"Agile customized to meet your needs, reflect your values, and support your business."
KANBAN FOUNDATIONS WORKSHOP
A Six-Hour Immersive Hands-On Event
The Kanban Experience
Kanban is a strategy to significantly enhance team performance by optimizing the flow of value through a process, using a visual, pull-based system. It emphasizes the importance of visualizing workflow, actively managing work items, and continuously improving the process.
By implementing Kanban, teams can achieve a better balance of effectiveness, efficiency, and predictability in their work, leading to improved outcomes and increased value delivery.
Whether used alone, or along with other Agile methodologes, Kanban provides a flexible framework that empowers teams to identify bottlenecks, reduce waste, and enhance collaboration--driving greater productivity and success.
Kanban Foundations Workshop
Simple Productivity Solutions
What You Receive
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Kanban Foundations Training Handbook
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The Kanban Guide
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Access to The Kanban Guru AI Chatbot
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Scrum.org Practice Exams
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ProKanban.org Practice Exams​
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7 PDUs or SEUs
What You Learn
The Foundations of Kanban essential to doing Kanban well and passing Kanban Professional certification exams. Covered topics include:
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Kanban Defined (20 min)
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The Dot Game Exercise (120 min)
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Exploring Kanban topics and vocabulary via an immersion experience
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Core Principles of Kanban (30 min)
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Start with what you do now – No need to overhaul processes immediately
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Agree to pursue incremental change – Evolutionary, not revolutionary
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Respect current roles and responsibilities – Adapt without disrupting
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Encourage acts of leadership at all levels – Everyone contributes to improvement
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Key Kanban Practices (30 min)
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Visualize Work – Use a Kanban board to see the flow.
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Limit Work in Progress (WIP) – Reduce multitasking and bottlenecks.
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Manage Flow – Focus on optimizing cycle time.
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Make Policies Explicit – Define clear rules for how work progresses.
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Implement Feedback Loops – Use stand-ups, reviews, and retrospectives.
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Improve Collaboratively, Evolve Experimentally – Use metrics and data to drive change.
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Basic Kanban Board Structure (25 min)
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Columns (To Do, In Progress, Done)
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Swimlanes for different work types
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Defining Work Item Types (15 min)
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Features, Bugs, Tasks, User Stories, etc.
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Setting Work in Progress (WIP) Limits Exercise (15 min)
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How to determine optimal WIP limits
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The impact of too much or too little WIP
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Key Kanban Vocabulary & Definitions (30 min)
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Work In Progress (WIP) – Tasks actively being worked on.
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WIP Limit – Restriction on the number of items in a given stage.
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Cycle Time – Time taken from when work starts to completion.
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Lead Time – Time from when a request is made to when it is completed.
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Throughput – Number of tasks completed in a given period.
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Blocked Work – Tasks that cannot progress due to an external or internal issue.
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Kanban Metrics & Measurement Exercise (30 min)
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Cycle Time – Measures speed of work completion.
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Lead Time – Measures responsiveness to new requests.
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Throughput – Tracks the volume of work completed.
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Common Challenges & How to Overcome Them (30 min)
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Handling resistance to change
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Addressing overloaded workflows
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Dealing with urgent/unplanned work
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Keeping WIP limits realistic
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Continuous Improvement & Next Steps (25 min)
Event Structure
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Six hours total
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May be delivered over one to three days.
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One optional 60-minute certification jam session
Workshop Fee
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$495 ​per person
- Scholorships available
Kanban Foundations Workshop
Simple Productivity Solutions
Who Should Attend
This class is for anyone looking to improve workflow efficiency, optimize team performance, and foster a culture of continuous improvement.
Whether you’re part of a team striving to improve predictabilityh=, a leader aiming to enhance visibility, or a decision-maker seeking more useful data, this course offers practical tools and techniques.
It’s ideal for professionals in any industry who want to create smoother workflows, increase predictability, and drive sustainable improvements. If you’re focused on delivering value faster, reducing waste, and making work more manageable, this class is for you!
Prerequisites
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Agile Foundations Workshop is strongly recommended
World Class Instructors
"The 'real world' experience of the instructors enables them to draw from a rich tapestry of stories. More than just lecture, they keep you engaged in the learning process. There are no bystanders here!"
Tom Meloche
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Tom was an Agile pioneer. He created and taught the very first class on Agile in Michigan in 2002.
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Over the past eighteen years he led Agile transformations in companies both large and small
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Tom co-founded Menlo Innovations LLC, the company featured in the book "Joy Inc. How we built a workplace people love."
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He has overseen the delivery of hundreds and hundreds of Agile projects with budgets counted in billions
Helene Gidley​
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Helene has been working as an Agile trainer, mentor, and coach for fifteen years. A coach of coaches, she leads the annual Agile Coach Retreat in Ann Arbor MI.
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She has thirty years of experience in the IT industry
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She consults and trains for the Fortune 500, startups, and mid-sized companies bringing broad Agile experience, coaching, and training to project teams
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She is the founder of Agile Groupies, a Scrum Meetup, which has been running for 10 years
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Tom and Helene believe in Appreciative Agile, growing agility with our clients by celebrating and embracing the best of their existing corporate culture.
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Professional Certification
This course prepares participants to pass two world-recognized Kanban certification exams. Exam fees are approximately one hundred and fifty dollars and are separate from the workshop fee.