Kanban: What To Expect

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The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of Kanban, a workflow management method designed to:

  • Visualise work

  • Maximise efficiency

  • Reduce risk

  • Reduce waste

  • Optimise delivery flow and

  • Aid agile transition in organisations

This method can be used by organisations looking to manage their work processes with a strong focus on agile.

Kanban Overview - 4 Principles

Principle 1: Start with what you do now - Kanban can be implemented in any organisation/team

Principle 2: Agree to pursue incremental and evolutionary change - Sweeping changes are not encouraged

Principle 3: Respect the current process, roles, and responsibilities - Current role definitions can be valuable and should be preserved to minimise the impact of change

Principle 4: Encourage acts of leadership at all levels - Everyone should have a mindset of continuous improvement

Kanban Overview - 6 Practices

  1. Visualise your process/workflow - What does it take to get an item from request to delivery? Having a complete description of this can help to spot weaknesses/blockers.

  2. Limit work in progress - Multi-tasking can lead to waste and inefficiency. Kanban ensures a manageable amount of work in progress by using a “pull” system that implies that work will only be “pulled” when there’s capacity. The main idea is to apply work in progress limits so people can concentrate on finishing any work that’s been started before pulling in extra work.

  3. Manage flow - Focus on managing work processes - Understand how to get work through the system faster.

  4. Make process policies explicit - The work process should be defined, published, and shared so that people understand and can adopt it with minimal friction.

  5. Feedback loops - Every team member should provide feedback on work practices as needed regularly.

  6. Improve collaboratively - A shared vision of the future and a collective understanding of what needs to be achieved is required for a successful implementation.

Project Planning With Kanban

Team members won’t always know how long it takes to complete a task - Probabilistic thinking applies with the Kanban approach as Kanban operates on a “pull” system where tasks are only pulled when there’s capacity to work on them.

Showing a timeline above the Kanban board can help visualise the duration of a project. The work should drive the plan and not the other way round.

Project Execution With Kanban

  • Prioritisation can be done by grouping or thinking of work items along these categories:

    • Expedite Items: Work items whose cost of delay is unacceptable - it includes the highest priority work that should be focused on

    • Fixed Date Deliverable: These work items come with a fixed timeline

    • Standard Items: Normal day-to-day activities that deliver value when completed

    • Intangible/Cosmetic/Chores: Least value items that can be worked on when people are blocked or waiting on other items.

    • Other key project activities include sizing/estimation, task allocation, and internal meetings designed to ensure the team is doing the right thing (planning meeting), doing things right (retrospectives & reviews), and getting things done (standups).

Common Mistakes To Avoid

  • Exceeding the WIP limit

  • Columns of the board not matching the actual workflow

  • Not analysing the cycle time to understand/highlight areas of improvement

  • Not discussing each task with the development team before creating a ticket - all tasks should be completely understood and broken down into smaller sizes (generally not exceeding 16 hours).