In the most basic terms, Kanban is an innovative technique that is used in project management. The technique allows teams to be more productive and makes the processes much more streamlined. The word Kanban derives its origins from the Japanese kan which means visual and the word ban which means card.”

Kanban has become a highly popular Agile tool. It is widely used by businesses and is particularly useful for certain software projects. However, there are several situations where Kanban use does not match the instance for which it is being used.

The Kanban Approach

Kanban basically helps manage the creation of products while emphasizing on continuous delivery. It aims to relieve the development team of any burdens. Kanban, like Scrum, helps teams work in a more efficient way.

The process involves three key principles.

• It is important to visualize what you are doing at present. Considering all business aspects and items in the context of each other can be a very informative exercise.
• Put a limit on the amount of work in progress you are handling. This will help enforce a balance so teams do not overstrain and work too much at any time.
• The third aspect enhances flow and involves picking up the next thing highest in the list of backlogs when the task at hand is finished.

Basically, the approach helps foster continuous collaboration and encourage active learning. It helps define the best possible workflow for maximal efficiency.

The approach, therefore, is expected to have several advantages.

• It results in shorter cycle times and timely feature deliveries.
• Kanban is ideal in environments where the priorities keep changing continuously.
• It helps to respond to change in an efficient manner.
• Reduces the waste and activities that do not add any value to the business.
• Motivates and empowers teammates who perform higher by having rapid feedback loops in place.
• Balances demand and throughput. This helps work on the most customer value-centric features.

Wrong Reasons to Use Kanban

Businesses might be using the Kanban approach for all the wrong reasons without even realizing it. We examine below several such instances in which the approach probably isn’t the best fit.

• Kanban is not the best way to deal with varied story sizes. The teams should instead be taught to split the stories into smaller tasks.
• Using Kanban will not increase your speed with which you generally progress through your tasks. If you are unable to finish a story in one iteration, that certainly does not spell out a need to use this approach.
• It is sometimes easier to form cross-functional teams and ending multi-tasking approaches. Kanban might not always be the best solution from team stability considerations.
• Kanban’s simplicity is often the reason why businesses use it as a solution to all management challenges and issues. You will undoubtedly have to work hard and face a lot of problems.

The Right Reasons to Use Kanban

Let’s now examine closely the right situations where Kanban can be used to increase efficiency, improve processes, and remove waste while responding to ever-changing priorities.

• Allows priorities to be continuously changed. This is something Scrum does not lend itself to easily.
• Helps release items at any time, which is not often possible with other iterative methods and techniques.
• Helps realize and visualize the best workflows. The approach can be used when a business needs insights into its current operations and the stage the project is presently in.

Conclusion

Kanban is easily used in a number of business situations but is not the one size fits all solution for all business challenges. It is easily used when there is a need to model the whole value stream or when there is a need to respond rapidly to continuously changing priorities.

It ultimately helps foster continuous improvement. The best way to choose the ideal method for business process improvement is to first consider what it is that you wish to improve. This will help choose the most suitable approach rather than using one tool to solve all problems.

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Using Kanban in Your Personal Life

Kanban is a workflow visualization tool that has proven itself to be extremely valuable in the business environment as a way to manage processes of all sorts. It’s simple yet powerful, and it makes a lot of vital information both evident and easily accessible for whole teams, bolstering productivity and process optimization.

But Kanban’s potential is not limited to the fields of business and management. It can be a tool that everyone could use in their personal life to efficiently manage all of their tasks, and to increase their own personal productivity. At its core, Kanban is just an organized approach to treating your list of to-dos. What makes it great and useful is its simplicity that doesn’t diminish its power or effectiveness.

What is Kanban?

Kanban is a method that is used to create a Kanban board. It’s usually a whiteboard, but it can be done on a large piece of paper or through specialized software, or even on MS Excel. Kanban has a few columns that signify different stages a task might be at, starting from the most basic To Do’ state, and ending with the Done’ state. The simplest version of Kanban has just one column in between, which is traditionally labeled Doing’, but there is no limit on the number of columns that can be used, so Kanban boards can get quite complex if need be. Tasks are usually written down on sticky notes, and they are physically moved from column to column when they are at different stages of the task completion process. The idea is to quickly move each sticky from one end of the board to the other end, which means your “customer” gets what they want quickly.

Learn more about Kanban boards here >>>

What Is Personal Kanban?

