The biggest misunderstanding about Kanban

Kanban is not a board being viewed. This is one of the biggest misunderstandings of Kanban beginners. "Kanban" is the literal translation of the Japanese "Kanban" -- a term used by Toyota. "Kanban" comes from the operating model of supermarkets. When the customer pays for the merchandise in the supermarket, the meter will register the type and quantity of the goods purchased by the customer automatically and send the cards with the details of the variety and quantity of the merchandise to the purchasing department for their convenience to replenish merchandise quickly.

Source: Freepik

Taiichi Ohno, the inventor of the Toyota Production System (the prototype of the lean production system), got inspiration from the operation mechanism of American supermarkets in the 1950s, and applied this model to the production site, combining with JIT (Just In Time) to form the famous Toyota Production System (TPS—Toyota Production). That is, with this TPS, Toyota has completed the transition from "No. 1 in Japan" to "No. 1 in the world". Afterward, It evolved into Toyota's famous "kanban system." The generation of Kanban was originally designed to achieve just-in-time production (JIT). Inventory is considered in JIT as a cost and waste rather than adding or storing value. This is different from traditional accounting. It encourages companies to gradually eliminate inventory for the convenience of reducing the costs in the production process, and adapt to the state of "zero inventory" gradually in management.

After more than 60 years of development and improvement, most of the Kanban management discussed today refers to the management method developed by David J. Anderson, the father of Kanban. It not only inherits the essence of the Toyota system,  but also adds many Kanban practices that are beneficial for modern teams and enterprise management. However, It should be noted that Kanban is not a traditional software development lifecycle method or project management method. It needs to be practiced on the basis of the basic process in order to gradually improve the process by applying Kanban.

One last time, Kanban is not a board being viewed, nor the same thing as Kanban in Scrum. Kanban has its own way of working, principles, practices, and tools, such as pulling, limiting WIP, value stream maps, cumulative flow maps, etc.

Kanban's ancestor -- Toyota Production System

The Kanban management method comes from TPS (Toyota Production System), so let's take a look at the "Toyota House" in TPS.

Source:  HardenX Business Agility

Base:

Balanced production: There are three phenomena in lean thinking, as shown in the 3M model below, namely Muda, Mura and Muri.

• Muda: Waste
• Mura: Imbalance
• Muri: Overload

Waste is the first thing to be eliminated in lean thought. Overload is easy to understand as well. In the case of overload, the first thing that cannot be guaranteed is the quality, and then the unsustainable working state of the employees. As for Imbalance, it can lead to poor flow. For example, for the 6 requirements that need to be developed, 4 are delivered in the first week and 2 are delivered in the second week. As a result, the requirements will accumulate in the deployment environment and cannot be released smoothly. Whether it is the original production line or the current software development, what we pursue is a stable rhythm that allows value to flow like water, so the balanced production is one of the bases of Toyota House. 

Source:  HardenX Business Agility

Continuous improvement (Kaizen): Taiichi Ohno said: "Toyotaer achieve breakthrough innovation through continuous discovery of problems, elimination of manufacturing failures, and continuous improvement."

For Agile now, whether it is Scrum or Kanban, or any other framework or method, continuous improvement is the most important foundation, and it is the magic weapon for us to avoid Fake-Agile or Disposable-Agile.

Standardized Work: Standardization is for continuous improvement. Continuous improvement cannot go further without standardization, and standardization is nameless without continuous improvement.

Pillars:

These two pillars are important supports for TPS. 

One pillar is "just in time". Only provide the right products to the right place as customers needed. There are 5 "R" principles: Right Time, Right Place, Right Product, Right Quality, Right Quantity. 

Another pillar is "Automation". Automation is a concept released by Sakichi Toyota, which includes the following two contents: Freeing human from the work of looking after machines so that human can do more valuable work; Giving the machine the wisdom of human and making the machine truly a tool for serving people. When an abnormality occurs, it will automatically stop and never produce defective products. Now the failure of CI build is a similar idea.

Roof:

The roof is the direction of effort, that is, where the value lies. Highest quality, lowest cost, shortest cycle time.

Kanban boards in knowledge fields: Visual management and pull-based work

Why do humans need cars? Because there is a requirement to reach the destination quickly. For the same reason, Why does the work in knowledge fields require visualization? Because the work in the knowledge field is not visible like the raw materials and components in the factory, the work in the knowledge field is invisible. But we have the requirement for understanding the current state of the work, sharing the project progress, discovering the risks and obstacles, etc. That's why we need visualization.

Visualization is an essential means in Agile, not just Kanban, any Agile method should visualize the work at the beginning of the implementation in order to correctly see the current requirements management, personnel assignment, project progress, risks and obstacles, and then we can continue to improve. Management transparency can be achieved only with visualization. What is special about Kanban is the pull-based work method based on visualization instead of the push method. Like Toyota's signal card, work items can only be pulled from the "front" when there is free space in the later stages. 

