The Sandvik IT Story

In this experience report, we present the lessons we have learned during a three years-long journey coaching more than 50 teams in using the Kanban method at Sandvik IT. We share our experience gathered when introducing, supporting and scaling Kanban systems with the purpose to improve the organization as a whole. Based on validated experiments and facts, we present:

• How we use the Kanban method to create a culture of continuous improvements.
• How we introduce Kanban to often overburdened teams using a one-day kick-start workshop, and how this workshop evolved into what is described in the “The Kanban Kick-start Field Guide”.
• How we help teams to improve their kanban system using a depth-of-kanban coaching tool.
• How we discovered the key role that management plays in maintaining the will to improve continuously, and our experiments on how to nurture it.
• How we keep track of the improvement capability of the various teams and how we act on it.
• How we scale our coaching capability to help even more teams.