There are two main aspects of Kanban that make it quite suitable for anybody to apply in their personal life:

1.      Visualization

Kanban is an extremely visual method, which is very helpful for the visual creatures that we are. One of the keys to personal productivity is the ability to get organized without wasting any time. There are many people that use just a simple to-do list on a piece of paper or even people that don’t write down their tasks and expect to hold it all in their heads. Most of them spend a lot of time and effort to decide what they need to do next, what has been done and what hasn’t, and making sure they are not forgetting anything. It’s really easy for it all to become a mess Having a Kanban board with all your tasks helps solve that problem. It presents all of the tasks you have and their progress in an easy to comprehend visual form. When you implement Kanban in your life, you will probably get used to it quickly, as being able to access all the information about the tasks you have at hand at a glance is virtually addictive.

2.      Limited Work in Progress

What leads to a lot of busy people struggling with managing their personal tasks is the fact that they try to do too much all at one. One of the most important principles of Kanban is the limits that you need to impose on the “work in progress” (WIP). You need to decide on a number of tasks that you will allow yourself to be active on at any given time, and adhering to this rule will help you stay focused and avoid stress. It doesn’t sound like a big thing, but it forces proper prioritization, and this has immense results on personal productivity. When you worry about everything all at once, your mind becomes highly ineffective, and this drains a lot of energy. But when you have a Kanban board, you can relax and concentrate on the task at hand without worrying about everything else you have to do everything is clear and manageable. All those items you need to do in the future should be stored in the backlog (‘To Do’ column), but only active projects and tasks are in the ‘Doing’ or WIP column. Start by limiting your WIP to 3 tasks, and see how that works for you. You can always move tasks back to the ‘To Do’ stage if something new comes up, but don’t go over 3 active tasks, or the system will not work.

Where to Start?

Kanban is not a complex system that needs a lot of preparation for. All you need is a few sticky notes and a surface to divide into columns and start sticking them on. It doesn’t require any additional expertise, so you can start from the most basic three-column board, and move up from there. Alternatively, you could look into the many desktop, web or mobile Kanban applications available and give them a go. We suggest you start using Kanbans by hand, instead of electronic solutions, so you learn the methodology and practice it first. In the end, the most important thing is just to start and to stay consistent, and you will start completing tasks more quickly, and not feeling overwhelmed.

Want to learn more about applying Lean to your personal life? Check out the book “A Factory of One” by Dan Markovitz

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Using Kanban to Manage Scarce Resources

Kanban is one of those tools that is simple yet powerful. It’s very easy to understand and to work with, and its visual nature allows for clearer communication between team members and teams, and makes finding problems obvious for everybody involved. Additionally, Kanban can be incredible helpful when managing a project when resources available are tight and need to be utilized in the best possible ways.

A lot of managers find themselves in a situation when they have to achieve lofty goals, and their team needs to juggle a lot of tasks or projects while they can only rely on scarce resources. A typical Kanban implementation puts a restriction on the number of tasks that can be on the Work in Progress’ section of the whiteboard, which forces teams to collaboratively prioritize and move resources around to make sure things are progressing.

You can learn more about Kanban boards for project teams here >>>

Scope and Limitations

It’s important to note that Kanban is basically a tool, and it cannot be a solution that automatically solves everything or makes resource allocation effective all on its own. It’s most useful as a resource planning tool when applied in the right context, usually during Agile or Scrum implementation, which has strong elements of Lean. It’s not just a matter of making a Kanban board for your daily team meetings, but making sure you follow the Lean thinking and philosophy while doing so. There also needs to be discipline about when the meetings are conducted, what updates to obtain from each person, how long can everyone talk, and rules about what allows the sticky notes to move.

Still, Kanban as a tool has its distinct benefits when dealing with resource scarcity and making sure a team constrained by external and internal factors has the highest possible impact.

The Immense Value of Clarity

One of the most crucial factors that foster process efficiency is clarity. This is especially true when a team has too many tasks on their hands without having enough resources and manpower to make all of them a priority. In this type of situations, the more overworked a team is, the more inefficient it becomes. This is what happens during rush hour traffic, too many cars (tasks) overload the available capacity (number of lanes or road structure). This happens specifically because there is a greater amount of time and effort spent in discussions, decision-making on what to work on neat, and communicating with the management about task prioritization. When things start piling up, many workers become paralyzed with the burden of not knowing how to approach the diverse set of problems that require solutions or action. The kanban board makes this more apparent to everyone, and everyone on the team can help solve it. This disperses a lot of the confusion and lack of clarity in managing projects.

