As long as there have been agile teams there has been the challenge of putting people together and getting them to actually be agile. You can send them off to a class and teach them Scrum or Kanban, or bring in team coaches, and that helps, but it doesn’t address one fundamental issue. Most people have not taken (or been given) the time they need to learn how to be agile in how they manage themselves as individuals.

Michael Grill is a Product Owner and Head of Process and Methods in the Agile Practice at Knorr-Bremse, and they have taken steps to address this challenge of helping individuals adopt an agile mindset and practices in managing their day-to-day work by adopting Personal Kanban before they put them together on agile teams. In this interview Michael joins me to share how Knorr-Bremse came to make this choice and how it is deeply impacting their agile practice. First, you begin working with Personal Kanban, then you and your team members begin working together using PK, and then you adopt practices from Scrum, Kanban or other forms of agile, to get the work done.

When Michael told me about the approach they had taken I was really excited to do the interview, because it just makes so much sense I was stunned that it had never occurred to me before.

To add a little to the complexity, the work that Michael and his teams use agile to develop hardware like breaking systems for trains, and that adds a whole other dimension to how they incorporate agile. If you’d like to hear more about that, we covered it in a previous interview and there is link to it below as well as links to where you can learn more about Personal Kanban and even take a course in how to get started with it.

Links:
Using Agile to Develop Hardware with Michael Grill https://tinyurl.com/yc32jdc8Personal Kanban site: https://www.personalkanban.comPersonal Kanban Training at Modus Institute: https://modusinstitute.comLean Agile Visual Management Certification: https://tinyurl.com/2m8pzaa7My blog on Personal Kanban: https://tinyurl.com/33vb3rua

Contacting Michael
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/michael-grill
Twitter: twitter.com/actualMG