Kanban

Overview

Kanban is perhaps the easiest way for any team to start using an Agile method. Unlike Scrum, it requires no change of roles, no change of process, and initially minimal impact to team's daily work. What it does require from the team is to make its work transparent using a Kanban board and to commit to continual team improvement. This minimally intrusive change can lead to huge improvements in effectiveness and productivity. Let's see how.

Kanban Principles

The Kanban Principles are as follows:

1. Start With What You Do Now

2. Agree to Pursue Incremental, Evolutionary Change

3. Respect the Current Process, Roles & Responsibilities

4. Encourage Acts of Leadership at All Levels

As you can see, there are only small changes required to begin with.  Most people have no problem agreeing to pursue incremental, evolutionary change, and most are willing to try encouraging acts of leadership at all levels. As opposed to Scrum, which requires everyone to take new roles and commit to several new events, Kanban respects current process, roles, and responsibilities.  You start with what you're doing now, document it on a Kanban board, and then incrementally improve team process over time.

Kanban Practices

The core of Kanban is the Kanban Board.  This is reflected in Practice #1 below.  We visualize the team's workflow on a Kanban Board in order to achieve transparency and self-organization.  The rest of the practices follow, and all of the practices rely on the Kanban board and the cards that flow across it.

1. Visualize the Workflow

2. Limit Work in Progress

3. Manage Flow

4. Make Process Policies Explicit

5. Feedback Loops

6. Improve Collaboratively (using models & the scientific method)

For more information about how these practices work, please see <<Deeper Dive into Kanban>>.  For now, just understand that everything in Kanban starts with the Kanban Board.  To get started with Kanban, you need to create a board that shows all of the team's work, and the team starts tracking their work there.  From that point on, you can start improving by using the rest of the practices.  But getting the work up on a board, whether it be physical or virtual, is the key to getting started with Kanban.

Summary

Kanban can be used by almost any team.  The team visualizes its work on a physical or electronic Kanban board and commits to pursuing incremental, evolutionary change. From there, the team may progress through the other Kanban Practices.  More details on how to get started with Kanban can be found in Getting Started with Kanban .

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Note: Atlassian's series of 5-minute Kanban videos can be very helpful to understanding the basics of Kanban: https://www.atlassian.com/agile/kanban