Agile teamwork

Kanban: more focus on service, less waste

Kanban brings work into flow, focuses on service orientation and leads to less waste – from the first idea to its final implementation. Kanban makes bottlenecks visible, reduces waiting and lead times. This method is used at all levels of the company to get work done effectively and efficiently.

Start now with Kanban

Call Julia Stiegelmayer.

"Kanban is much more than the typical Kanban boards with cards. Let me show you what else the framework can do."

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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.
Limit work in progress (WIP.
Manage flow
Make policies explicit
Implement feedback loops.
Improve collaboratively, evolve 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 starting in the late 1940s. At that time, the inventor of the Kanban system, Toyota's former production manager Taichii Ohno, shaped the future of one of the most transparent and helpful tools of today's production and project management. He invented both the Toyota Production System and 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.
You 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.

Few rules, versatile usable

Since Kanban has only a few rules, it is useful and applicable in many work situations. Typical applications are:

Organizing similar workflows in a team, e.g. in a call center or in IT support
Organizing development flows
Organizing your portfolio
Organizing your own work ("Personal Kanban")

How can you start?

Getting started with Kanban is quite simple and builds on three basic principles:

Start with what you do now.
Understand current processes, as they are actually practiced.
Respect existing roles, responsibilities, and job titles.

The best way to start is with our Kanban Basics Workshop - oriented to your individual needs - and get all team members on board. Part of this workshop is a simulation that makes the principle tangible and ensures aha effects for all participants. Afterwards, we set up a prototypical Kanban board for your work as it works at the current time. How this works, you will learn our blog article "Kanban Set Up Guide". Get started and improve your system step by step! We will be happy to accompany you.

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