Kanban is a workflow management method for defining, managing, and improving services that deliver knowledge work. It aims to help you visualize your work, maximize efficiency, and improve continuously. In Japanese, kanban is translated as billboard or signboard. Originating from manufacturing, it later became a territory claimed by Agile software development teams. Recently, it started getting recognized by business units across various industries.
The name Kanban translates from Japanese to “visual sign” or “card” and originated from the Toyota Production System and Lean Manufacturing in the late 1940s. Toyota made improvements to its processes by modeling them after how supermarkets stock their shelves.
Engineer Taiichi Ohno observed that supermarkets focused on stocking their shelves with just enough products to meet demand, and would only be triggered to restock when there was a space on the shelf. This shift optimized the flow between the supermarket and customers and improved inventory management efficiency.
Toyota brought this concept to the factory floor: Teams would create a visual cue, or Kanban, to communicate that they were ready to pull more materials to complete their work.
Kanban definition. Initially, it arose as a scheduling system for lean manufacturing, originating from the Toyota Production System (TPS). In the late 1940s, Toyota introduced “just in time” manufacturing to its production. The approach represents a pull system. This means that production is based on customer demand, rather than the standard push practice to produce goods and push them to the market. Their unique production system laid the foundation of Lean manufacturing or simply Lean. Its core purpose is minimizing waste activities without sacrificing productivity. The main goal is to create more value for the customer without generating more costs.
At the beginning of the 21st Century, key players in the software industry quickly realized how Kanban could be used to change how products and services were delivered positively.
With an increased focus on efficiency, and by harnessing advances in computing technology, Kanban left the automotive industry’s realm and was successfully applied to other complex commercial sectors such as IT, software development, R&D, and others.
Indeed, what we now recognize as the Kanban Method with all core elements emerged at the beginning of 2007.
You can start building your Kanban system by setting up the most straightforward Kanban board with three basic columns – “To Do”, “Doing” and “Done”. When constructed, managed, and functioning correctly, it serves as a real-time information repository, highlighting bottlenecks within the system and anything else that might interrupt smooth working practices.
Kanban is a simple framework that does not require specific setup or procedures and is typically easy for teams to get started with or overlay on top of existing workflows. Many teams try Kanban project management to see if it lives up to its reputation of delivering increased productivity, higher quality, and reduced waste.
As a best practice, Kanban projects should incorporate the following five core principles:
The visual nature of Kanban offers unique value when deciding if it’s the right project management methodology for your team. Here are some additional advantages and disadvantages of choosing Kanban to manage projects:
Advantages
Disadvantages
When aiming to implement the Kanban method, every organization must be careful with the practical steps. There are six core practices as identified by David Anderson that need to be present for successful implementation.
1. Visualize the Workflow
To visualize your process with a Kanban system, you will need a board with cards and columns. Each column on the board represents a step in your workflow. Each Kanban card represents a work item.
The first and most important thing for you is understanding what it takes to get an item from a request to a deliverable product. Only after understanding how the flow of work currently functions can you aspire to improve it by making the necessary adjustments.
The first and most important thing for you is understanding what it takes to get an item from a request to a deliverable product. Only after understanding how the flow of work currently functions can you aspire to improve it by making the necessary adjustments.
2. Limit Work in Progress
One of Kanban’s primary functions is to ensure a manageable number of active items in progress at any one time. If there are no work-in-progress limits, you are not doing Kanban. Switching a team’s focus halfway through will generally harm the process, and multitasking is a sure route to generating waste and inefficiency.
Limiting WIP means implementing a pull system on parts or the complete workflow. Setting maximum items per stage ensures that a card is only “pulled” into the next step when there is available capacity. Such constraints will quickly illuminate problem areas in your flow so you can identify and resolve them.
3. Manage Flow
Managing the flow is about managing the work but not the people. By flow, we mean the movement of work items through the production process.
One of the main goals when implementing a Kanban system is to create a smooth, healthy flow. Instead of micro-managing people and trying to keep them busy all the time, we should focus on managing the work processes and understanding how to get that work faster through the system. This would mean that our Kanban system is creating value more quickly.
4. Make Process Policies Explicit
You can’t improve something you don’t understand. This is why your process should be clearly defined, published, and socialized. People would not associate and participate in something they do not believe would be useful.
When everyone is familiar with the common goal, they would be able to work and make decisions regarding a positive impact.
5. Feedback Loops
For teams and companies that want to be more agile, implementing feedback loops is a mandatory step. They ensure that organizations are adequately responding to potential changes and enable knowledge transfer between stakeholders. An example of such a feedback loop is the daily stand-up meeting for team synchronization. It takes place in front of the Kanban board, and every member tells the others what they did the previous day and what they will be doing today.
There are also the service delivery review, the operations review, strategy review, and the risk review meetings. The frequency depends on many factors, but the idea is that they are regular, at a strictly fixed hour, straight to the point, and never unnecessarily long.
The ideal average length of a stand-up should be between 10-15 minutes, and others may reach up to an hour or more depending on the team size and topics.
6. Improve Collaboratively (using models & the scientific method)
The way to achieve continuous improvement and sustainable change within an organization is through a shared vision of a better future and a collective understanding of the issues that need fixing.
Teams with a shared understanding of their goals, workflow, process, and risks are more likely to build a shared comprehension of a problem and work together towards improvement.
The Positive Side of Kanban
Nowadays, many organizations adopt the Kanban method to become more agile and bring order to their chaotic work processes. Simply said, a Kanban system helps you get more work done.
But let’s dig a bit deeper and see the real benefits of using Kanban.
The basic idea of Kanban is visualizing every piece of work on a whiteboard. This way, the Kanban board turns into a central informational hub. All tasks are visible, and they never get lost, which brings transparency to the whole work process. Every team member can have a quick update on the status of every project or task.
Once you build a Kanban board and you fill it with cards, you will see that some columns will get overcrowded with tasks. This will help you spotlight bottlenecks in your workflow and tackle them properly. For example, you can get a sense of how big tasks should be so your team can promptly move them forward.
If you take a look at the basic Kanban principles, you will quickly understand that any team can use them in your organization, from R&D to HR.
The main reason is that Kanban respects your organization’s current state, and it doesn’t require revolutionary changes. On the contrary, it suggests that you should pursue incremental, evolutionary change and continuously improve.
Kanban was created to meet actual customers’ demands just in time, rather than pushing goods to the market. Today, in knowledge work, Kanban makes it easy to respond to the ever-changing customer’s requirements. It allows teams to be more agile, adapt to changing priorities, reorganizes, or switch focus fast.