Agile Workflows with Kanban
Kanban, as the title suggests, is an Agile project management system. I have been a student of Project Workflows and Project Management methodologies for many years. I think it is fascinating to see how projects, large and small get broken down into their component parts and are accomplished.
The tools of kanban can be used to track projects from the highly complex to the household task list, and with teams of 1 to teams of many distributed around the globe. The key features of kanban, that distinguish it from other systems, are its’ continuous and visual natures. The word kanban comes from the Japanese word for a visual signal. Kanban is a way to visualize work, limit work-in-progress(WIP), and maximize efficiencies, or Flow.
Project tasks can flow continuously. As additional tasks and features(User Stories) become needed at one end of the process, the Backlog, other tasks are flowing through and are completed at the other end. The key tool of kanban is the kanban board.
Kanban boards are not overly complicated. They can be adapted to the type of projects being done and generally consist of a series of columns depicting the workflow from left to right and the priority from top to bottom. Although several software systems have been developed to mimic the kanban board and its workflow across distributed teams, most consist of a whiteboard and sticky notes.
A typical software development board might consist of 5 columns: Backlog, Breakdown, Development, Testing, Integration. The Backlog column starts with the User Stories. These stories get normalized in the Breakdown column to a series of tasks which all take approximately the same amount of time to accomplish based on estimates. Here the tasks are moved into Development and assigned to an individual or small group. As these features are completed in development, they might move on to Testing by the testing team. The developers pick up another task from the Breakdown column. If bugs or deficiencies are found, that feature may move back onto the Backlog, at the required priority. Successfully tested features move on to the Integration process. Each of these main columns can be further divided into Active and Done. A task may be completed in one column but is not able to be picked up by the next column until there is room.
One very important concept in the kanban process is the limiting of WIP or Work-In-Progress. This may seem counterintuitive, but is based on the amount of physical resources and how much can be accomplished in a given time period. A column with too many sticky notes may mean that not enough items are moving through to the next column in a timely manner. Physically limiting how many stickie notes that can fit in a column can provide a visual cue when a bottleneck might be occurring.
Or… it could just be a corkboard on the kitchen wall with To Do, Doing, Done!
https://kanbanize.com/kanban-resources/getting-started/what-is-kanban
