Kanban is a method for managing knowledge work with an emphasis on just-in-time delivery
while not overloading the team members.
In this approach, the process, from definition of a task to its delivery to the customer,
is displayed for participants to see and team members pull work from a queue.
Kanban in the context of software development can mean a visual process management system
that tells what to produce, when to produce it, and how much to produce inspired by the
Toyota Production System and Lean manufacturing.
The Kanban method The name 'Kanban' originates from Japanese[看板],
and translates roughly as "signboard" or "billboard".
It was formulated by David J. Anderson as an approach to incremental, evolutionary process
and systems change for organizations.
It uses a work-in-progress limited pull system as the core mechanism to expose system operation
problems and stimulate collaboration to continuously improve the system.
It is rooted in four basic principles: Start with what you do now
The Kanban method does not prescribe a specific set of roles or process steps.
The Kanban method starts with the roles and processes you have and stimulates continuous,
incremental and evolutionary changes to your system.
The Kanban method is a change management method.
Agree to pursue incremental, evolutionary change
The organization must agree that continuous, incremental and evolutionary change is the
way to make system improvements and make them stick.
Sweeping changes may seem more effective but have a higher failure rate due to resistance
and fear in the organization.
The Kanban method encourages continuous small incremental and evolutionary changes to your
current system.
Respect the current process, roles, responsibilities and titles
It is likely that the organization currently has some elements that work acceptably and
are worth preserving.
The Kanban method seeks to drive out fear in order to facilitate future change.
It attempts to eliminate initial fears by agreeing to respect current roles, responsibilities
and job titles with the goal of gaining broader support.
Leadership at all levels Acts of leadership at all levels in the organization,
from individual contributors to senior management, are encouraged.
Kanban Method's six core practices Anderson identified five core properties that
had been observed in each successful implementation of the Kanban method.
They were later relabeled as practices and extended with the addition of a sixth.
Visualize Visualising workflows supports proper understanding
of changes planned and helps to implement them according to this plan.
A common way to visualise the workflow is to use a card wall with cards and columns.
The columns on the card wall represent different states or steps in the workflow.
Limit WIP Limiting work-in-process implies that a pull
system is implemented on parts or all of the workflow.
The pull system acts as one of the main stimuli for continuous, incremental and evolutionary
changes to the system.
The pull system can be implemented as a kanban system, a CONWIP system, a DBR system, or
some other variant.
The critical elements are that work-in-process at each state in the workflow is limited and
that new work is “pulled” into the new information discovery activity when there
is available capacity within the local WIP limit.
Manage flow Each transition between states in the workflow
is monitored, measured and reported.
By actively managing the flow the continuous, incremental and evolutionary changes to the
system can be evaluated to have positive or negative effects on the system.
Make policies explicit Until the mechanism of a process is made explicit,
it is often hard or impossible to hold a discussion about improving it.
Without an explicit understanding of how things work and how work is actually done, any discussion
of problems tends to be emotional, anecdotal and subjective.
With an explicit understanding it is possible to move to a more rational, empirical, objective
discussion of issues.
Implement feedback loops Organizations that have not implemented the
second level of feedback - the operations review - generally do not see process improvements
beyond a localized team level.
Improve collaboratively, evolve experimentally The Kanban method encourages small continuous,
incremental and evolutionary changes that stick.
When teams have a shared understanding of theories about work, workflow, process and
risk, they are more likely to be able to build a shared comprehension of a problem and suggest
improvements which can be agreed to by consensus.
The Kanban method suggests using a scientific approach to implement continuous, incremental
and evolutionary changes.
Common models used are: Theory of constraints
Deming System of Profound Knowledge Lean economic model).
Open Kanban Open Kanban is an open source, Agile and lean
based method to deliver value for knowledge-intensive work, e.g. in the fields of information technology,
software development, business, product development and personal organization.
On the lean side it is inspired on the work of Taiichi Ohno, Eliyahu Goldratt and W. Edwards
Deming.
On the Agile side it takes inspiration from the Agile manifesto signers, and in addition
contributions from Alan Shalloway’s Kanban for Teams, Corey Ladas' Scrumban and David
Anderson's early Kanban work.
It innovates by making the whole method fully open source and free to improve or modify.
Open Kanban was written by Joseph Hurtado, and it has been translated by members of the
community to French, Italian, Russian and Ukrainian.
Kanban board example Kanban Software Development Workflow complements
the Scrum, XP and Waterfall models.
See also Kanban
Kanban board Teamwork
Lean software development List of software development philosophies
References