How can you improve your Kanban experience?

Agile isn't a mere methodology, but a set of principles aimed at continuous improvement. Often, Kanban is seen negatively as teams focus on what they don't want rather than what they can gain. To optimize Kanban, consider its unique value to different roles: Test Managers can better monitor work quality, Business Analysts can spot bottlenecks, and Project Managers can visualize progress, fostering informed decision-making. To shift Kanban perception, highlight its potential benefits clearly. Remember, the essence of agile and Kanban is 'finding a better way' - it's more than just managing workflow. It's about nurturing a culture of relentless improvement, efficiency, and value delivery.

False. You can use a Kanban board very effectively without ever creating a value stream. While some industries may find this valuable, this is not a hard prerequisite for most scenarios.

Agree with @Brian Pulliam. This is not the first step. In fact this violates the “start where you are” change principle, which is a critical differentiator between kanban and scrum approaches.

Kanban is an effective process. It is helpful when multiple teams work together. By creating multiple swim-lanes, it can accommodate a workflow and show what is coming next. Team can work on to accomplish one swim-lane and be ready for upcoming one. But the limitations is in Kanban is process does not have hard stop on the tools itself. Team has to decide the hard stop date and most of the cases it gets pushed for so many reasons and team lose the focus to stay on the deadline.

When it comes to defining your value stream, I've found that it's crucial to involve all relevant stakeholders. In one project I worked on, we gathered representatives from different departments to collaboratively map out the value stream. This approach helped us gain a holistic understanding of the entire process and allowed us to identify areas for improvement and potential bottlenecks and blockers.

One thing I have found helpful is to keep the stages/columns defined clearly and kept to a minimum. Having too many stages makes it unreadable and also indicates process bloat which reduces efficient delivery and increases time to unblock issues that might arise at any stage.

Visualizing work is not just about creating a Kanban board; it's about fostering transparency and collaboration. In a team I was a part of, we used a physical Kanban board placed in a central location. This simple act encouraged spontaneous conversations and allowed everyone to see the progress of work at a glance. It made communication more efficient and helped us identify dependencies and potential issues early on.

This key practice seems to be often overlooked or ignored entirely. I see many team set WIP limits but they don’t understand why or when to change. Here’s a tip to start assuming you want to limit WIP by workflow step (not the only way to limit WIP): Take the number of people who do the work for the particular workflow step, double it and subtract 1. Be ready to adjust as an experiment and review the data to see if the change did what you want.

Setting limits on work in progress can be challenging but rewarding. In a project where we struggled with multitasking, we decided to implement work-in-progress limits for each stage of our value stream. Initially, it was difficult to resist the temptation of starting new tasks immediately. However, once we embraced the limits and focused on completing tasks before moving on, we noticed a significant improvement in productivity and overall flow.

Managing flow requires a data-driven approach. In a team I worked with, we started tracking cycle time and lead time for our work items. By analyzing these metrics over time, we were able to identify patterns and make adjustments to improve our flow. It helped us identify areas where work was getting stuck and enabled us to experiment with different strategies to increase efficiency.

Feedback loops are invaluable for continuous improvement. In one project, we conducted regular retrospectives and involved all team members in the process. By creating a safe space for open and honest feedback, we were able to identify areas of improvement and take collective action. The feedback loops helped us address issues promptly, fostered a culture of continuous learning, and led to iterative enhancements in our value stream.

And as you begin the use the kanban system, it begins to reveal the underpinning issues, which are often masked by the demanding timebox of a sprint. And it is these improvements that are where we see the true gains. Much less focused on what went well, what didn’t go well, what can we improve questions in a retro, which tend to overly emphasize the people aspect. Most problems are found in the system, not in the people. Many teams find they are improving the system only once they allow the system to speak, and kanban is great at that.

Sprint retrospectives are not designed to be people focused. The Agile ceremony used to guide the conversation is just that, a guide. If you find yourself in a sprint retrospective only speaking about what the people were doing then make a conscience effort to speak to the process, system, and agile ceremonies. Allowing the daily standup to turn into a progress meeting and the sprint retrospective focus on what the team did are two common coachable Scrum Master breakdowns that should be addressed by the team and in the Scrum Master CoP.

Adopting a Kaizen mindset is essential for long-term success with Kanban. It requires a commitment to ongoing improvement and a willingness to challenge the status quo. In a team I was a part of, we encouraged everyone to share their ideas for process improvement. By embracing a culture of continuous learning and fostering an environment where experimentation and innovation were encouraged, we were able to make significant strides in our Kanban journey.