Value Delivered: Boosting ERP Support Effectiveness with Scrum and Kanban at ambarics

In this "Value Delivered" episode of the Scrum.org Community Podcast, Dave West speaks with Andre Bohn of ambarics and Professional Scrum Trainer Alex Hardt about how combining Professional Scrum and Kanban helped ambarics streamline ERP software support. Learn how greater transparency, limiting work in progress, and visualizing work item age enabled the team to better manage unplanned work, reduce escalations, and increase customer satisfaction.

Episode Transcript

Lindsay Velecina (00:00):
Music. Welcome to the scrum.org community

(00:04):
podcast, a podcast from the homeof Scrum. In this podcast, we
feature professional scrumtrainers and other scrum
practitioners sharing theirstories and experiences to help
learn from the experience ofothers. We hope you enjoy this
episode.

Dave West (00:20):
Hello and welcome to the scrum.org community podcast.
I'm your host. Dave West, [e-mail] in today's
podcast, we're lucky to betalking to ambarics about how
they use professional scrum tohelp their customers in the
challenging world of ERP in themanufacturing industry. This is
an interesting topic, not justbecause they're talking about

(00:41):
ERP and manufacturing, which issuper cool, but because they're
using Scrum and Kanban. Somepeople say they're opposites,
but actually, I think we'regoing to see here today how
those opposites are actuallycomplimentary. And I've got two
amazing people on the podcast totalk about it. I'd like to

(01:02):
welcome Andre Bohn, consultantand project manager from
ambarics. Welcome to thepodcast. Andre,

Andre Bohn (01:12):
hello. Nice to be here.

Dave West (01:13):
Now. He's a project manager and consultant, but
we're not allowed to talk titleshere, so apologies for that, but
he's just really just an expertperson that can help us today.
And then we're also got AlexHart from one of our PSTs, who
actually taught them Scrum andKanban and then allowed magic to

(01:37):
happen. So welcome to thepodcast, Alex.

Alex Hardt (01:41):
Thank you for this invitation and this great
podcast we create here.

Dave West (01:47):
We'll see how good a podcast it is, but yes, we've
got all the ingredients for it,so I really appreciate that.
It's great to have you bothhere. All right, let's start
Andre really on setting thescene for our listeners. Let
talk about the you know, what doyou do? What's the company does?
What does ambarex do? And andthe sort of context for this

(02:10):
work?

Andre Bohn (02:12):
Sure thing. Well, ambarex is, I thought long and
hard about it, but I think inthe essence, we are like an
franchisee. We have our softwaredeveloper who codes and develops
the ERP software, and we are inthe middle between our between

(02:35):
the software and the clients whouse the software. And though we
have a high support focus,because our software developer
does not do support stuff atall. We have to manage it. So we
have always unplanned work,which is kind of hard. What we
also do projects. We onboard newclients into our system. We

(02:57):
manage everything around that,and we even have development
part where we develop newfeatures and adjust existing
features for the needs of ourclients. That's basically it.
You can guess that these pillarshave some constraints. You can't

(03:20):
do everything, and you have towork sometimes with the project
development team of the ERP,sometimes with the customer, and
it's always shifting, and it'snever quite as clear. Of course,
it's not really franchising, butI think franchising and is like
a close equivalent. So it's

Dave West (03:40):
a metaphor, you know, ultimately you are taking these
things and representing in manydifferent places. And the
majority of your customers Andreare in the in sort of big German
manufacturing. And those kind ofcustomers, is that right?

Alex Hardt (03:57):
Mostly small and middle caps, like, yeah, no.
Really big players, but thesmaller ones,

Dave West (04:05):
yeah, which is, which is crucial, because they need to
take advantage of ERP. And ofcourse, they're part of a
complex supply chain that, nodoubt, is also using ERPs to
manage, to manage the contentand the work as it goes through.
So, you know, you provide that,that service. And I think just

(04:26):
to summarize as well, you've gotchanging requirements, you know,
customers, the platform, lotslots of things, flu, lot very
fluid, and lots of dynamic,dynaminism, as it were,

Alex Hardt (04:40):
that's right, cool.
All right.

