Kanban Practices
The following are the six core Kanban practices:
- Limit WIP: Limiting Work-In-Process (WIP) implies that a pull system is executed on either parts or the whole workflow. It (PULL system) will act as one of the key stimuli for incremental, continuous, and evolutionary changes to the system. Limit WIP assigns explicit limits to the number of items that may be in progress at each workflow state.
- Visualize: Visualizing the workflow and making it visible is important so as to know how work proceeds. Without understanding the flow of work, incorporating the right changes is difficult. Usually, a card wall with columns and cards is used to visualize the flow of work. Different states or steps within the workflow are represented by the columns on the card wall.
- Manage flow: Flow of work through every state within the workflow should be observed, measured, and informed. By managing the flow vigorously, the incremental, continuous, and evolutionary modifications to the system can be assessed to have negative or positive effects on the system.
- Improve Collaboratively, Evolve Experimentally: Kanban encourages small incremental, continuous, and evolutionary changes. Whenever teams have a common understanding of concepts about work, process, workflow, and risk, they are more likely to be able to form a shared understanding of a problem and suggest enhancement actions that could achieve a consensus.
- Implement Feedback Loops: Early feedback from clients and the pull system are important in Kanban. If we get feedback from different stakeholders and processes, it will help to eliminate risk and optimize the delivery process.
- Make Policies Explicit: Until the mechanism of a process is not made clear, it is difficult to hold a debate and discuss ways to improve it. Without a clear understanding of how work is truly done and how things actually work, any conversation of complications tends to be anecdotal, emotional, and subjective. With a clear understanding, it is possible to hold a more rational, empirical, objective discussion of issues. It is more likely to facilitate consensus around improvement suggestions.
Kanban – Agile Methodology
Kanban is a popular Agile Software Development Methodology. It is a signaling device that instructs the moving of parts in a ‘pull’ production system, developed as part of the TPS (Toyota Production System). Kanban is about envisioning the existing workflow in terms of steps. These steps can be created on the whiteboard.
Table of Content
- What is kanban?
- When Would The Kanban Approach Be Needed?
- Kanban Board/Card
- Principles of Kanban
- Kanban Practices
- Kanban Workflow – How does Kanban Pull System Work?
- Lead Time and Cycle Time
- Cumulative Flow Diagram
- How to Calculate Lead Time and Cycle Time
- Steps of Kanban Approach
- Benefits of using Kanban Framework
- Kanban vs Scrum
- Conclusion
- Frequently Asked Questions on Kanban – Agile Methodology
The main aim of Kanban is to reduce WIP (Work-In-Progress), or inventory, between processes by ensuring the upstream process creates parts as long as its downstream process needs it. The goal of the Kanban execution is to ensure work items move to the next steps quickly to realize business value faster.
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