Source:  HardenX Business Agility

The benefits of a Kanban pull system are as follows:

• Eliminate waste in the form of excess inventory, storage costs and overhandling
• Reduce cycle time
• Respond quickly to the changing of the customer requirement
• Build predictability of completion
• Improve productivity by focusing on work

The Four Core Principles of Kanban

David J. Anderson (a pioneer in the field of Lean/Kanban knowledge) summarizes Kanban as a method for organizing incremental, incremental process and system change as knowledge work. This method focuses on getting things done, and its foundations can be broken down into four basic principles and six practices.

• Principle 1: Start with the current working way.

The flexibility of Kanban allows it to be practiced based on existing workflows, systems and ways of working, without destroying the parts that are doing very well now. Naturally, it will highlight the issues that need to be addressed, and help assess and plan the changes needed, so that they don't disrupt existing work as much as possible.

The comprehensive nature of Kanban also allows you to gradually introduce it to all types of organizations without worrying about overcommitment or culture shock, or requiring you to make massive changes from the start.

• Principle 2: Implement incremental change

The Kanban method is designed to satisfy the "minimal objection". It encourages continuous, small, incremental changes to existing processes. Generally speaking, massive changes are discouraged, because such changes are often met with opposition due to concerns about uncertainty.

• Principle 3: Respect Existing Processes, Roles, and Responsibilities

The Kanban method recognizes that existing processes, roles, responsibilities, and titles have their own value and are generally worth preserving. The Kanban method doesn't prohibit change, but it doesn't need to be considered a "silver bullet" either. It's just designed to facilitate and encourage incremental, logical change without worrying about the change itself. Kanban differs a lot from Scrum. Scrum has well-defined and unique roles, artifacts, etc. Implementing Scrum requires changing a lot of existing things, but Kanban is not like that.

• Principle 4: Encouraging Action at All Levels of Leadership

This is the latest Kanban principle. It reminds us that leadership comes from the actions of teams on the front line every day. Everyone has to develop a Kaizen mindset so that we can achieve optimal efficiency at the team/department/company level.

Six Practices of Kanban

Every organization has to pay attention to the actual implementation steps when we want to implement the Kanban method. David Anderson summarizes 6 core practices that are essential to implement Kanban successfully. 

Source:  HardenX Business Agility

• Practice1: Visual process 

Source:  HardenX Business Agility

It requires a board with cards and is divided into many columns in order to visualize the flow of a Kanban system. Each column in the board represents a step in the workflow. Each Kanban card represents a work item.

The first and most important thing for anyone implementing Kanban is to understand what needs to do to get from a request to a deliverable. Only after understanding how the current workflow works can it be improved with necessary adjustments.

Drag it into the "To do" column when you plan to start a work item X, and then move it to the "Done" column when you finish it. It is easy to track the progress and identify bottlenecks in this way.

• Practice 2: Limiting Work in Process (WIP)

One of the primary functions of Kanban is to ensure that the work items active at any time are controllable. You are not using the Kanban method if there is no WIP limit. Usually, it's harmful to the process if switch team attention along the way. What's more, the method of multi-tasks will lead to waste and it is inefficient.

Limiting WIP means implementing a pull system in some or even all of the workflow. Putting a maximum limit on each stage ensures that work will only be pulled past when the next stage is capable. Such constraints can reveal problem areas in the workflow very quickly so you can identify and fix them.

• Practice 3: Manage Workflow

Managing workflow emphasizes focusing on managing workflow rather than overloading people. In terms of workflow, what we call a flow is the movement of work items during production.

One of the main purposes of implementing a Kanban system is to create a balanced, healthy workflow. Instead of micromanaging staff and keeping them busy, we should focus on managing the work process and need to understand how to work faster with the system. This means Kanban is creating value at a faster speed.

• Practice 4: Explicit process specification

You can't improve it if you don't understand something. That's why our processes are clearly defined, published and contracted. Employees won't agree and get involved in something not helpful. When everyone is familiar with common goals, they are able to work smoothly and make decisions based on changes that will have a positive impact.

• Practice 5: Create a feedback loop

Building feedback loops will be an essential step for teams and companies that want to become more agile. This ensures that the organization is sufficiently responsive to possible changes and enables knowledge transfer among members. The simplest practice of a feedback loop is a daily standup for team synchronization. The daily standup is held before the Kanban board (physical or electronic) and each member tells the others what he did yesterday and what he will do today. 

Source:  HardenX Business Agility

In addition, there are various review activities in the feedback loop. The frequency of feedback is determined by many factors, but the basic idea is that these meetings should be regular, start at strictly fixed times, and be as short as possible. The ideal time of standup is 10-15 minutes, other meetings may be one hour or more, depending on the size of the team and the topic of the meeting.

• Practice 6: Improve collaboration through models and scientific methods

Sharing a vision for a better future and having the same understanding of the problem to be solved is the only way for an organization to achieve continuous improvement and sustainable evolution. A team that has a consistent understanding of their goals, workflows, processes, and risks is more likely to gain the same understanding of the problem and work together for improvement.

ZenTao is fully supporting the three project management models: Scrum, Waterfall, and Kanban. Users have more flexible choices with the more completed features of ZenTao. 

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