Dave West (04:42):
So, so let's actually talk a little bit about
professional Scrum and Kanban asa solution. So here you are
working with your clients. Youknow you want to do professional
Scrum, or you're doingprofessional Scrum, and then you
thought, well, maybe Kanbanwould help, particularly around.
And unplanned work. So tell us alittle bit about why you started

(05:04):
work with Kanban andprofessional scrum combined.

Alex Hardt (05:08):
And barracks was always interested to work in an
agile manner. We had in oursmall startup phase, like three
people in the same room, and itwas always like a co working
session. Everybody had the samething on the mind and stuff like
that. But as we grew bigger andhad more employees, the work got

(05:33):
more and more fragmented, likewe have new rooms. Not everybody
is sharing the room. We had toopen communication channels like
somebody's in the home officeand not on work. And therefore
we and most crucial part why itbecame necessary to become more

(05:54):
agile was we didn't inspect andadapt our processes for our
employees, like it's when Ijoined, we were like eight
people, and these eight peopleworked like the three people in
the same room. Nothing elsechanged, and therefore I saw the

(06:15):
need to improve. I saw the needto adapt, and that's where I
pondered around with frameworksthat can do that, and mostly the
two big frameworks I got werelike Scrum and Kanban. Every
system has or framework, as youwill, has trade offs, like,

(06:37):
Sure, Scrum is really good in aproject setting if you have
projects, but it's maybe not sogood in unplanned work. And
Kanban is really good in atunplanned work, but not good for
projects. So it was alwaysdigital to me, to me that to get
those two together, and Ithought long and hard, but it

(07:02):
couldn't. Could not ever figureit out on my own. And so I sent
there and pondered, what thehell shall I do? That's what
that was when I got selflearning day. We have those. We
can ponder around and dosomething useful for the

(07:23):
organization. And that's was,that was when I met Alex and his
training on PSK. And I thought,well, that's excellent
professional Scrum and Kanbancombined. Those are the steps
and the tools we need toimplement a solution that works

(07:44):
for us, because, as I outlinedearlier, we have a complex work.
We have always unplanned workitems we cannot get ahead, and
we have also project work. Andthis was like a true dream
scenario for me to have finallysomething that works together.
Maybe Alex want to speak.

Andre Bohn (08:07):
The interesting thing is, I would say so in the
class we teach, so you doprofessional Scrum, and then you
add as a complimentary practice,can one and they didn't have
this Scrum, and then mixed itdirectly for themselves. And
they never saw companies that Iwould say they did, doing 100%

(08:30):
Scrum. Andre and his team isalso not doing it, but they're
on the way to get out of theframework. What happens to
improve what they are doing. Andin the end, I think it's about
getting the most out foryourself and not applying scrum
by the book, because it's toldso,

Dave West (08:53):
yeah, it is interesting. So I was the person
that brought in professionalscrummor [e-mail] and
the reason why I felt quitepassionately about the need to
combine Kanban and Scrum, or toprovide these complimentary
practices, professional Scrum,or I guess if you were a kanban

(09:15):
shop, the complementarypractices of Scrum to Kanban was
because what I saw was a lot oforganizations were wrestling
with unplanned work in sprints.
You know, they were, they werewrestling with how to make
things more transparent, andthey were wrestling with how to
make, you know that what metricsand decisions about improvement

(09:36):
of both the product and of howthey work, using metrics to
using data to drive that, andthey were really challenged with
that. And that was my motivationto work with Daniel vacanti and
Yuval Yvette to people that I'dmet on my journeys around the
world, around that were reallygood at Kanban, and bring that

(09:57):
into. Into scrum.org so it'sreally, really great to hear
that it had some benefits. Sotell me a little bit interesting
to hear. You know, what was thesort of essential things that
you got out of usingprofessional scrum with Kanban
Andre?

Alex Hardt (10:19):
Can you? Can you put your question a little bit more
precisely, please? Yeah,

Dave West (10:24):
okay, let's do that again. Okay, so tell me a little
bit you know, how you use thosepractices. What practices stood
out? Was it all around flow? Wasit all around managing that
transparent, you know, sort oflike visualization. Is it about
WIP limits? What really were thekey things that you took out of

(10:47):
that training and applied inyour organization?

