New to Kanban Team Exercise

The purpose of this exercise is to reinforce Kanban principles while creating a few metaphoric
obstacles for teams to overcome. Obstacles dive into multiple process flows, external coordination by
the team, and team scalability.

Thank you to Jürgen Köller for the use of images and text in the paper folding exercise.

Form teams of 4 or more.

The purpose of the team is to make paper boats.

Give each team a set of 100 papers

Give the teams 10 minutes per day to run the board

Give the teams 2 minutes per day to have a standup meeting and make changes to the process

Make sure that each team has a board and each member a job to perform.

Step 1) Give them the instruction sets and let them build a kanban board and establish initial WIP limits
(10 minutes)

Step 2) First Day – No changes

Step 3) Second Day – No changes

Step 4) Third Day – Order comes in for half hats/half boats. Hats end on step 8

Questions – How does having two process workflows affect the team?

How can we alleviate these issues?

Step 5) Add signatures to the boats

Point – Learn how third party coordination affects the team.

Pick three people outside of the game room and tell them people will be coming by to get
signatures on little paper boats. Give a persona from below to each of the people you select.

Persona – Boat signing debutant

You may sign boats as they come to you, but only three per unique person.

Persona – Boat signing diva

 You are simply too busy to sign boats on demand. Have boat deliveries come back in 5 minutes
for your signature.

Persona – Boat signing skeptic

You want to know why they want your signature.

Persona – Give me what I want guy

Demand to only sign boats in batches of 8.

Step 6) Forth Day – Ask the team to combine.

Point – Learn to organize amongst discrete teams.

1

Take a sheet of paper of the size A4 (8 1/2" x

11"). Paper used for ink jet printers will do. 

Fold the upper half down on the red line.

2

Find the centre line by folding the left side

on the right side and by unfolding.

Fold downward both upper triangles on the red line.

It must look like this. 

5

At the bottom fold the top strip upward on the red line.

Fold the two small triangles on the left and on

the right backwards to make them disappear.

It must look like this.

8

Turn the paper over and fold the other lower strip
upwards. You have formed the well known hat.

Turn the hat 90 degrees and open it. The

thumbs must be inside. Lay the upper and
the lower parts on each other.

10

It must look like this. 

11

Fold the lower front triangle upwards on the red line.

12

It must look like this. .

13

Turn the paper over and fold up the other lower triangle.
You get a hat without a brim.

14

Open the hat again and put the upper part on the lower one.
15

Pull the upper corners of the triangles in direction of the arrows...

16
Pull the upper corners of the triangles in direction of the arrows...

... as much as possible. Form the boat. 

The paper boat is finished.

 

If using 8.5" x 11" ink jet paper the sail will be

visible above the sides of the boat.
 

17

Stretch the boat both to the right and left, and then
separate it slightly from underneath so it can float.
18

Get a signature from an outside source on the boat. In order to produce valuable boats, some
famous signatures are required. Here’s a list of people that you may obtain a signature from:

Person 1

Person 2

Person 3