What is Kanban? A Beginner’s Guide!
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By Bhaskar S
- Updated: August 14, 2023
Kanban 101
Overview of the Kanban Method
TRIVIA – Kanban, also spelt “kamban” in Japanese, translates to “Billboard” (“signboard” in Chinese) that indicates “available capacity (to work)”. Kanban is a concept related to lean and just-in-time (JIT) production, where it is used as a scheduling system that tells you what to produce, when to produce it, and how much to produce.
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Where did Kanban originate? – A Brief History on Kanban
It all started in the early 1940s. The first Kanban system was developed by Taiichi Ohno(Industrial Engineer and Businessman) for Toyota automotive in Japan. It was created as a simple planning system, the aim of which was to control and manage work and inventory at every stage of production optimally.
What is the Kanban Method?
While kanban was introduced by Taiichi Ohno in the manufacturing industry, it is David J. Anderson who was the first to apply the concept to IT, Software development and knowledge work in general in the year 2004. David built on the works by Taiichi Ohno, Eli Goldratt, Edward Demmings, Peter Drucker and others to define the Kanban Method, with concepts such as pull systems, queuing theory and flow. His first book on Kanban – “Kanban: Successfully Evolutionary Change for your Technology Business”, published in 2010, is the most comprehensive definition of the Kanban Method for knowledge work.
The Kanban Method is a process to gradually improve whatever you do – whether it is software development, IT/ Ops, Staffing, Recruitment, Marketing and Sales, Procurement etc. In fact, almost any business function can benefit from applying the principles of the Kanban Methodology.
The Kanban body of knowledge has abstracted and benefited from the works of various thought leaders since the original book was written! People such as Don Reinertsen (author of Principles of Product Development Flow), Jim Benson (pioneer of Personal Kanban) and several others.
Kanban Principles & Practices
4 Foundational Principles:
- Start with what you are doing now
- Agree to pursue incremental, evolutionary change
- Initially, respect current roles, responsibilities and job-titles
- Encourage acts of leadership at all levels
Start with what you are doing now
Agree to pursue incremental, evolutionary change
Kanban encourages you to make small incremental changes rather than making radical changes that might lead to resistance within the team and organization.
Initially, respect current roles, responsibilities and job-titles
Unlike other methods, Kanban does not impose any organizational changes by itself. So, it is not necessary to make changes to your existing roles and functions which may be performing well. The team will collaboratively identify and implement any changes needed. These three principles help the organizations overcome the typical emotional resistance and the fear of change that usually accompany any change initiatives in an organization.
Encourage acts of leadership at all levels
Kanban encourages continuous improvement at all the levels of the organization and it says that leadership acts don’t have to originate from senior managers only. People at all levels can provide ideas and show leadership to implement changes to continually improve the way they deliver their products and services.
6 Core Practices of the Kanban Method:
- Visualize the flow of work
- Limit WIP (Work in Progress)
- Manage Flow
- Make Process Policies Explicit
- Implement Feedback Loops
- Improve Collaboratively, Evolve Experimentally
Visualize the flow of work
Limit WIP (Work in Progress)
“An interesting side effect of pull systems is that they limit work-in-progress (WIP) to some agreed-upon quantity” – David J. Anderson
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Manage Flow
Managing and improving flow is the crux of your Kanban system after you have implemented the first 2 practices. A Kanban system helps you manage flow by highlighting the various stages of the workflow and the status of work in each stage. Depending on how well the workflow is defined and WIP Limits are set, you will observe either a smooth flow within WIP limits or work piling up as something gets held up and starts to hold up capacity. All of this affects how quickly work traverses from start to the end of the workflow (some people call it value stream). Kanban helps your team analyze the system and make adjustments to improve flow so as to reduce the time it takes to complete each piece of work.
A key aspect of this process of observing your work and resolving/ eliminating bottlenecks is to look at the intermediate wait stages (the intermediate Done stages) and see how long work items stay in these “handoff stages”. As you will learn, reducing the time spent in these wait stages is key to reducing Cycle Time. As you improve flow, your team’s delivery of work becomes smoother and more predictable. As it becomes more predictable, it becomes easier for you to make reliable commitments to your customer about when you will get done with any work you are doing for them. Improving your ability to forecast completion times reliably is a big part of implementing a Kanban system.
Make Process Policies Explicit
As part of visualizing your process, it makes sense to also define and visualize explicitly, your policies (process rules or guidelines) for how you do the work you do. By formulating explicit process guidelines, you create a common basis for all participants to understand how to do any type of work in the system. The policies can be at the board level, at a swim lane level and for each column. They can be a checklist of steps to be done for each work item-type, entry-exit criteria for each column, or anything at all that helps team members manage the flow of work on the board well. Examples of explicit policies include the definition of when a task is completed, the description of individual lanes or columns, who pulls when, etc. The policies must be defined explicitly and visualized usually on the top of the board and on each lane and column.
Implement Feedback Loops
Improve Collaboratively, Evolve Experimentally
How does Kanban work? – The Concept
The concept of FLOW
The concept of Flow is critical and by measuring Flow metrics and working to improve them, you can dramatically improve the speed of your delivery processes while reducing cycle time and improving the quality of your products or services by getting faster feedback from your customers – internal or external.
These are dealt with in great detail in the book titled “Actionable Agile” by Dan Vacanti.
Kanban WIP Limits
Do not force visualization, transparency, and WIP limits on any department that does not volunteer to collaborate.” – David J. Anderson
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Kanban System Examples
Kanban in IT & Software
Kanban is not a software development or a project management methodology – David makes that very clear in his ‘Blue Book’. Kanban does not say anything about how a Software should be developed. It does not even say anything about how Software projects should be planned and implemented. Therefore, Kanban is not a management framework such as Scrum. Instead, the purpose of Kanban is to continually improve one’s own work process.
Kanban was used in Microsoft’s software development operations in 2004. Since then, Kanban has been adopted enthusiastically in the IT, Ops, DevOps and applications/ software teams.
The beauty of Kanban is that it can be applied to any process or methodology. Whether you are already using Agile methods such as Scrum, XP and others, or more traditional methods – waterfall, iterative, etc. – you can apply Kanban on top of that to gradually start improving your processes, reduce cycle time and improve your flow. In the process, you will find yourself on the path to continuous delivery of features, products or services.
Kanban in Lean/ Agile software/ product development
Kanban as an Alternative Path to Enterprise Agility
Kanban beyond Software & IT
You can also sign up for upcoming webinars on Kanban – or look at some great previous webinars conducted by thought-leaders such as David Anderson and several other thought leaders!
If you want to explore SwiftKanban, you can check out our rich set of features or if you’re looking for a free Kanban board signup for SwiftKanban Here! If you have any immediate questions, ask one of our Sales reps at [email protected]
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