Kanban Board

What is it for :

1. Visualize Work
2. Pull Work
3. Remove bottlenecks
4. Aim at predictable, short lead times
5. Reduce WIP and cycle times
6. Ensure a steady flow of value

Guiding principles :

1. Begin with what you have/do now
2. Recognize current processes, roles, and responsibilities
3. Aim for incremental and evolutionary improvements
4. Empower team member and encourage leadership at all levels

The following can be achieved :

• The Theory of Contraints
• Muda/Waste Analysis
• Visual Workspace
• Value Stream Analysis
• Pull based system

Frequency of release has a tradeoff with release costs.

It is attractive for organizations to have a faster time to market.

Quicker to market means better organization efficiency, imrpoved profitability and increased customer satisfaction.

Kanban Process :

1. Visualize and map work - our brain understands images 60% better than words
2. Limit WIP
3. Manage Flow
4. Make policies explicit
5. Work for continuous improvement

Information captured for eahc work step :

1. Stages and details of steps and tasks entering and eaving the board
2. Date and time for each task
3. Type of task
4. Potential issues
5. Deadlines and policy constraints
6. Who's responsible/who's working

Limiting WIP :

$$L=\lambda \ast W$$

where, L = average number of items in the queueing system
W = average waiting time in the system
$\lambda$ = average number of items arriving per unit time

$$LeadTime=WIP/AverageCompletiontime$$

Key points for limiting WIP :

1. Stop accepting new work completely if possible, as it increases lead time and customer expectation
2. Stop starting and start finishing
3. Limit WIP may result in improvement opportunities
4. Acting on opportunities yields better flow
5. What is the right WIP limit - there are no fixd rules

Triaging :

$$HighSeverity+HighCriticality=HighPriority$$

Algorithm for determining task to be taken is Weighted Shortest Job First.

Identifying bottlenecks are important for improving flow.

Leaning, Standardizing, Fool Proofing, Flexible Resourcing are required for alleviating bottlenecks.

How to make process policies visible?

1. Provide written descriptions
2. Set and display WIP limits
3. User predefined task cards
4. Build workflow and relationship policies into the board layout
5. Use templates to standardize moevment and flow policies

No examples for this is known.

Collaborative Improvement and Evolution :

1. Evolutionary Changes
   • Continuous
   • Incremental
2. Lean Continuous Improvement tools
   • Kaizen
   • Kaizen Blitz
3. Feedback Mechanism
   • Lessons Learned
   • Project documentation

Improving long-term capability :

1. Focus on improvement areas in Kanban teams
2. Improve Cycle Time
3. increase Feedback frequency
4. Focus on Long-term quality
5. Improve team and process maturity

Technical Debt:

Technical Debt acumulates when a quick and dirty job is done due to short delivery times.

Technical debt has to be minimized to get as close to a perfect software as possible.

Think of the lifetime economic value. Be willing to make a trade-off.

Kanban Lens :

1. Service Orientation
2. Service Delivery and Workflow
3. Workflows and knowledge discovery activities

Teams should give metrics, which should give measurements, and communicate what may be going right or wrong.

Team culture should have :

1. Should have Collaborative Culture
2. No Control culture
3. Should focus on Competence culture
4. Should have Cultivation culture