Alex Hardt (10:51):
Yes, the main thing was the Edit transparency with
Kanban board. Previously,everybody had his own work, but
it was never formalized. Like,these are the things I'm working
on right now. It was all hiddenbehind our support tickets and

(11:17):
our system, but it was neverclear. Like, those are the
things I'm currently working onright now. Those are the things
that I'm planning to work on andetc. So the first and the
biggest thing was we had anformalized way of putting our
work together to share it witheverybody else. Now, even if I'm

(11:39):
ill or if I'm on a vacation,everybody knows what's on my
plate. Like, that's the firstand the biggest positive change
you can It's phenomenal,phenomenal with our sprint
planning, we previously tooklike, two hour meetings to get
everything together, becauseeverybody forget, forgets

(12:01):
everything like and oh, Iremember there was something I
wanted to address. And now wehave a formalized way of sharing
our work together, and so we canlook at our board and we see
what stuff is happening, whatdoes not happen. Where do we
need to address some things? Isit our client that's lacking?

(12:23):
Are we lacking that's great, andwe're down to like, maybe half
an hour for the sprint planning,with that alone sets like a real
benefit, and the other one iswork in progress, or the limits
of work in progress. Previously,we basically started everything.

(12:48):
There was a request from theclient. As soon as it get in, we
wrote an email, yes, we can doit maybe, maybe not. But now we
are more precoious with that,because not everything can we
cannot address everything atonce. There has to be, like a CO

(13:09):
or somebody has to wait, and wehave now more focused on
finishing things than startingthings. And this is like an eye
that was an eye opener for ourteam. And, yeah, that's
basically the most important

Dave West (13:29):
part. Yeah, yeah. So I just want to and Alex, you're
obviously much smarter than meabout these things. But before,
Alex, you add a little bit, I'dlike to just that work in
progress thing. So I remember Iwas on me and Yuval and Daniel
did a little bit of a road showwhen we first brought this out.
And so I visited lots of peopleand presented these things. And

(13:53):
the biggest thing that I sawwith all these quite good
professional scrumimplementations was they had so
many things in progress, andthere were so many invisible
cues, you know, where thingswere done, but they weren't done
because they're waiting onsomething else, and there was
something else, and there's thiscluster of work that was kind of
like messy, and that any onemoment exactly, if you let's

(14:18):
hopefully go On vacation, not onsick, but you sort of missed. It
was really hard. It was veryreliant on people. And I think
that's one thing that I thatresonates really well from your
description. Andrea, Alex, youknow, you're the expert here
talk. You know, is that theseare unusual things, or is this
what you would expect aftersomebody went on a professional

(14:40):
scrum Kanban class.

Andre Bohn (14:46):
So it happens not every time, or let's say not so
often, that they really gotnoticed, that people start
implementing what happens afterthis class, and what happens in
Andre's case, was a hugesuccess. I would say that.
Happens, not every day. Mostlythe challenge is for students, I
think, in the class that do nothave the real authority to

(15:08):
change things. And that was areal benefit of Andre and his
team, that he has a projectmanager, let's say, the lead of
the team, and the small size ofthe team, and he had a direct
conversation with his executivewho could change the environment
for the good happens. The thingthat whip limits are too high. I

(15:31):
think we see this everywhere,also in our personal life, not
only in business. That istotally normal.

Dave West (15:42):
Yeah. Sorry. So I'm laughing, because, as we're
speaking, my slack is like crazywhere there's like seven
different things running inparallel. So no, I don't, I
don't believe that Alex at all.
I don't suffer from that.

Andre Bohn (15:58):
Can imagine. So, so limiting the VIP, from my
experience, also often is achallenge, because people like
and tend to start on work oneverything. And for a lot of
teams that I know and I workwith, this is most, the most
important, but also the mostchallenging thing to tell people

(16:21):
like Andre said, finish firstbefore you start something new.
And how they achieve this what Iget out with the conversation
that I had with Andre. So it wasless that they explicitly limit,
limited their whip. It's morewhat Andre said they focused on

(16:42):
the work item age, so they tookcare to finish things before
starting something new. So, andI think this is a good approach
that is less rigid than, let'ssay, Okay, now the WIP limit is,
I don't know, five, yeah. Andthen creating an environment

(17:02):
where people change theirbehavior. And let's focus on
finish things and then startingthings. And let's see what we
can do to finish and get thework item H down. And that, I
think, also satisfy Andre yourcustomers when they get their

(17:23):
stuff sooner, in a morepredictable way, isn't it

Alex Hardt (17:29):
exactly right? I think most of our customers
didn't recognize any changebecause their expectation was
always it's was done yesterday.
But besides that, we saw huge,huge improvements. One thing
that the Kanban board madetransparent was quiet tickets.

