Kanban in Project Management

Revision as of 13:55, 8 September 2016

Kanban 看板 translates directly to signboard from Japanese. The Kanban system was originally a inventory-control system developed by Taiichi Ohno, an industrial engineer at Toyota to reduce the waste (muda) in the production line and to improve the manufacturing efficiency.

The Kanban system is with some alterations applied as an agile project management tool. The basis of the Kansan system is to have a board with cards attached. Different parts of the board represent several stages of the development that all tasks go through. The cards represent the different tasks in the project, and move from left to right on the board. The board can be set-up and divided however the user like, nonetheless the main concept is always the same and can be summarized by these six points:

1. Limit WIP (work in process): The board is divided in parts, and each part can only have a set number of tasks, thus this don't need to be the same for every part. This is true for all parts except the “start” and “finished” part, which is always unlimited
2. Cards : Each task is represented by a card (post-it note or similar)
3. Flow: The tasks on the board are moved from left to right between the different parts. The person performing the task is moving the post-it
4. Team: The team working with the tasks agree on some rules for when a task can be set as finished.
5. Kaizen (constant improvement)

   • The team working with the Kanban board have to get together on a regular basis to analyze the flow. Focusing on tasks that are stuck on the board
   • There is no Kanban police - and if you need to alter your board or break your rules that's ok, but let the rest of your team know.

History

Kanban is now a popular system used by teams practicing agile project work. Until now the framework is mostly used by software development teams. Kanban is considered a prominent and relatively new framework, as it was first introduced (to this use) by Microsoft in the early 2000’s. Nonetheless the Kanban methodology date back more than 50 years.

Kanban was first implemented in the Toyota factory in 1953 by Taiichi Ohno, an industrial engineer and the father of Kanban. The system was inspired by the grocery store model. The concept was that grocery stores was stocking just enough product to meet customers demand. This practice causes the inventory levels to match the customer pattern and therefore be at a minimum without affecting the customer. Thus the store gains efficiency in inventory management by decreasing the amount of excess stock.

Taiichi Ohno’s vision, when implementing Kanban an alternated grocery store model, to Toyota was to align their massive inventory with the actual consumption of materials. To communicate capacity levels at the different workstation on the factory floor in real-time workers would pass a card with this information between workstations. When the bach of materials used at one point in the production line was emptied, a card with this information was sent to the warehouse. Here it would be a new bach ready to be transported to the production line. After this the card would be sent to the supplier, where a new delivery for the warehouse was waiting to be shipped. This could be carried on in as many stages as desired. The Kanban framework for production lines is still very much used today, though it have been developed in tact with the the technology to a faster and more agile version of the same system.

When Microsoft introduced Kanban as a project management tool in the early 2000’s. The workstations was replaced by parts of a Kanban board and the cards was replaced with post-it’s. Other than that, the concept, value and advantages stayed the same.

Kanban Step-By-Step

The Board

The Kanban boards for project management most often consists of three main parts “To Do”, “Doing” and “Done”. Each of these is divided in sub sections. There are many reasons for doing this, the main one being to visualize when the task is ready to go to the next main part.

To Do

Backlog: In this section tasks that are in your ‘’backlog’’ is placed. This part of the board have no upper limit. The number of tasks here is most often limited by your lack of knowledge of the future, as you don't know all the “To Do” tasks yet. To indicate which of the tasks that is most urgent in the backlog they are sorted on the board. This can be done by either the group leader, or in the group meetings.

Breakdown: The Breakdown part is managed by concerning the task size. This can be that all task must be limited to take approximately two working days. If the task initially is longer/larger than this, it is divided into several smaller tasks before moving on to this part of your board. The tasks are broken down like this to enhance the flow of tasks in the project. If the task are too big it is a higher chance it get stuck at one part of the board, and it can be difficult to diagnose why. When the tasks are placed here, thay are ready for the next main part “Doing”.

Doing

The tasks that are undergoing some kind of work is located in this part. This part of the board is almost always divided into several smaller parts as it is where the most complex and challenging activities take place. An example of this can be Plan, Develop, Test and Deploy. In each of the subsections of this part of the kanban board it should be a limitation as to how many tasks can be at one part. This is to limit the WIP, and secure a agile project work. In some cases tasks are stuck in the sections of the doing part due to interdependencies of outer tasks or people, and there is noe work to be done on these task atm. In this case you can mark the activity as ‘’stuck’’ and the activity does not count in your WIP limit.

Plan: In this section the work is planned, this can be allocation of resources or finding a possible solutions.

Develop: Here is where the task go from an ide to a product. This section is also often divided to the sub sections In Process and Done. The reason for having a Done part, is to make it visual when the tasks is ready to be transferred to the next stage, testing.

Testing: After the development the product is tested or checked, before being marked as finished. This is often done by a different person then the developer. This stage often have some rules set by the team to secure the quality of the end product. When the testing is over

Done

When the task arrives at the ‘’done’’ area of your kanban board. It means that your team is done with this task. The done are of course do not have any task limit, but it can be a good idea to set some goals and milestones related to this part of the board.

The Cards

The cards include critical information about the particular work item. This includes a short description of the job, the time estimation for the job, and so on. In the virtual kanban cards it is possible to add more information, as pictures, technically detailed information and other documents that may be valuable.

The kanban cards can have three stages ‘’pending’’, ‘’undergoing work’’ or ‘’finished’’. When a team member is finished with his or her work they go to the board and mark their work item as finished. If there is room for the item in the next part of the board, it is moved there, the status is now ‘’pending’’. Now the team member can choose a new work task matching their capability and with the highest prioritisation on the board, this should now be marked as ‘’undergoing wok’’.

Kanban in Software Teams

Kanban vs. Scrum

Benefits

Limitations