Kanban has become a very popular work—or workflow—management tool, especially in the Lean, Agile, and DevOps worlds. It has also found its way into IT Service Management (ITSM) as a way of providing focus and insight into work jobs/tasks and flows, such as ticket queues, planned and unplanned tasks, or projects and improvement activities.
It offers a visual overview of all the work at hand, provides insight into the status of work items, and hopefully motivates people who can see their work progressing from left to right—from “to do” (or “to-be-started”) to “complete.” Plus, it allows management to understand better the relative workload levels, blockages, and performance of both individuals and teams.
What is Kanban?
Kanban is a visual system for managing work that emphasizes continuous flow and limiting work in progress. The term "Kanban" originates from Japanese, roughly translating to "visual signal" or "card." This system was first developed in the manufacturing industry, specifically at Toyota in the 1940s, as part of their efficient production system.
However, its principles have proven so effective that Kanban is now widely used in various fields, including software development and other forms of knowledge work.
Kanban is mostly about making work visible. In its simplest form, a Kanban board might consist of a large board divided into columns representing different stages of work, such as "To Do," "In Progress," and "Done." Tasks are represented by cards or sticky notes that move across these columns as work progresses. This visual representation allows everyone to see the status of work at a glance.
Kanban is a pull system, which means that new work is only pulled into the system when there's capacity to handle it. Instead of pushing tasks onto team members and potentially overwhelming them, Kanban allows the team to pull in new work when they're ready. For instance, a team might set a rule that they can only have three items in their "In Progress" column at any given time. Only when one of these items moves to "Done" can a new item be pulled in from "To Do."
This approach helps prevent overload and ensures that work flows smoothly through the system. It focuses on delivering value to customers and continuously improving the team's processes, making Kanban more than just a task management system - it's a methodology that can transform how teams work, communicate, and deliver results.
Benefits of the Kanban method
The Kanban method offers numerous benefits that have contributed to its widespread adoption across various industries.
-
Improvement in lead times and cycle times: With clear limits to work in progress and increased focus, teams can complete tasks more efficiently. When team members are not juggling multiple tasks simultaneously, they can dedicate their full attention to the task at hand, leading to faster completion times.
-
Increased productivity and efficiency: When all tasks are visible on a board, it becomes easier to identify bottlenecks, redundancies, or inefficiencies in the workflow. This visibility allows teams to address issues promptly and streamline their processes.
-
Enhanced collaboration and communication: Daily stand-up meetings around the Kanban board (whether physical or digital) provide a forum for everyone to discuss progress, challenges, and next steps. This regular communication ensures that everyone is on the same page and can offer help or resources where needed.
-
Better alignment with business goals and objectives: Visualizing every work item in the Kanban board makes it easier to prioritize tasks that align with strategic objectives. Teams can focus on high-value tasks that contribute directly to business goals, ensuring that effort is spent where it matters most.
-
Improved customer satisfaction: Let's take, for instance, software development teams. For them, Kanban's focus on continuous delivery means that working software can be delivered to customers faster and more frequently. The faster delivery of value not only satisfies customers but also allows for quicker feedback and iteration.
Understanding Kanban boards
If you've never seen a Kanban board before, picture a large board divided into columns. Each column represents a different stage in your work process. A basic Kanban board might have columns labeled "To Do," "In Progress," and "Done," but boards can be customized to reflect the specific stages of any workflow.
Within these columns, you'll find cards or sticky notes. Each of these represents an individual piece of work or task. As work progresses, these cards move from left to right across the board. For example, when a team member starts working on a task, they would move their card from the "To Do" column to the "In Progress" column. When the task is completed, the card moves to the "Done" column. This movement provides a clear visual indication of the progress of work.
Kanban boards can be as simple or as complex as needed. Some teams might add columns for stages like "Testing" or "Review" between "In Progress" and "Done." Others might use swimlanes - horizontal divisions of the board - to separate different types of work or different projects.
The power of a Kanban board lies in its ability to provide a clear overview of all work in progress at a glance. The entire team can easily see what everyone is working on, what's coming up next, and what's been completed.
Today, many teams use online Kanban tools that provide the same visual approach but with added benefits. Digital Kanban boards can be accessed from anywhere, making them ideal for remote or distributed teams. They often include features like automatic notifications when cards are moved, the ability to attach detailed information to cards, and integration with other project management or communication tools.
Setting up a Kanban board
If you're just getting started with Kanban, you might be wondering how to set up your first board. After all, this will be the foundation upon which your team's workflow will be built. Let's cover all the basics:
First step: creating columns
Start by identifying the different stages of your work process and creating columns on the board to represent them.
