Kanban or kanban? Chocolates are decisive!

       One of my friend and colleague returned back from USA after a month long official visit. While we were going through the road-map of upcoming projects he had with him and the planning to apply suitable agile practices in these future projects, he cracked a joke on my previous posts on scrum saying, ‘Hey… in all your posts you do promise for at least one topic to be explored in future. This reminds me of television soaps which are generally left incomplete at such a point for the next episode that it becomes necessary to wait till next one.’ He also pointed my out for mentioning kanban as Kanban at places and for my promise of posting something about kanban.

Though I have yet not finished the initial planned posts on scrum but as my friend got me chocolates from USA, I am bound to start some ground up for kanban.

Kanban or kanban?

You must be thinking what sort of question is this? But he was correct* as the practice is called kanban.

* Moreover a few chocolates are still in my pocket so how can I argue on this. Readers, who have not got the chocolates, may follow any of these- kanban or Kanban.

Kanban is made of two Japanese words kan and ban. Kan means visual, and ban means card. kanban approach is based on the principles of Lean. The concept of Kanban came from Toyota, where it was invented as a scheduling system for just-in-time manufacturing in the Toyota Production System.

The most common problems faced during development:

• Wrong estimates
• Inability of delivering tasks on the committed date.
• Unclear priorities.
• Improper distribution of tasks.
• Tasks bombarded from everywhere.

Kanban the savior: Kanban is a very young yet popular methodology based on three principles:

• Visualize
• Limit work in process
• Manage flow

Visualize: First principle of kanban is to make information visible. This can be achieved using electronic kanban board or simply by creating sticky notes representing each task with it’s most current status on a board. The visualization of work-flow on the board becomes apparent to everyone in the team. At times there are a few tasks exists which are often not visible clearly but consumes a lot of time of the team.  Such tasks can easily be captured on the visual board so all team mates including the management also get aware of these tasks and hence can be planned in a better way.

Limit work in process: The second principle of kanban is to limit the WIP. In this principle we  establish a limit for items we will work on at one time. The benefit of taking up a fewer items being worked is that each item will be done more swiftly. Team will focus on the work which is

Manage flow: To manage the flow up-to finish of the task is the third principal of kanban.

This principle indicates to manage flow in a quick and uninterrupted way and keep the work-flow continuously improving.

Kanban methodology started with three principles however recently, David J. Anderson and a few fellows have extended the three basic principles to five properties and six practices. These are known as ‘Core practices’.

As the last chocolate I had, has been finished hence I am taking a short break now. We will continue with kanban in next few posts but before that I have to provide a quick and complete flow of Scrum which is still in pipeline. Most probable this weekend we will see that flow.

Any question on kanban? Please do not hesitate to ask. I will be replying as soon as possible.