You know when you’ve been thinking about taking a few days off to recharge your energy and out of nowhere comes that great opportunity to spend a weekend on the coast. Sensational, right? So let’s go, but wait! What will you take? Is the car all right? Does the hotel accept pets? Does everything fit in the suitcase?
Relax, we will plan your trip together using the Kanban Method. After all, nothing better than relying on Agile Methodologies in our personal life, even if at the last minute.
- Wow Rafael, what a nerd! ?
- Yes ?, but it will be cool! ?
Come on, we’ll follow some steps to understand the motivation of the trip and other things that will help you with this planning.
- What is the purpose of this trip?
a. Have a weekend at the beach to rest and recharge. - Looking at your organizing activities, what type of things do you need to think about?
a. We have things to organize Pre-trip;
b. We have things to organize During the trip. - Now let’s list the planning activities, divided by the phases we mentioned above;
a. Pre-trip:
i. Look at oil, water, calibrate tires and fuel up the car;
ii. Book the hotel and confirm if it accepts pets (in my case, Paçoca ?);
iii. Prepare the suitcase (Sunscreen, beach clothes).
b. During the trip:
i. List the desired tours for Friday (Taking a walk on the beach, having lunch and dinner at different restaurants, etc.);
ii. List the desired tours for Saturday (Cycling on the waterfront in the morning, getting to know the city, enjoying the beach, etc.);
iii. List the desired tours for Sunday (Enjoying the beach, having lunch);
iv. Fuel up the car to return. - Analyze how many days you will have off and whether your wish list is compatible;
a. It will be 3 days (Friday, Saturday and Sunday). - Now that we understand the purpose of the trip, we’ve listed what you need and intend to do, let’s organize it in the Personal Kanban.
Here is our planning, where we have a view of the stages. You can see that the activities are separated by colors, identifying the classified types:
And here is our Personal Kanban, also separated by types of activities and giving priority to the item related to the car, after all, we don’t want to spoil the trip ?:
Cool, it was quick and simple, but which Kanban concepts did we use here?
STATIK
STATIK is an exploratory method of Kanban that helps us to understand our current process or a new one through steps starting from the purpose, sources of dissatisfaction, and other 6 steps. It is also a way of working on our systemic thinking, as we have the possibility to understand the entire scenario that involves a product or team.
Although STATIK has 8 steps, you don’t need to do them all and not even in exact sequence. Adjust it to your situation and moment.
In our case, we used 6 STATIK steps, namely:
- Purpose understanding;
- Type of work, approaching the concept of service classes, where we work with standard items;
- Demand analysis, by listing planning activities;
- Capacity analysis, by listing the number of days we can think of how to divide the tours into the possible days, thus having a limitation of work and cadence;
- Kanban System Design, we model our personal Kanban;
- Board creation and inclusion of activities.
Out of curiosity, and completing the rationale, the other two steps that we did not use:
- List of dissatisfactions with the current process. They work better in existing processes;
- Workflow of each type of activity, that is, we would understand from the beginning of an activity to its conclusion.
More than replicating a ready-made and working model, always remember that cutting out unnecessary steps that don’t make sense for the core objective is also part of the exercise of being agile.
Personal Kanban
In the Kanban Method, there is the concept of Personal Kanban, which offers the use of Kanban and its principles for daily personal use. Its main advantages are visual management and the possibility of increasing productivity, as we are clear about what we need to do, the priorities and the pace at which we can pull items. As there were simple steps in our travel process, we opted for this use.
WIP Limitation
By dividing the tours across the travel days, we establish a cadence in carrying out the activities and completing them. With that, we don’t need to do anything in a hurry, we can have more quality and enjoy every moment.
Well, now that I’ve helped you with planning, have a nice trip!
Oh, don’t forget to bring my souvenir! ?
References:
By Rafael de Oliveira, Agile Principal at Invillia