Swim Lanes

While the typical Kanban board only has columns, there is also a possible implementation that includes rows. These rows classify tasks according to their priority, department, or other categorization. Those rows are called “swim lanes” (like in a swimming pool), and they might make comprehending and implementing task prioritization even easier and more effective. A Kanban implementation that includes swim lanes allows both the team members and the people in management to set clear direction and clear priorities.

In the example above, the swim lanes are broken out by 3 regions. Each region has their own lane, and the standard workflow across the columns. When one team gets behind or is struggling to complete a task, it will become clear during the reviews. To make sure the customer is getting what they want, Team NY might need to stop some of their tasks (move items back into the To-do column), and move an item from Team LA into their “Do today” column, so Team LA can focus on the item they are struggling with.

This is the power of kanban boards, to make sure the entire project is moving forward to meet customer needs, not just tracking individuals or team progress.

Check out a past interview related to virtual Kanban boards with Lean Kit CEO Chris Hefley >>>

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Implementing Kanban Boards as Part of the Lean Methodology

When looking at a methodology like Lean, there is philosophy and values that describe the methodology as a whole, and there are a number of tools that help with more practical issues.

One of the central tools that are used as part of the Lean methodology that can be particularly effective is Kanban, and more specifically Kanban boards.

What are Kanban boards?

Kanban boards are a visualization tool that deals with work that needs to be done within a workflow, which helps with flow optimization. A Kanban board is an interactive table where each column represents a step in the workflow, where the tasks start on the left and gradually progress through to the right until it is complete.

A physical implementation of a Kanban board is usually a whiteboard with the columns written permanently and the tasks written on sticky notes, so it’s easy to move from column to column, so the progress is visually clear and tangible. Most of the time, sticky notes of multiple colors are used, with each color signifying a different type of task. The most basic example of a Kanban board is a simple three-step workflow with the columns being To do’, Doing’ and Done’. In such an implementation, often the number of tasks allowed in the Doing’ section is limited (usually 3) which helps with prioritization, minimizes the number of tasks at a time (inventory), and helps with proper allocation of resources.

Additionally, besides physical whiteboards, an organization might also use software to make the boards virtual. This allows for larger teams to share the board more efficiently, and for workers or teams that are not at the same physical location to collaborate and coordinate their efforts. Most of the time, Kanban boards are more complex than the basic three-step example given above, and the specialized software allows for a higher level of complexity (without making things too messy), while keeping the visual effectiveness of the tool.

A Kanban board is a tool based on a very simple concept, which makes it both easy to understand, and easy to get started. Despite its simplicity, it can be difficult to maintain the board over time, which is where things break down. If you are just starting out, use the physical kanban board before moving to the electronic version, so that you really learn the methodology and discipline.

Benefits of using Kanban boards

Effective visualization

Clear project visualization helps team members be more effective. As humans are creatures that favor visual stimuli, a Kanban boards makes all the project vital data instantly accessible to everyone, and a lot of information can be understood in a single glance. This means that everybody involved in a task can clearly see the context of their own work, and this helps people to strive towards goals that would be beneficial to the project as a whole (not just individual workers completing their own tasks). One of the most common questions the board answers is whether anyone is working on a given task right now, and who is assigned to that task.

Impediments and waste become easier to identify

When the whole process is visualized and the progress of each task can be clearly understood and visualized at any given moment, anything that is not on track is easy to identify. This allows the management and other team members to help out the individual who is behind, so that the project or workflow can move forward. Usually another team member can offload a task from another person who is behind, or can assist the individual with that task, to help them get unstuck. It drives a collaborative environment, where the customer is the focus.

When tasks are completed, there is an opportunity to reflect on how well the task was completed (speed and quality), and identify opportunities to improve the process for next time.

Communication is facilitated

As Kanban boards are very easy to understand and implement, they are an effective tool for bolstering the communication and collaboration in any team. Kanban boards present a lot of information in a very clear way, which allows information about the project to flow freely inside the organization. This eliminates a lot of the most tedious type of communication which allows team member to direct their communication efforts towards more meaningful issues. Kanban boards also free up a lot of time for the managers, because they don’t need to constantly ask for status updates.

Increased productivity

Due to all the benefits of implementing Kanban boards listed above, they allow for the team to reach higher productivity with less waste, which is the main goal of the Lean methodology.

Have you used a kanban board within your organization, or do you have a personal kanban board for your work? Leave a comment below…

Looking for info about Kanban cards? Download a free kanban card template >>>

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