view and a feeling of belonging,”
as the weekly update of the servers each column, tech support began Robert says.
in addition to support, designing the tackling cases more efficiently. What Robert did not know is that
board would obviously be difficult. They figured out how to deal with the daily stand-up meetings of his
As Robert explained how the the less important and non-urgent colleagues had transformed and were
backlog was fed and who the improvement cases that they had been helpful now because everyone always
stakeholders were, Klaus noticed the ignoring before. looked at the same direction - the
obvious discrimination. He wanted to “Even though our clients do not get upper right corner of the board.
help Robert and the others understand an immediate gain from these minor
that the only distinction should be improvements, in the long run those
between lack of and presence of value. tasks prevent problems from eventually
It was important for all cases to be occurring, such as the preventable
treated equally and judged upon the crash of an unstable server,” Robert
content not the sender. says.
Figure 4 - Tubes with balls in colours corresponding to each department. Each ball indicates two hours labour. KVP
stands for continuous improvement and is part of the red segment, which indicates internal work. Other groups
of tubes are split in Projects and Client Support. These tubes provide a quick and clear view of each department’s
effort in each designation.
–8–Conclusion
W hile overall the energy market is a very stressful place to operate, on the premises of
Visotech, life is calm. After years of constant thinking about what is value to their
customers and how to change and improve their processes to generate that value, the creators and
maintainers of Periotheus feel more confident they are serving their clients well.
“We meet the deadlines much much better, we are better at projects,” Christoph says.
Project managers have become very good at prioritising, while development, integration and
support enjoy doing their work, striving to improve it. When a decision daunts Johannes, as he
sits with a client, he no longer has to give vague ETAs or make decisions on a gut feeling. He has
all the information he needs.
The only thing he has to wonder about is how the energy market would evolve once household
appliances become smart and start making the energy supplier decisions. When that happens,
Visotech will have a new kind of value chain stakeholder to serve – artificial intelligence.
But until then the same Kanban boards will keep changing, always aligned with new
discoveries of what constitutes value.
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