Kanban Methodology: Principles, Practices, and Implementation

Kanban: Flexible Planning

• No prescribed phase durations.
• Priorities are constantly reassessed based on the most recent information.
• The team starts new items in order of priority.
• Priorities can change throughout the project.
• The team decides what to do and when.
• Reduced lead times.

Core Values

1. Transparency: Sharing information openly and using clear vocabulary.
2. Balance: Maintaining equilibrium between demand and capability to prevent system breakdown.
3. Collaboration: Improving how people work together.
4. Customer Focus: Delivering value by understanding customer needs.
5. Flow: Visualizing and maintaining the flow of work.
6. Leadership: Encouraging leadership at all levels to achieve value delivery.
7. Understanding: Self-knowledge for both individuals and the organization.
8. Agreement: Moving toward goals while respecting different opinions.
9. Respect: Valuing and showing consideration for all people.

Principles

Change Management Principles

• Start with what you do now: Understand current processes and respect existing roles and responsibilities.
• Agree to pursue improvement: Focus on evolutionary change.
• Encourage leadership: Foster acts of leadership at every level.

Service Delivery Principles

• Understand and focus on customer needs and expectations.
• Manage the work; let people self-organize around it.
• Regularly review the network and its policies to improve outcomes.

Little's Law and Metrics

Delivery Rate = WIP / Lead Time

• Lead Time: The time an item is in process between commitment and delivery.
• WIP (Work in Progress): The collection of items currently within the system.
• Delivery Rate: The rate at which items are delivered over a given period.

Kanban Practices

1. Visualize the work.
2. Limit work in progress (WIP).
3. Manage flow.
4. Make policies explicit.
5. Implement feedback loops.
6. Improve collaboratively, evolve experimentally.

Implementing Kanban

1. Understand what makes the service fit for purpose for the customer.
2. Understand sources of dissatisfaction with the current system.
3. Analyze demand.
4. Analyze capability.
5. Model workflow.
6. Design the Kanban system.
7. Socialize the system and board design, then negotiate implementation.

Roles

Kanban does not create new roles or positions in the organization (e.g., Product Owner or Flow Master).