How can you tell if Kanban is right for your project?

In my experience, Kanban is effective when there is a need, intended or not, for greater flexibility. For example, if priorities are being constantly reshuffled or surfaced last minute, trying to run sprints or use other timeboxed approaches is highly disruptive and unfair for both developers and others relying on items to be completed within the period. It can also lead to leaving more buffer in the sprint for changes, and inflating estimates over time, essentially rendering the reasons for using Scrum in the first place moot (and pretty much transitioning to Kanban unofficially). Explicitly using Kanban can help to center expectations for both tech and business teams around current work in progress and a single pipeline of priorities.

In the field of agile practices, Kanban rocks when things are always changing. Imagine last-minute priorities constantly juggling. It’s not always so easy using strict timeboxed methods like sprints. It can mess up workflows and make estimates go haywire. Teams often slide into Kanban mode without even realizing it. Because it’s always staying flexible and focusing on what’s happening right now. But hey, let’s not ignore the flip side. Kanban’s lack of clear boundaries can lead to work piling up. While Kanban is tempting, think it through before making the leap. To me, the thing is finding the right fit!

What I love about Kanban is the laser-focus it enables. Sometimes, when a product team works on a project that just needs to happen - and it's more important to spend time making it happen rather than thoroughly planning, estimating, and creating all that overhead of running a program - this focus and all-hands-on-deck approach is magic. Naturally most projects do require planning, scheduling, and some timeline - so those mechanisms are important. But when you just need the team to build it - and nothing else matters - Kanban makes it very simple to prioritize, no-BS, with transparent communication and daily syncs, and get the team together to work on what's been deemed as the most important deliverable for the business. It's so much fun!

Ainda n?o conheci um projeto sequer que n?o se beneficiaria dos princípios, valores e práticas abordados no Método Kanban. Afinal, este nome é apenas uma identifica??o para práticas modernas de gest?o para o trabalho do conhecimento.

The colocation is the key of success of Kanban board. If you have a colocated team you can use this tool to monitor the running tasks and if you are in an Agile mindset and team you can use it as a sort of guideline during the daily standup meeting. During the meeting everyone can use it to describe the status, the blocker he/she found during their work. Everytime, during the day the project leader, the project manager, the project sponsor can check the status of the current iteration in terms of active, completed and running task in order to have the photo of the running work. It ca be used to compute the current team performance in terms of tasks per iterarion so you can create a sort of prediction about the future iterations.

If implemented poorly, Kanban may cause effort intensive tasks being delayed in favor of completing higher count of smaller tasks

Kanban tends to get messy if not attended or updated on time. One needs to always keep an eye on the new incoming tasks on kanban and update it properly. Once the kanban is left unattended it will create 100s of tasks for you and organising it will become a mess.

Kanban is very simple to understand and apply but its failures are primarily because of incorrect application. Before solving time-to-market or efficiency problem using kanban, answer this questions: What best describes your process activities? a) small repetitive tasks having limited variation of complexity, performed continuously, demanding little competency for effectiveness (e.g. PoS terminal) b) repetitive tasks of variable complexity, demanding considerable competency for effectiveness (e.g. ) Scenario a) is suitable for kanban (flow) and b) is for Scrum (time box). What if you have mix of both a & b? Simply use mix of both Kanban and Scrum! But before doing that ensure you redesign the process in clear parts allowing you to do so.

Kanban is structured like a traffic signal, to manage the flow of traffic to meet customer needs by signaling when to start, stop or slow down production. Any variability or unpredictability will affect the functioning of the system, making it send confused, mixed and wrong signals with regard to the optimal production levels.

I should note that embracing Kanban required a bit of a mindset shift. Our team had to get used to making decisions collectively, and it took a while for everyone to feel comfortable with the autonomy it offered.

Visualizing our work has been a game-changer. Seeing tasks move across the board, from 'To Do' to 'Done,' gives a clear picture of where things stand. It helps the team stay on the same page and quickly identify any bottlenecks.It's tempting to juggle multiple tasks, but setting WIP limits has improved focus and quality. We've learned that finishing tasks before picking up new ones leads to a smoother workflow. As for practices, the Kanban board itself has been our visual hub. Watching tasks transition through stages has provided a real sense of accomplishment and keeps us aligned. Breaking down work into manageable items has made each step feel less daunting. It's a lot easier to track progress when tasks are smaller and focused.

Easy to read and operate when it comes to kanban boards. Visualising current work and managing it becomes quite easier for the manager and anyone who is reading it. Helps in continuous improvement, more output, simple tracking.