(17:50):
Many times somebody sends in arequest and never touches back
on their own, and if you're notwell structured or have policies
around it, you would nevernotice that there was something
laying dormant and not gettingaddressed. And the canvas board

(18:13):
for our for us, helped us toidentify those tickets or
support cases and wrestle withthem and get in touch in a
productive manner. Yeah, andeven then, when we asked
directly and needed feedback onsomething critical, even then,

(18:37):
we got horrendous item ages. Ithink if we would not have had
an Kanban board or a kanbanapproach, those tickets would
have never seen the light ofday, like they would have lain
always dormant in our backlog,but got never addressed. And so
I think it's really a change,because everything that's in

(19:01):
progress is in progress. And youcan even not guarantee that it's
with a low item age, but you canguarantee that you work on it,
and I think that's a huge part.
And I think in the long run,those changes our customers will
notice, yeah,

Dave West (19:23):
yeah, I agree, Alex, you've got something to add.

Andre Bohn (19:27):
Yeah, I wanted to add. So Andre is a smart guy,
not only consultant and projectmanager, but also some kind of
developer also. And the nicething that they had so they
Kanban board, let's say alsokind of their sprint backlog is
a combination also with the workitem H, so chart, so you can see

(19:48):
the work item H, and they havesome kind of traffic light
system implemented in theirKanban board. And they also see
the age of the items. Directlyin their Kanban board. That's a
very nice thing. So that is evenmore visualization in a direct
way. I would say, instead ofhaving two boards and charts

(20:10):
that you need to flip and checkall the time,

Dave West (20:14):
yeah, it's funny you say that as well, because Yuval,
when I did this road show, thetechnique that he used was he
used a banana skin. And he said,every item that you put on is a
banana and it has a skin sittingthere. Because, I mean, I I
don't do this at home, but Iremember when I was a student,

(20:36):
you know, you'd find a bananaskin somewhere around your your
your apartment, and you be like,What the heck happened here? But
the these things got brown andyucky and slimy after, after a
while, it's so much. I'm gladyou implemented that that
technology, rather than usingbananas, which, which, yeah, a

(20:57):
bit of a waste of good bananas,hey. So that that's awesome. And
just to lean in a little bit,you said, well, most customers
didn't notice it. It's funnythat they'd have noticed this if
you hadn't got this right? Isn'tthat they're sort of like, it's
almost like a hygiene factor, interms of, if you don't have

(21:18):
these practices in place, youget escalations. You get unhappy
customers. You get those sort oflike those fire moments where
everybody has to work over theweekend because customers
expectations were different toyour expectations, and suddenly
there was a moment where yourealize that, do you have you
seen, perhaps some improvementsand in that long term. Mean you

(21:41):
already an awesome company, butnow you're an even better
company, right?

Alex Hardt (21:47):
I think so it's hard to tell, because we never we, I
never lived in a life or in acompany or a timeline. So to say
where we did not implement it.
Therefore, it's hard to say, butI think gut feeling it's better.
We have less escalations. We aremore transparent about our

(22:12):
workload. We can totally say toour customers or argument with
it. Like, sure, we can do thisthing, but somebody else has to
wait. Which should it be? Andusually that's like an fair
point, please finish the workeditems first. Like, those are

(22:34):
also benefits of it.

Dave West (22:40):
Yeah, I love that having those open conversations
with stakeholders, andparticularly the stakeholders
that write checks, is perhapsthe best and the most valuable
thing you can possibly do. Ithink it's awesome. All right,
so I could talk about Kanban andprofessional scrum for hours,

(23:02):
but I guess what our listenerswould really like to know. All
right, so our listeners arelistening to this podcast,
obviously, and thank you foryour time doing it, and they're
thinking, that's great. What canI do? What should I do next?
What should that be? Andre whatwould you tell people that

(23:23):
haven't combined the power ofprofessional Scrum and Kanban
together?