This is the first and most crucial step in setting up your Kanban board. Gather your team and map out your current workflow. What are the key stages that each piece of work goes through from start to finish? A basic board might include columns like "To Do," "In Progress," and "Done," but your board should reflect your specific process. For example, a software development team might have columns like:
-
Backlog
-
Ready for Development
-
In Development
-
Code Review
-
Testing
-
Ready for Release
-
Done
Remember, the goal is to make your actual workflow visible, not to force your process into a predefined structure.
Second step: WIP limits
Determine the work-in-progress (WIP) limits for each stage to ensure that the team is not overwhelmed.
WIP limits are a key feature of Kanban. They help prevent bottlenecks and ensure a smooth flow of work. To set WIP limits:
-
Analyze your team's capacity and the typical time tasks spend in each stage.
-
Start with conservative limits and adjust as you learn more about your team's capabilities.
-
Consider setting different limits for different types of work or priorities.
For instance, you might set a WIP limit of 3 for the "In Development" column, meaning no more than three items can be in development at once. This encourages the team to finish current work before starting new tasks.
Third step: Create Kanban cards
A card or sticky note will represent individual pieces of work. When creating these cards:
-
Include essential information like task description, assignee, due date, and priority.
-
Use color coding to differentiate between types of work or priorities.
-
For physical Kanban boards: Keep cards small enough to fit multiple on the board, but large enough to read from a distance.
-
For digital Kanban tools: Remember that you can attach more detailed information, files, or links to make them more useful.
Fourth step: Meetings
Establish a regular meeting cadence, such as daily stand-ups, to review progress and discuss any issues.
Regular meetings are vital for keeping the Kanban system running smoothly. Consider implementing:
-
Daily stand-up meetings: Quick 15-minute meetings where everyone shares what they're working on and any blockers.
-
Weekly review meetings: Longer sessions to discuss completed work, upcoming priorities, and any process improvements.
-
Periodic retrospectives: Meetings to reflect on the Kanban process itself and identify areas for improvement.
These meetings help ensure that the Kanban board stays up-to-date and that any issues are quickly identified and addressed.
Implementing Kanban in your organization
Implementing Kanban across an organization requires careful planning and execution. Here's a more detailed look at how to successfully introduce Kanban to your organization:
Start small
Introduce Kanban to a single team or project. Beginning with a pilot project or team allows you to:
-
Learn from the implementation process without risking organization-wide disruption.
-
Demonstrate the benefits of Kanban to other teams and stakeholders.
-
Refine your approach before scaling up.
Choose a team that's open to change and has a manageable workload for your pilot implementation.
Educate team members
You should introduce your new Kanban teams to the principles and practices of Kanban methodology and ensure they understand the benefits.
Proper education is crucial for successful adoption. Consider:
-
Organizing formal training sessions or workshops on Kanban.
-
Providing resources like books, articles, or online courses for self-study.
-
Inviting Kanban experts or consultants to speak to your team.
-
Encouraging team members to share what they have learned and experienced with Kanban.
Establish clear goals
The Kanban framework is not only about visualizing your current process. You can aim for many objectives, such as improving lead times or increasing productivity.
Setting clear, measurable goals helps:
-
Provide direction for the implementation.
-
Motivate the team by showing the potential benefits.
-
Allow you to track the success of the implementation.
Make sure your goals are SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.
-
Non-SMART Goal: "Complete more tasks."
This goal is vague and lacks clear criteria for success.
-
SMART Goal: "Increase the number of completed tasks per week by 15%."
This goal is Specific (increase completed tasks), Measurable (by 15%), Achievable (assuming it's a realistic target), Relevant (important for productivity), and Time-bound (implied weekly).
Remember, implementing Kanban is not a one-time event but a learning and continuous improvement process. Be patient, stay committed to the principles, and be prepared to adapt as you learn what works best for your organization.
How to get started with Kanban: Our 5 tips
1. Don’t overcomplicate things
Especially when you’re just starting out with Kanban – instead, start simply, and you’ll find that you can easily adapt your Kanban board on the fly (if needed). The important thing is to make it easy to use – thus increasing the probability that you’ll quickly adapt to this new way of working.
2. Ensure that the board truly reflects your way of working
Or, to be more precise, the various states that exist in the usual workflow. For instance, this might be the addition of “waiting for review” or “waiting for approval” columns where work might be held up if not monitored. Importantly, take the time to map out the current workflow before creating your Kanban board.
3. Be careful when “chunking” your work
Each Kanban card should represent an independent piece, or chunk, of work. And dependencies between cards will add, and potentially hide, complexity within your work and the board.
4. If sharing a Kanban board, set up use policies
If you use a Kanban board alone, then the chances are that you’ll use it consistently. However, the same isn’t true if a single board is used by multiple people. These policies should state when cards can move between columns, in particular when work is considered complete. Importantly, it’s not enough to create the policies – they need to be communicated to, understood, and agreed to by everyone involved.
