Kanban - the hidden art behind the slips of paper

The Kanban board, which visualizes work in columns, is now widely known. But there is more to this board than meets the eye. Kanban is a framework that helps teams to increase transparency within the team, identify bottlenecks, shorten lead times and continuously improve collaboration and processes.

To understand how this works, it is worth taking a look at the practices.

1st practice: Visualize the work

The team's work is divided into partial orders and written on cards. These cards are hung on a Kanban wall, which shows the value stream in individual work steps. The cards are moved on this wall from creation to delivery through the columns that represent the individual steps in the process. This makes the work progress or value creation transparent (Anderson, 2011).

2nd practice: Limit parallel work

Because switching from one partial order to another costs set-up time, parallel work is limited. So-called "Work in Progress" (WiP) limits are introduced for this purpose. This means that a maximum limit is introduced for partial orders that are in progress at the same time. The principle ensures that a continuous flow of work is supported by recognizing and dealing with congestion and overloads. Kanban practitioners like to associate this principle with the phrase "Stop Starting - Start Finishing." (Leopold, 2016).

3rd practice: Control the flow

To control the flow of work, we measure the lead time of individual tasks. The lead time is the time it takes for a task to go from order to delivery. Kanban practitioners measure two types of lead time:

1. The (system or customer) lead time measures the time taken to complete a customer's request once the commitment point has been exceeded. The clock is therefore started as soon as the request is accepted - not as soon as it is submitted. This often includes a lead time for the actual processing.
2. The cycle time only measures the time required to complete an order. The clock is started as soon as the card is processed and stops when the request is delivered to the customer (Anderson, 2011).

The aim is to continuously reduce the customer lead time. By visualizing the work, bottlenecks become visible. By eliminating the bottlenecks, the flow is controlled.

4th practice: Make rules explicit

Making rules and workflows explicit creates a basis for discussing and improving these processes and rules. This includes, for example, the definition of "Done" and the definition of work steps and columns on the Kanban wall (Leopold, 2016).

5th practice: Optimize the system

Another core element of Kanban is continuous improvement. Teams use targeted feedback mechanisms and improvement meetings (such as a retrospective or a kaizen) to ensure a continuous improvement process. This practice originally comes from lean management (Womack & Jones, 1997). Results, working methods and organizational structures are constantly reviewed and adapted. This way of thinking leads to continuous improvement in small steps.

6th practice: Improve together, develop experimentally

Improvements in Kanban are achieved jointly and changes are driven forward experimentally. This means that an improvement idea starts as an experiment. This experimentation is based on the PDCA cycle (Plan, Do, Check, Act). The purpose of the change is defined in advance. Then a period of time is set in which it is tested. Criteria are developed to determine whether it fulfills this purpose. The idea is then implemented and evaluated together after the test period. This cycle ensures that only those changes that prove to be useful are implemented. It can be useful to use modelsand scientific methods to confirm or invalidate the application of the models in context (Anderson, 2011).

How to start?

In addition to the six practices, Kanban has no roles, artifacts or events that are introduced disruptively. It is therefore light-footed and easy to establish based on the current approach and environment. In this context, Kanban emphasizes the following four principles in particular (Anderson, 2011):

• Start where you are at the moment.
• For the moment, respect existing processes as well as existing roles, responsibilities and job titles.
• Agree with others to strive for incremental and evolutionary improvements.
• Promote leadership at all levels.

Once you have understood these principles and practices, you have everything you need to set up and start a Kanban system. My tip: As part of the regular improvement meetings, always take a look at the practices and principles and ask critically: are we living them? If these practices are successfully integrated into daily work, Kanban is much more than just visualizing work and helps teams to process their orders together efficiently and effectively.

To introduce Kanban effectively, it is also worth following the 'Systems Thinking Approach to Implementing Kanban' (STATIK).

Sources:

Anderson, D. J. (2011). Kanban: Evolutionary change management for IT organizations. Dpunkt.

Leopold, K. (2016). Kanban in practice: From team focus to value creation. Carl Hanser Verlag GmbH Co KG.

Womack, J. P., & Jones, D. T. (1997). Lean thinking-banish waste and create wealth in your corporation. Journal of the Operational Research Society, 48(11), 1148-1148.