Alex Hardt (23:28):
Well, I think there's no real downside in
doing it. That's that's thefirst part. It's not
professional Kanban or Scrum.
It's professional scrum withKanban, and it complements each
other, I think. And even if youdon't have the means to do it

(23:53):
fully and fully well, whichwould be perfect. I think
starting it is also good enough.
Start with limiting your work inprogress. Work on less things
start to be more transparent,and benefit from more

(24:13):
transparency. Those two stepsalone are worth a lot, and
honestly, start there. That'sthat would be my first thing,
and then figure it out fromthere, like it's already thought
out, what you have to do, whatyou can do, how you measure it,
how you define it, and stufflike that. Though, nobody

(24:38):
nothing has holds you back toput it that way,

Dave West (24:42):
that's awesome advice. Make it transparent.
Start getting that whip so it'sreally transparent. Start
looking at aging, and then usethat as the basis to be
continuous improvement. Alex,anything to add?

Andre Bohn (24:57):
Let's say somehow the unfair advantage of. Andres
team, I think, is the bonds thatthey had in their team and the
small size of the company, andalso that before they already
had this kind of team spirit andteamwork, I think that made a
lot things for them easierimplementing this. And yeah,

(25:20):
there are a lot of goodframeworks, Kanban, Scrum,
combining scrum with Kanban, inthe end, it's about the people
and the great work that they'redoing. So if you have awesome
people, there are a lot of goodthings that they can use and
show their awesomeness.

Dave West (25:37):
900% agree it gives this is and to be honest, that's
true of Scrum in its most basiclevel. It is all about
amplifying the power of people,or, as Ken say, amplifying the
stupidity of your team. Kenscuba the CO creator of Scrum,

(25:58):
and he just used it to make badteam decisions really, really
transparent. I hoped that theywould then fix those decisions,
and Kanban really is just thesame. So thank you, gentlemen
for sharing this, this awesomestory, with our listeners. I'm

(26:20):
inspired to sort of go back tomy own backlog and my own work
with my team and actually spenda little bit more time thinking
about aging. It is funny, andyou may have seen this as well
Andrea, that over time, you sortof forget you put these
practices in, and then, youknow, time aging starts to

(26:42):
affect the process and youforget about them. So I'm
definitely going to go back andthink a little bit more about
some of the things that are onour backlog, and ensure that
with we're keeping an eye onsome of those aging things. So I
appreciate that that really,really does help me and but
Thank you, Alex Andre forjoining us today on the

(27:02):
scrum.org community podcast.

Alex Hardt (27:07):
Thanks for having us.

Andre Bohn (27:09):
Thanks Dave for inviting us. Great.

Dave West (27:12):
And for the listeners, there's an awesome
case study that you can have alook at that if you haven't got
time to listen to our Dorsettones online, and we connected
to this, to this podcast. Sotoday you heard from Amber edX
talking about how they use Scrumand Kanban together to really

(27:34):
manage the complexities ofdealing with stakeholders and
customers in a in a systemthat's always improving and
getting better, combining thatpower of product based
development with Scrum, withthat flexibility that Kanban
provides us with, I guess ifthere was one sentence that sums

(27:56):
it up, that really is the bestpractice, Let's start finishing
and stop starting. I think Andredid a really good job describing
that. I instantly thought, tshirt, let's start finishing and
stop starting. How many timeshave you started something
without actually reallyfinishing the thing that you
were on before? It's great thatsage advice here that you heard

(28:19):
today on today's podcast. Sothank you for listening. If you
liked what you heard, pleasesubscribe, share with friends,
and, of course, come back andlisten to some more. I'm lucky
enough to have a variety ofguests talking about anything
and everything in the areas ofprofessional Scrum, product
thinking, and, of course, agileand maybe a little bit of Kanban

(28:40):
today. Thanks everybody andScrum on

Lindsay Velecina (28:46):
Welcome to the scrum.org community podcast, a
podcast from the home of Scrum.
In this podcast, we featureprofessional scrum trainers and
other scrum practitionerssharing their stories and
experiences to help learn fromthe experience of others. We
hope you enjoy this episode.
Bye.