How can you improve your team's predictability with Kanban?

To define your value stream, start by identifying the starting point of your process, which is typically the intake of customer needs or requests. Then, identify each subsequent step or activity that takes place until the final delivery of value to the customer. Determine the different types of work items that move through the value stream. These can include user stories, bug fixes, feature requests, or any other units of work that are part of your process. By defining your value stream, you can create a foundation for implementing Kanban. Through continuous measurement and analysis, you can identify opportunities to streamline your workflow, reduce waste, and increase the speed and quality of value delivery to customers.

To improve predictability with Kanban: - Create a visual Kanban board. - Define work stages clearly. - Limit tasks in progress. - Track time for tasks. - Prioritize and communicate.

Conduct cadences meetings where your team can review the Kanban board, identify and resolve any issues, and make any necessary adjustments. This can help to keep your team on track and improve predictability.

Kansan can help teams get into focus and finish mindset. Even though there are no time constrained sprints. It really helped my teams to prioritize all the work and pick what was the highest priority while giving everyone a chance to collaborate and chime into decision making.

One thing I have seen and used is to identify and set the WIP ( work in progress ) limit for each column of your Kannan . Continue to measure this across the execution lifecycle and try experimenting with the number less than what you see as a limit to begin with . Fine tune this over a period of time till you see some level of improvement and flow for the team .

This is where the team comes together to establish agreements on how to best utilize the board, ensuring a cooperative and iterative process. The goal is to minimize resistance and clarify working methods and workload. Practices such as limiting the number of items in columns, promoting pair programming, and setting clear rules for defining when a task is "done" are essential. You can essentially map your team's processes onto a Kanban board to streamline your workflow. Techniques like color-coding tickets based on priority, tracking the time a ticket spends on the board, and setting deadlines can significantly help the team determine their priorities.

Visualize the workflow for the team as is. Don’t try to visualize the way you want it to be. That can come later. Start where you are.

In my experience, start the Kanban and visualize the current workflow. It would aptly depict the “Done” tasks and thus the team would clearly portray what they can do and deliver. This can be used as a scale to understand the flow and from there a steady movement forward.

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The Kanban board is an excellent visual tool for identifying bottlenecks, tracking work in progress, and distinguishing between completed and ongoing tasks. By implementing rules, such as setting limits for each column defining when a ticket can be moved to the testing phase, and using color-coding for tickets, you can quickly assess the status of the workload. It's essential to ensure that everyone on the team understands the significance of each visual cue and has a clear understanding of what "good" looks like.

There is a simple way to remember this - and it is pretty famous in the field. Stop starting. Start finishing. If you want to reduce lead time (and you do want to reduce lead time in case you didn’t know) then you need to reduce WIP.

Limiting work in progress not only reduces cognitive overload but also allows the team to focus on one item at a time. It's common to see engineers picking up 2 or 3 tickets at once and saying, "I can handle this," until the days pass, and no significant progress has been made. Teach your team to avoid multitasking, promote pair collaboration, explain why "less is more," and emphasize that we're not here to simply crunch numbers but to learn, improve, and maintain a healthy production system. Context switching is a real and sometimes dangerous issue, both for mental well-being and the potential for major incidents. Limit your work in progress, explain why, and systematically add this to the Kanban board.

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Set Work in Progress (WIP) restrictions for each stage of the process to avoid overburdening the team. WIP limitations assist maintain a regular flow of work and inspire attention, making it simpler to forecast when jobs will be done.

To implement a pull system in your value stream, we can follow these steps: 1. Visualize your workflow 2. Define work stages 3. Limit work in progress (WIP) 4. Track and measure cycle time 5. Pull work items: Only start working on a new work item when there is an available slot in the next stage of the workflow. 6. Use pull signals: Implement visual signals, such as Kanban cards or electronic notifications. 7. Collaborate and communicate 8. Continuously improve: Regularly analyze the data collected, identify areas for improvement By implementing a pull system, you prioritize customer demand, reduce waste, and ensure that work is delivered just-in-time, leading to a more efficient value stream and increased customer satisfaction.

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When team members have the ability and the existing WIP restrictions allow, they can move work from the "To-Do" column to the next step of the workflow. This guarantees that work only begins when resources are available.

The pull system allows each engineer to effectively manage their workflow. To illustrate this concept to my team, I often use the analogy of a restaurant's kitchen. In a restaurant, orders are placed on the "board," and each specialist takes responsibility for completing their part in preparing the meal. While the kitchen environment can be fast-paced, it offers a helpful visualization of how the Kanban board works. It's important to note that multitasking is discouraged, but pair-working is encouraged. It's not the role of the manager to assign tickets without the team's permission. Trust in their expertise and create an environment of autonomy, accountability, and responsibility.

To maximise predictability - you need to manage blocked work effectively in Kanban. A common scenario is when you encounter bug or defects during testing. Another scenario is when you can’t progress due to cross team dependency Instead of moving card backwards, block the card as and track the card as WIP. Use a label to categorise it into blocked state. In SUPs discuss how the blocker could be resolved by escalating the issue

Hmmm, it is actually the team itself taking the ownership and responsibility to improve on their predictability with or w/o Kanban. So me as the lead or manager of the team can only serve as mentor/coach to make the team aware of this responsibility and give them the freedom and ownership to work on that in a "inspect & adapt" mode.

I really think that the scaled agile framework team has done a great job in v6 with flow metrics. They have also released 8 flow accelerators that are designed to help improve flow through systems.

Continuous learning is at the core of Kanban. This model originates from Toyota, where it was employed to manage workload in their factories. It allowed any worker to halt the "flow" when a fault was discovered and make an attempt to fix it before resuming the "flow" again. Feedback loops play a crucial role in enabling team members to alert the team when a problem arises. This helps prevent passing on "bugs" to production and enhances internal team processes. The essence of Kanban lies in identifying bottlenecks, raising awareness, and fostering collaborative efforts to resolve them. This can be challenging, especially in environments with tight deadlines and shifting priorities. Address and improve your working environment first.

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Kanban can serve as a valuable tool for quickly grasping how a team operates, collaborates, addresses issues, and identifies its priorities. It's crucial to establish clear rules and obtain agreement from all team members. After all, this system is intended to assist the team rather than burden them with bureaucratic processes. Feedback is important.

In addition to visualizing the workflow, visualize the work. Create a card type that shows the types of work your team has. Each card should have enough information for the next process team member to be able to make a pull decision.

First, visualize the workflow that represents the stages of work. This provides transparency into the work process. Next, set work-in-progress (WIP) limits for each stage to prevent overloading the team and maintain a steady flow of work. Prioritize work items based on their importance and impact, ensuring that the most critical tasks are addressed first. Implement a pull system, where team members pull new work only when they have capacity, rather than pushing work onto individuals. Regularly review and analyze metrics and data, such as cycle time and lead time, to identify bottlenecks and areas for improvement. Encourage continuous improvement by holding regular retrospectives to discuss what went well and what could be improved.

On the board, clearly prioritize work items, making it clear which tasks should be done next. Label or color-code work items to differentiate between different types or levels of effort.