Kanban is more than just columns and work plans. It’s a way of thinking and working that can transform the culture and performance of your workplace. Whether you work in IT, operations, marketing, sales, human resources or any other function, Kanban can help you achieve your goals and meet your challenges.
This article will tell you more about Kanban, how it works, why it’s important and how you can apply it to your own work context. You’ll also discover how ProKanban, the leading Kanban certification and training organization, can help you master this framework and become a Kanban professional.
What is Kanban?
Kanban is a framework that emerged from the Toyota production system in the 1940s. It was first used to manage the flow of materials and inventory in manufacturing processes. Later, it was adapted to software development and other knowledge-based fields of work.
Kanban means “traffic sign” or “visual signal” in Japanese. It refers to the use of maps or other visual indicators to represent the working elements of a process. These cards are placed on a board showing the different stages of the workflow, from start to finish.
The Kanban board helps teams visualize their work, limit their work-in-progress, identify bottlenecks and waste, and optimize their value stream. It also enables teams to collaborate effectively, communicate seamlessly and respond rapidly to changing customer needs and priorities.
How does it work?
Kanban is based on four fundamental principles:
- Visualize your work: Make your work visible using cards and a chart. It helps you see what you’re working on, what’s done, what’s on hold and what’s next.
- Limit your work in progress: Limit the number of cards at each stage of your work. This allows you to concentrate on completing what you’ve started, avoid multitasking and overload, and reduce cycle time and turnaround time.
- Manage your flow: monitor the movement of cards on your board. This enables you to measure performance, identify problems and opportunities for improvement, and deliver value more quickly and predictably.
- Continuous improvement: Regularly review your process and experiment with changes. This enables you to learn from experience, adapt to changing conditions and increase efficiency and quality.
Why is this important?
Kanban is important because it can help you achieve several benefits for yourself, your team, your organization and your customers. Here are just a few examples:
- Increased productivity: By limiting clutter and managing flow, you can eliminate waste, reduce interruptions and get more work done in less time, and get more work done in less time.
- Quality improvement: By visualizing your work and continuously improving it, you can detect errors at an early stage, prevent defects, and guarantee customer satisfaction.
- Improved collaboration: By using a shared board and communicating transparently, you can align your team members, coordinate your actions, and solve problems together.
- Greater flexibility: By using a just-in-time system and responding to customer feedback, you can prioritize your work, adapt to changing demand, and deliver value incrementally.
- Greater motivation: By empowering your team and fostering a learning culture, you can increase autonomy, creativity and happiness at work.
How can you apply it to your own work context?
Kanban is a flexible framework that can be applied to any type of process or work environment. You can start with a simple three-column table (To Do, To Do, Done) or adapt it to your specific needs and objectives.
Here are a few examples of how Kanban is used in different fields:
- IT operations: Kanban can help IT teams manage their service requests, incidents, problems, issues and changes more and more efficiently. They can use work plans to prioritize their work and avoid conflicts. They can also use metrics such as throughput, cycle time and turnaround time to measure their performance and improve their service level agreements (SLAs).
- Software development: Kanban can help software development teams deliver products that meet customer needs and expectations. They can use Kanban to manage their order book, development process, test process and release process, development process, test process and release process. They can also use Kanban to implement agile practices such as Scrum, DevOps or Lean Startup.
- Marketing: Kanban can help marketing teams plan and execute their campaigns more effectively and creatively. They can use Kanban to manage their content creation, social media, email marketing, and analytics. They can also use Kanban to collaborate with other teams such as sales, product or customer service.
- Human Resources: Kanban can help HR teams streamline their processes and improve the employee experience. They can use Kanban to manage recruitment, integration, training, performance management and retention.
They can also use Kanban to foster a culture of feedback, recognition and commitment.
These are just a few of the many Kanban examples you can find in different fields. You can also use Kanban for your work or personal projects, such as managing your tasks, goals or hobbies.
Myth-busting
Kanban is a popular and powerful framework, but it’s also surrounded by many myths and misconceptions. In this section, we’ll debunk some of the most common myths and reveal the truth behind them.
- Myth: Kanban is only for manufacturing or IT.
Truth: Kanban can be applied to any type of work process or environment, from software development to marketing to human resources. Kanban is based on universal principles and practices that can help any team or organization optimize its workflow and deliver value to its customers. - Myth: Kanban doesn’t encourage teamwork.
