Kanban

Kanban

• Means ‘billboard’ or ‘signboard’ in Japanese
• Inspired by the Toyota Production System (TPS) – a precursor to lean manufacturing inspired by the just-in-time inventory replenishment adopted by supermarkets
• Its use in software development evolved from a 2004 project at Microsoft

Key Features

• Highly visual – use of a Kanban board
  •  This is the single source of truth
  • Can be a physical or virtual board
  • No fixed steps
• Limit Work In Progress (WIP)
  • Reduces waste from context switching and multitasking
  • Promotes collaboration
  •  Exposes operational problems quickly (and tries to improve them)
• Focus on Flow
  • A side effect of limiting Work In Progress is that tickets get pushed through the process more rapidly
  • This encourages the team to get in-flow tickets finished before starting new work
• Evolution not revolution
  • Small changes, pushed through quickly
  • Fast cycle times
• Continuous Improvement
  • Constantly evalutate what works and what doesn’t to improve the process

Differences With Scrum

• Scrum has regular fixed length sprints (typically 2 or 3 weeks). Each Sprint starts with a sprint planning meeting, where stories from the backlog are chosen for the sprint, and a retrospective at the end of the sprint. Kanban flow is continuous.
• Scrum typically releases at the end of the sprint. Kanban can be released at any point.
• Scrum has defined roles – Product Owner, Scrum Master, etc. Kanban has no predefined roles.
• Scrum uses the Velocity metric (how many story points can be delivered in a Sprint). Kanban used Cycle Time (how quickly it takes a task to be delivered, from when work begins to when it is delivered)

Useful Links

• Using Atlassian JIRA for Kanban