Kanban & Agile Coaching Service

Our coaching services are designed to assess your needs and provide a clear plan of action. We obviously track all of our coaching on a Kanban board that visualizes all of the coaching engagement’s key deliverables. Our customers are the ones who flow the coaching deliverables to the “Done” column based on clear acceptance criteria.

Start with scheduling an initial coaching call to let us know exactly what you are seeking to improve. This call will give you a great idea about what to expect.

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Coaching Services

Below is our list of the most common coaching services we provide our customers.

Strategic Planning

Whether you use a Balanced Scorecard with KPIs or align your goals using OKRs, we can facilitate sessions to ensure your team stays focused. An experienced and neutral facilitator is essential to structuring conversations and gaining consensus.

Typical Format: We start with an assessment of your current state, followed by a design for your future state that includes defining your key metrics, and we facilitate sessions with various groups in your organization to align their work to impact your goals positively. This coaching is often delivered in tandem with Portfolio Kanban.

Portfolio Kanban

Sessions with multiple teams to design the ideal workflow across your organization. This involves creating multiple connected boards organized in flight levels that ensure the most efficient way to align work to your goals, strategies, and objectives.

Typical Format: If needed, we start with a Kanban introduction, followed by an assessment of your current state of managing projects, a design for your future state using a Portfolio Kanban system, 4-6 facilitated team sessions to use the new process effectively, and at least 4 retrospective sessions to engender a culture of continuous improvement.

Intake Process

Having clearly defined work is one of the most essential parts of delivering outstanding results. We can help design the ideal intake process to ensure you set yourself and/or your team up for success when receiving new work.

Typical Format: We start with an assessment of your current state, followed by a design for your future state, and we facilitate a few sessions with your team to ensure that the process is working efficiently.

Board Design

One or more sessions to design a single board. We follow a 5 step process that includes defining your types of work, visualizing the ideal workflow, making your process explicit, and setting WIP limits.

Typical Format: If needed, we start with a Kanban introduction, followed by a Kanban board design using our 5 steps exercise, and we facilitate a few sessions to confirm WIP limits and refine explicit agreements.

Story Writing

This concept, introduced in Agile software development, captures work in a lightweight format with clear acceptance criteria. The goal is not to answer everything upfront but instead tell a story that can generate healthy conversations by the people responsible for delivering this work. These conversations help confirm the way to measure success.

Typical Format: We start with assessing your current backlog of work. We ensure that work follows an ideal way to visualize and break down the work into stories with acceptance criteria, and we facilitate at least 2 story writing sessions. Depending on your needs, we can continue to run these sessions or ensure that someone from your team learns to become a great facilitator.

Team Boot Camp

For new and existing teams seeking to boost productivity by interacting in day-to-day activities with a coach. This program is customized based on the team’s maturity level and pain points. The coach will observe and then facilitate sessions to lead by example and engender positive team behaviors.

Typical Format: We start with a Kanban introduction, followed by a Kanban board design using our 5 steps exercise, and we facilitate 4-6 team sessions to adopt the Kanban method effectively, confirm WIP limits, and refine explicit agreements. Lastly, we conduct at least 4 team retrospective sessions to engender a culture of continuous improvement, 4 team replenishment sessions to ensure an effective way to prioritize work ready to flow on the board, and facilitate/observe multiple daily stand-up sessions.

Personal Kanban

Weekly one-hour sessions that include goal setting, tracking, and measurement. This one-on-one program creates a cadence to develop new habits for individuals to use forever. If you want to live a life by design that unlocks all your dreams, then this is for you.

Typical Format: We start with a Kanban introduction, then leverage our Personal Kanban board template to define your goals and break them into actionable Kanban cards. We then meet for 8-12 weekly 1-hour coaching sessions to increase your accountability and keep you focused on achieving your most important goals.

If you don’t see a coaching service that targets your specific needs, then contact us so we can design a custom coaching plan.

“Kanban Zone Coaching made my productivity skyrocket”

Kanban Zone has helped me structure my thoughts in my day-to-day work, and has also helped me to organize my personal time. Over the course of a few weeks, I literally saw my productivity improve as I moved to Done. This not only helped me shape my ideas, but also was very satisfying at an emotional level as I dragged each card to the next stage.”

Pablo Azar, Financial Economist

Kanban Coaching that Works

The journey is about investing in high levels of accountability to achieve your goals and sustain these achievements. As you start seeing better results, our Kanban Coaching service helps ensure that you stay on the path of continuous improvement. Are you clear on your goals? Are you ready to achieve these goals?

Start with scheduling a call with one of our coaches to determine the best course of action. The first complimentary coaching session (video call) will already provide you with Kanban coaching steps and tips you can implement immediately.

Let’s Design your Coaching Plan

Kanban Coaching Resources

To learn from our coaches, access our articles written by our Kanban coaching team and selected books to help you on your Kanban journey. Below is a sample of topics that you will find under the online resources:

You can also learn about Lean Thinking concepts like Kaizen, Dojo, Muda, Mura, Muri, Shuhari and where it all started with the Toyota Production System.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do you only provide services online or also in person?Dimitri Ponomareff2022-04-09T02:24:31-07:00

Do you only provide services online or also in person?

Our services can be delivered online or in person. We have found that the level & quality of engagement and participation is quite comparable. However, services that can be provided virtually are much more cost effective. It eliminates the time and cost of travel, which would be billed to customers, and increases the amount of time a coach is available to work directly with a customer. For example, when coaching virtually we can quickly schedule or join a session with little lead time. This permits us to be there when we are most needed, instead of just when we are physically there in person.

What is the cost of professional services?Dimitri Ponomareff2022-04-09T02:24:52-07:00

What is the cost of professional services?

Our rates are based on the type of services and the level of seniority of the assigned coach. Since professional services are customized for each customer, we provide the flexibility of working from a set of billable hours or a monthly retainer model. Once we confirm the ideal program for our customers, we provide a Statement of Work (SOW) and track all deliverables in Kanban Zone. For Kanban Zone enterprise customers (200+ licenses), professional services and software subscriptions can be combined in a custom plan.

Do you include free coaching with your Kanban Zone software?Dimitri Ponomareff2022-04-09T02:25:06-07:00

Do you include free coaching with your Kanban Zone software?

Yes. The level of free coaching provided is determined by your software subscription. Also, our support team is always ready to help and can request a coach to work directly with our customers when needed. You may also submit a request to our support team to work with a coach.

Do you only provide professional services on your Kanban Zone software?Dimitri Ponomareff2022-04-09T02:25:19-07:00

Do you only provide professional services on your Kanban Zone software?

No. We always use our Kanban Zone software to track and deliver our services. However, some customers may already have multiple tools in place and only need us to coach and train them using their current platform. Although we strongly believe that Kanban Zone is the ideal software, we focus on the mutually agreed goals of the engagement. Switching to Kanban Zone may or may not be part of the solution. If not, then we ensure that the customer has the resources to implement what’s needed on their current platform and only use the Kanban Zone software to model the ideal solution.

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Unleash the Power of Lean Visual Management!

Boost traceability, and collaboration across all organizational levels with Kanban Zone!

Start Your Free Trial Today!