Kanban: more focus on service, less waste

How does Kanban work?

When you hear Kanban, the first thing you might have in mind are the typical Kanban boards with cards. These boards are used to visualize the flow of work. But this is only the first of six practices of the Kanban framework:

• Visualize the workflow.
  

• Limit parallel work (WIP - work in progress).

• Manage the flow of work.

• Make process rules explicit.

• Implement feedback loops.

• Improve together, develop experimentally.
  
  

Besides these practices, the Kanban method knows other elements:

• three service delivery principles

• three change management principles
  

Where does Kanban come from?

Based on a pull system, Kanban originated in Japan at the end of the 1940s. years in Japan. The inventor of the Kanban system, Toyota's former production manager Taichii Ohno, shaped the future of one of the most transparent of one of the most transparent and helpful tools in today's production and project management. He invented both the Toyota Production System as well as the Japanese management concept Kaizen.

Kanban for modern knowledge work was coined by David J. Anderson. It is derived from the insights of many years of practical experience, originally published in the book "Kanban: Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Business".

One advantage: results are finished faster.

Using Kanban has numerous advantages.

• Through visualization and the pull principle, teams become more flexible and can organize their work independently. Their work progress becomes transparent and thus visible to others.

• Another benefit: You work at a sustainable pace because you can predict how much time a task will actually take.

• They improve quality through firmly established feedback loops and avoid waste through the pull mechanism.

• You focus by limiting parallel work (WIP limit) - and results get done faster.

• The best thing about it: Kanban improves communication and teamwork. The best prerequisite for good cooperation, which leads to faster results and is fun for everyone.