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Kanban

Introduction

Kanban has two meanings in Japanese. Both meanings are incorporated into the Kanban Method

  1. Kanban written in Kanji (Chinese characters)
    看板 means “sign” or “large visual board”.
  2. Kanban written in Japanese alphabet, hiragana
    かんばん means signal cards(s).
  3. In Chinese, only the 看板 version exists. Hence, in Chinese, kanban can only mean “sign board” but the method was actually inspired by the signal cards system used in Japan.

The Kanban method is not a method for project management nor software development. But rather, it is a method to visualize your work, promote more innovation via improved collaboration, and increase service delivery efficiency. Kanban is a “Fit for Purpose” method because every Kanban system is different and based on its context. It will continue to evolve as you collect and evaluate empirical data points in the process. Better Kanban systems organize work, not people. Therefore, organizing work rather than people makes everything simpler.

The 5 Foundation Principles behind Kanban:

  1. Start small and what you know already.
  2. Agree to pursue evolutionary change over time.
  3. Respect everyone’s roles, responsibilities and title.
  4. Encourage acts of leadership from everyone.
  5. Improve Collaboratively.
    1. Models & Scientific.
    2. Improve in Small steps.

Learn to view what you do now as a set of services (that can be improved):

    1. What to look for…
      1. Creative work is service-oriented.
      2. Service delivery involves workflow.
      3. Workflow involves a series of knowledge discovery activities.
    2. What to do…
      1. Map the knowledge discovery workflow.
      2. Pay attention to how & why work arrives.
      3. Track work flowing through the service.

Core Practices

  1. Visualize.
  2. Limit work-in-progress (WIP Limits).
  3. Manage flow.
  4. Make policies explicit.
  5. Implement feedback loops.
  6. Systems Thinking approach to improve collaboratively, and evolve experimentally.

Create Your Own Kanban System

It is important to analyze your current workflow for inefficiencies, pain points, and bottle necks. Then look how to improve your workflow via designing a Kanban System. It is okay to start with incremental, small changes and then scale. It is best to draw your current workflow on paper and make it a collaborative session with your team.

Kanban System Design (Elements to Identify & Define)

  1. Work item types.
  2. Workflow states.
  3. Sources of variability (that disrupt planned work & commitments) to be designed out.
  4. WIP limits & queue replenishment policy.
  5. Classes of Service.
  6. Explicit Policies (Similar to Team Agreements in Scrum).
  7. Commitment points.
  8. Replenishment & release frequencies.
  9. Visualization – board & ticket design.
  10. Metrics & reporting.
  11. Feedback mechanisms.

Frequency or On-Demand

Frequency

  • Recurring events should generally happen with a regular frequency. The specific frequency is a contextual design choice.
  • Choose Frequencies for:
  • Replenishing Backlog.
  • Releases (can be internal or external).
  • Feedback loops
  • Standups.
  • Service Delivery Review (similar to Demos).
  • Operations Review (similar to Retrospectives).

On-Demand

  1. Lower maturity organizations struggle with on-demand replenishment. They are helped by predictable, regularly scheduled events.
  1. On-demand Backlog replenishment may be possible where coordination effort is low and business owners are (almost) instantly available.
  2. On-demand delivery may be possible where automated deployment technology is available and customers have been trained to take delivery of small increments frequently.

Ticket Design

It is important that you design your tickets based on your context. For example, if some of your tickets are "Bugs", then you would have certain required fields the reporter would fill out related to Bugs. Below is an example:

Benefits of a Kanban System

  • Visibility.
  • Eliminates overburdening.
  • Reduces or eliminates multi-tasking.
  • Controls or eliminates interruptions, disruptive task-switching and variability.
  • Shorter lead times.
  • Better quality.
  • Deferred commitment.
  • Improved predictability.
  • More frequent selection & commitment, more frequent delivery, short lead times.
  • Improved governance & risk management.
  • The ability to evolve processes & workflows in response to a changing external environment.

Kanban System Design Example

Policy:

1 business day to groom ticket or contact customer.

Goes to Ready on demand when grooming is done.

Policy:

Prioritization

Assignee

Decide if it needs to be expedited

SLA

Policy:

Expeditated Tickets first

Tickets w/ higher priority next

Follow WIP limits

Policy:

Work Completed

Team Verified

Let User know its Done

Update comments field w/ tech notes

Policy:

If User finds an issue, reopen ticket, and sent to the Expedite lane

Help Desk validates if it’s a new issue or fix existing ticket

BACKLOG

READY

IN PROGRESS (WIP 7)

DONE
(CLOSED)

USER VALIDATION

 

 

 

 

 

 

Policy:

Request for more information or meet with the Customer

Policy:

Request for more information or meet with the Customer

 

 

 

Waiting for External Feedback

Waiting for External Feedback

 

 

 

 

 

Classes of Service

  1. Expedite.
  2. Regular Ticket.

Meeting(s)

  1. Operational Review -> Once a month (90 minutes).

Reporting

  1. Tickets Re-Open.
  2. Lead time from ticket in Backlog to Ready.
  3. Cycle time from Ready to Done.
  4. # of tickets expedited.
  5. # of tickets escalated.
  6. General Help Desk reporting.

Intake Form

  1. Title.
  2. Description.
  3. Impact [Drop Down].
  4. Urgency [Drop Down].
  5. Category Links.
  6. Attachment.
  7. User Availability.
  8. Priority [will be automatically set].
  9. Re-Open [Check Box].
  10. Expedited [Check Box].
  11. Comments.
  12. Other built-in (default) fields.

Kanban at Scale

When you have multiple teams implementing Kanban, whose work is connected, you will need a way to visualize the work together among the different teams. This will help to understand and plan inter-team dependencies, touch points, dates, bottlenecks, etc. In this context, Kanban at Scale, also known as Enterprise  Kanban, is needed. Kanban at Scale is basically a higher level Kanban board and system in an organization that tracks, visualizes, and drives the work among multiple teams, whose work is related to each other. Each team can be treated as a Class of Service since they are working on a specific type of work.

References

Kanban: Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Business.
Author: David J. Anderson. Published: January 2010. Publisher: Blue Hole Press.

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