Kanban is good to visualise your work and optimises workflow. Kanban improves collaboration within teams. It promotes a shared understanding of tasks, responsibilities, and their respective statuses.

Omnipresence Kanban boards that live in the cloud are available to all employees 24x7, no matter where they happen to be. Physical boards are limited by time (office hours) and space (the location).

Kanban is a powerful management method that focuses on optimizing workflow and productivity while maintaining flexibility and transparency. At its core, Kanban relies on a visual system, often a board with cards or digital tools, to represent work items or tasks. Kanban is about visualizing work, limiting work in progress, maintaining a smooth flow, and continuously improving processes. It’s a valuable approach for organizational leaders because it promotes efficiency, adaptability, and a clear understanding of work status, ultimately leading to better results and customer satisfaction.

Particularmente, acredito que n?o fa?a sentido se perguntar se o Kanban é ou n?o para o seu projeto ou até se ele alinha com os valores e princípios do Kanban. Kanban é um método para melhorar seu fluxo e sua eficiência, n?o um modelo de gest?o de projetos ou produtos. Com isso, eu perguntaria, antes de levar o Kanban: - Quais as restri??es do seu projeto hoje? - Quantas demandas chegam a partir desse projeto? Com que frequência? - Qual a sua capacidade atual para executar o projeto? - Qual o fluxo de trabalho atual e suas políticas? A partir disso, traria as práticas do Kanban para aprimorar aspectos do projeto que possam estar em risco ou causando prejuízo.

When adopting Kanban, consider continuous deployment. It is not mandatory, but one of the main ideas behind Kanban is to reduce waste, minimize the time to market, good DevSecOps processes are crucial in allowing development teams to deploy increments in a secure and timely manner to production. Also evaluate your cycle time metrics. Again, not mandatory, but if it’s not measured, consider if it makes sense to go for Kanban. If there are no tools or processes to understand how long to go from idea to production and every major milestone in between, there’s no data-driven way to suggest improvements to the process, ever.

In agile methodology, we always say before considering it just ask why? if they can explain it , we can do it. Questions to ask before adopting kanban should be: 1. Why do we need it ? 2. Can't we have normal scrum board for it? 3. Whats' the commitment point? 4. Is it related to any big delivery or just small tasks ?

We decided to go to Kanban in our squad, it was because we had a shift from feature work to defect/technical debt form of work. We, as a squad, discussed the best way forward and decided that until the feature work reappeared we would work in Kanban. The PO keeps the backlog at a good size and in priority, we hold refinement three times a week and refine about 5-10 issues to keep it having issues that can be pulled and we hold retrospectives every 2-3 weeks to make sure it is all holding together. It gives the squad a good sense of responsiveness to the business as the defects are being handled and the tech debt reduced, as well as it makes for a better/stronger squad in that the issues are from all parts of the software.

In the ever-evolving landscape of project management methodologies, Kanban shines as a versatile and efficient approach. However, prescribing Kanban warrants a meticulous evaluation of several key factors: Examine the existing workflow, identifying bottlenecks and understanding its continuity. As Kanban adapts differently to demand patterns, Evaluate whether visualizing work would enhance understanding and collaboration. Determine if Kanban’s customer-centric approach aligns with organizational goals. Gauge the team’s readiness for a culture of continuous improvement and change, Assess resource limitations and their impact on Kanban, Determine if team members have the necessary skills or require training.

What is not mentioned in this article is that most delivery teams looking to adopt an Agile approach at a team level are looking at Kanban or Scrum. It's important to understand the differences between a flow-based (Kanban) or timebox-based approach (Scrum) and the reasons for choosing each approach.

Although Kanban provides enhanced transparency into project tasks, it can become quite confusing when dealing with a large number of tasks spread across multiple projects, especially if the delivery timeline is based on tasks rather than projects. For instance, imagine you have two main features as separate projects for a product: a security enhancement and a UI improvement, and there are tasks related to each uplift. Both features (Epics) should be developed simultaneously; therefore, you would need to manage the delivery using a timebox approach for each ticket associated with these two main features, instead of focusing on one epic for delivery.

Its Important to understand the difference between a scrum and kanban boards. Though they look the same the purpose of both are different.

The general question is, in my opinion, wrong. It's probably because no one checked after AI generated the article idea. I would consider Kanban in the context of a process instead of a project. You can use the Kanban method to optimize processes in your project, but It is not a PM tool.

From my experience, when diving into Kanban, remember that a united team is key. We need to grasp the balance between task sizes – not too big or too small. Lead times can differ, so flexibility is crucial. If we depend on others, like external teams, foresight and communication help. And stakeholders need updates for transparency.