Introduction to Kanban

Kanban  (billboard in Japanese) originated from Toyota Production System (in the late 1940s) as a "Just in Time" manufacturing to production scheduling  system.

The Kanban System monitors and controls processes and systems in the value chain from the supplier to the end customer in order to avoid bottlenecks and reducing wastes to increase customer value and reduce production cost.

The Kanban Method was first applied by David J Anderson in IT and software development.

Kanban Method uses Kanban Systems (Kanban Boards + Pull Based mechanism + WIP Limits) along with Flow Management metrics and continuous improvements.

The Kanban method is not a life-cycle or project management methodology. Kanban is least prescriptive.

Benefits of Kanban

* Deliver continuous value to business

* Eliminate bottlenecks, Improve work flow, Reduce Cycle time

* Increase predictability (amidst changing requirements, market conditions ...) and create stable systems

Sample Kanban board with explicit policies. defined WIP limits, and classes of service defined.

The following six core practices and four fundamental practices. Teams should embrace the six practices and 4 core principles for successful implementation.

Six Core Practices

1. Visualize the flow of work The Kanban board (electronic or whiteboard with sticky notes) is a visual real-time medium to represent the work flow. A daily walk through of the board helps the team to identify gaps and bottlenecks and improve delivery. The work items in the board is written on Cards and each card can be classified into work item type (User Stories, Bugs, Support Tickets, etc) and its Class of service (Expedite, Standard, Fixed delivery date, Intangible).

2. Limit the work in Progress Stop Starting and Start Finishing is the premise of Kanban. Implementing the pull-system with WIP limits helps the team to focus on getting items from Ready to Done before taking up new items. Each column in the board will have a WIP limit. Teams can start with setting 1.5 times number of people working on that phase.

3. Manage Flow Flow of work items to done is critical for business to realize its value. Observing the flow is critical, and managing a healthy/updated board will facilitate in capturing bottlenecks that disrupts the flow. Walk-through of the board will expose systemic issues (like hand-offs between stages, etc). Continuous process improvement emerges from processing these issue items through a feedback loop. Observing the workflow and making adjustments will make the system stable and predictable.

4. Make process policies explicit A common understanding of guidelines, process policies, checklists, definition and description for each item type, stage column a is important for delivery. The policy should be explicitly documented for each stage, its entry and exit criteria, how each item type should be treated while resolving the items.

5. Implement Feedback Loop Delivering the most required value to the market is important for business, products and services to survive. In order to perform this function implementing a robust feedback and adaptation loop to test a perceived value to a realized value. Flow of work items, metrics and reports provides insights about what is going well, and what needs to be inspected and adapted.

6. Improve Collaboratively, Evolve experimentally Kanban emphasizes delivery mechanism by people participation and evolve incrementally, at a sustainable pace through use the scientific models and methods. Defining and validating hypothesis will provide evidences about the value stream of work items and prioritize based on the data and proofs derived.