5. Conduct regular reviews to identify blockages or other limitations
This could also include the level of adoption, the timeliness of updates, or the identification of “hidden work.” And don’t overlook (or forget to factor in) improvement and evolution. There might be required changes to workflows—maybe even inspired by the use of Kanban boards—that will need boards to change or evolve over time. So, take the time to question the validity of the operational status quo regularly.
Kanban best practices
-
Visualize the workflow: Make the work visible to all team members and stakeholders.
-
Limit work in progress: Establish limits on the amount of work in progress to ensure that the team is not overwhelmed. If there’s a disproportionate number of cards in the “in progress” or “doing” column, then it needs to be addressed (the same applies if something similar is happening in other in-flight columns).
-
Focus on flow: Prioritize the smooth flow of work through the system over individual productivity.
-
Pull-based workflow: Follow the principle of “pull” over “push.” Only pull new work into the system when the team has capacity.
-
Educate the entire team on the principles and practices of Kanban.
-
Use data and metrics to inform decisions.
Kanban analytics and metrics
Kanban analytics and metrics are crucial for understanding the efficiency of the process and identifying areas for improvement. Here's a deeper look at some key metrics:
-
Lead Time: This is the total time it takes for a piece of work to move through the entire system, from the moment it's requested to when it's delivered.
-
Lead time helps you understand your overall efficiency and predict delivery times for future work.
-
It's calculated by: Delivery Date - Request Date
-
-
Cycle Time: This measures the time it takes for a piece of work to move through a specific stage of your process.
-
Cycle time helps find bottlenecks in your workflow.
-
It's calculated by: Date Work Finished in Stage - Date Work Started in Stage
-
Example: If coding takes 3 days and testing takes 2 days, these are separate cycle times within your overall process.
-
-
Throughput: This is the number of work items completed within a given timeframe.
-
Throughput helps you understand your team's capacity and productivity.
-
It's usually measured weekly or monthly.
-
Example: If your team completes 20 tasks in a week, your weekly throughput is 20.
-
-
Work-in-Progress (WIP): This is the number of work items currently being worked on.
-
WIP is crucial for maintaining flow and preventing overload.
-
It's typically limited to ensure focus and efficiency.
-
Example: If your "In Development" column has a WIP limit of 5, there should never be more than 5 items in this stage at once.
-
-
Cumulative Flow Diagram (CFD): This is a chart showing the number of work items in each stage over time.
-
CFDs help visualize your workflow and identify bottlenecks or delays.
-
The horizontal axis represents time, while the vertical axis shows the number of items.
-
Each colored band represents a different stage in your process.
-
Widening bands indicate bottlenecks, while parallel bands show smooth flow.
-
Measuring Kanban success
-
Collect and analyze these metrics regularly to gauge the effectiveness of your implementation. Look for trends over time. Are lead times decreasing? Is throughput increasing? Use the metrics to set realistic expectations for future work and to identify areas for improvement.
-
Review your WIP limits regularly to ensure they optimize flow without causing idle time. If work is frequently blocked due to full columns, consider increasing WIP limits. Conversely, if workers are juggling too many work tasks, consider decreasing WIP limits.
-
Discuss what's working well and what could be improved regularly. Encourage the team to share their insights and suggestions. Implement agreed-upon improvements and track their impact.
Additional strategies for measuring success:
-
Customer satisfaction surveys to gauge the impact of Kanban on delivery quality and speed.
-
Team satisfaction surveys to understand how Kanban is affecting work-life balance and stress levels.
-
Defect or bug rates to measure if quality is improving alongside speed.
-
Cost of delay calculations to understand the financial impact of your improved processes.
Kanban vs. Agile methodologies
Kanban and traditional Agile methodologies like Scrum share come of the same concepts and the overall goal of improving team performance and delivering value efficiently, but they differ in their approach. Kanban is a more flexible system that focuses on visualizing and optimizing workflows without the need for fixed iterations or specific roles like Scrum Master. It allows for continuous flow and adaptation, making it highly responsive to changing priorities.
Project managers using Kanban focus on optimizing flow and reducing lead times rather than planning sprints or managing a product backlog as they would in Scrum. However, Kanban is not mutually exclusive with other Agile methodologies. Many teams incorporate a Kanban board within a Scrum framework to better visualize their sprint work or adopt a hybrid "Scrumban" approach.
Common challenges and solutions
-
Resistance to change: Educate team members on the benefits of Kanban and involve them in the implementation process.
-
Difficulty in establishing work-in-progress limits: Start with small limits and adjust as needed.
-
Inability to prioritize work: Establish clear goals and objectives and prioritize work accordingly.
-
Difficulty in scaling Kanban: Establish clear guidelines and processes for scaling Kanban across multiple teams.
Final words
Kanban is a powerful tool for improving any production process and increasing productivity. To ensure long-term success, remember to start small, scale gradually, and continuously improve the development process. If you follow the Kanban principles outlined in this guide, you can successfully achieve significant benefits.