Truth: Kanban promotes collaboration and self-organization among team members by visualizing work, limiting clutter, managing flow, continuously improving and making policies explicit. Kanban teams work together to solve problems, eliminate bottlenecks and deliver value faster and more efficiently. - Myth: Kanban is incompatible with Scrum.
Truth: Kanban and Scrum are complementary frameworks that can be used together to improve agility and performance. Scrum teams can use Kanban practices to visualize their work, limit their WIP, manage their flow and improve their process. Kanban teams can use Scrum practices to define their objectives, plan their work, monitor their results and adapt their actions. - Myth: Kanban is easy to implement.
Truth: Kanban is simple to understand but difficult to master. A change of mindset and culture is needed to adopt it effectively. Continuous learning and improvement are also necessary to maintain and optimize the Kanban system over time.
These are just some of the myths we encounter about Kanban. If you’d like to learn more about the reality of Kanban, we recommend you take one of our ProKanban courses and become a certified Kanban professional.
How can ProKanban help you master Kanban?
ProKanban is the leading Kanban certification and training organization. It offers courses that cover the fundamentals and advanced topics of Kanban, such as:
– Applying Professional Kanban (APK): This course is for anyone who wants to improve their ability to deliver value and be more efficient. Kanban is fast becoming the modern way of managing the delivery of value to an organization’s customers. In today’s always-connected environment, you need a clear set of practices that don’t prevent you from delivering continuously, but provide enough structure to keep everyone aligned and focused. This two-day course will give you an in-depth introduction to improving your team’s efficiency by applying Kanban flow principles.
–Applying Metrics for Predictability (AMP): This course is for anyone who has to answer the question “When will it be finished?” or who has to give an estimate for a User Story, Epic, Feature, Project and/or Release. This includes executives, managers or team members who want greater understanding and transparency on the health and performance of their process. Anyone currently using Agile or Lean methodologies and interested in how to improve the predictability and effectiveness of their current practices will benefit from the Applying Metrics for Predictability course.
Pyxis chose ProKanban as its partner to offer Kanban courses because we believe it offers the most comprehensive and practical program for learning and applying Kanban. ProKanban courses are designed and delivered by experienced and certified Kanban trainers who have hands-on experience of using Kanban in a variety of fields and contexts.
How to combine Scrum and kanban
As we mentioned earlier, Scrum and Kanban are not mutually exclusive frameworks. They can be combined in a variety of ways to enhance agility and performance. Here are some examples of how Scrum and Kanban can be combined:
– Scrumban: This hybrid approach combines the structure of Scrum with the flexibility of Kanban. Scrumban teams use Scrum ceremonies such as sprint planning, daily scrum, sprint review and sprint retrospective. They also use a Kanban board with WIP limits to visualize their workflow and optimize their process.
– Scrum with Kanban: This is an approach that adds four Kanban practices to Scrum without modifying its fundamental elements. Scrum teams with Kanban use work-in-progress visualization (WIP), WIP limits for each workflow state (column), active management of blocked work items (obstacles) and explicit policies for process improvement.
– Professional Scrum with Kanban (PSK): This is a course developed by Scrum.org that teaches Scrum practitioners how to apply Professional Scrum with complementary Kanban practices. PSK teams use Scrum as a basis and learn to apply Kanban practices to improve their flow and delivery. They also learn how to use measurements and flow charts to control and improve their process.
These are just some of the ways in which Scrum and Kanban can be combined to create a powerful synergy. If you’d like to find out more about how to combine Scrum and Kanban, we recommend you take one of our courses on this topic, such as Professional Scrum with Kanban (Private Group).
Interesting books to read
If you want to learn more about Kanban, here are some books we recommend you read:
– Essential Kanban Condensed by David J. Anderson and Andy Carmichael. This book provides a concise and accessible introduction to the key concepts and practices of Kanban. It covers the history, principles, values, practices, metrics and benefits of Kanban. It also includes case studies and examples of how Kanban has been applied in various fields and contexts.
– Making Work Visible: Exposing Time Theft to Optimize Work & Flow by Dominica DeGrandis. This book shows you how to identify and eliminate the time-wasters that prevent you from delivering value to your customers. It teaches you how to use Kanban techniques such as visualization, stock limits, flow management, feedback loops and metrics to improve the efficiency and quality of your work.
– Agile Project Management with Kanban by Eric Brechner. This book offers a practical guide on how to use Kanban to effectively manage agile projects. It covers topics such as creating a Kanban board, prioritizing work items, estimating work effort and duration, tracking progress and performance, managing change and risk, and extending Kanban to teams and organizations.
