Pink Elephant Blog
Lean Thinking: The Power of Kanban & Team Management
They say, “a picture is worth a thousand words” and when it comes to an effective, efficient workflow, visual aids like those offered through visual management (VM) techniques, speak (and illustrate) volumes.
VM tools were developed to make the control and management of an organization as simple as possible, providing a much-needed ability to see work through visual tools rather than text-based ones.
As organizations strive to improve the speed, flow, and collaboration of their teams, they are turning to traditional Lean VM tools like kanban to support planning and execution of work.
What Is Kanban?
Originally developed by Toyota in Japan, kanban is a system for scheduling work using a physical board and notes to show work in progress. Kanban is one of the most widely adopted Lean tools. Its use can enable IT teams to improve visibility into both planned and unplanned work, prioritize work, identify bottlenecks, and quickly react to changing priorities.
Kanban boards can be used for a variety of purposes. One major use of a kanban is to provide visual cues to tell you what to produce, how much to produce, and when to produce it and givesan overall view of progress and process, from start to finish. Or, within IT departments, a kanban board’s notes can also show changes and projects that enable development teams to break down and discuss deliveries and possible throughput which allows for more control and prioritization.
Putting Kanban into Practice
By visualizing what activities are necessary – and in what order they occur – in the workflow, kanban helps teams hone their focus on what tasks need to be finished before starting new ones. When everyone on the team can see everything that is taking place, they can work together to agree on what’s important and then make decisions to move something ahead or drop an item in priority.
When workflow is visualized and work in progress is limited, any interruption in flow can be identified, targeted, and resolved before a backlog forms or grows too large. This is important because backlogs tie up investments, create prioritization conflicts, and increase the distance to delivering customer value. Kanban allows an organization to determine how work is pulled through the process as capacity permits, rather than pushing work into the process when requested. Since service-oriented IT teams can say “yes” too often, the result tends to be that more work is started than finished. Kanban helps to manage these problems.
Kanban also allows managers to set timeframe for progress. This is particularly important when a project lasts a year or two. By being able to visualize a few weeks ahead, a team’s motivation to meet deadlines is greatly improved because using kanban involves breaking down a project into manageable parts so IT operations can visualize tasks as well as discuss resources and deliverables. This will increase the speed of delivery while reducing stress on the team.
A helpful tip to get you started…
Our video, above, suggests that when you use kanban, consider creating two boards to manage your meetings – a weekly board and daily board. Coordinate meetings to support the management of the daily and weekly priorities – daily meetings at the start of each day and a weekly meeting to wrap up the week and prioritize for the following week. A daily meeting among the team ensures everyone is on the same page, it allows management to provide necessary information, and team members can talk and solve problems together without having to schedule a formal meeting.
Learn More about Lean, Visual Management, and Kanban
Pink offers several Lean courses where you can learn to put VM tools like kanban into practice, including:
- Lean IT Foundation: Understanding Lean IT Principles & Objectives
- Lean IT Kaizen: Implementing Lean IT Practices
- Lean IT Leadership
For more information contact us today.
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