Boost your organization's performance with a scalable and adaptive "Start where you are" approach to accelerate value delivery.
Stop starting, Start finishing
The flow rate (Flow) comes from one of the (5) principles of Lean. The aim is to implement actions that will promote accelerating value creation - a topic more than often addressed in agile discussions...! 😉
These actions result in fewer delays, less waste and fewer bottlenecks, enabling faster delivery of value to customers, at both team and customer level.organization-wide. The weakest link determines the strength of the chain.
In the context of adopting an agile framework(s), depending on the context, the will of the teams and that of the organization, an interesting option is to undertake an evolutionary and adaptive approach". Start where you are " (Kaizen) rather than a radical revolutionary agile framework (Kaikaku) with new roles and a new team structure.
One such adaptive evolutionary approach used to optimize workflow is the Kanban management approach or method.
Boost your organization's performance with the Kanban approach: scalable and adaptive to accelerate value delivery!
WHAT IS the Kanban and what is NOT?
Kanban is:
- An evolutionary change management approach that respects your employees, their mental workload and life balance, as well as your organization and its past.
- Kanban complements and fits in with your current processes with a view to improving them incrementally and continuously without any desire to radically and 'Revolutionarily' supplant them ...!
- Every organization has a different culture, different target markets, different value chains, and so on.
- Every project is different in terms of its mandate (objective to be achieved), scope, complexity, budget, schedule, risks, etc.
- Each team is different, in terms of its history, the skills, experience and competence of its talents.
- The principles of evolutionary and incremental change management (Kaizen) of the Kanban approach are based on :
- Understanding and applying your current processes ("Start Where you Are"))
- Respect for what your employees have achieved in the past, as well as their roles & responsibilities and functions within the organization.
- Obtaining agreement to pursue improvement through evolutionary change, AND
- Encouraging acts of Leadership at all levels
- A set of principles and practices to guide you in managing work and improving the way you do it, AND to ensure that work on an item starts only when there is a customer demand and there is available capacity (commitment point - commitment point).
- A scalable work management method Pull system " " Just in Time "in particular used to support the rapid delivery of continuous value," on time "and " on quality "for both your teams andacross your organization!
- In particular, Kanban boards to visualize work and its flow, and quickly spot bottlenecks so you can take the necessary action to improve the "system".
The Japanese have been using the full potential of the Kanban system for ages in their manufacturing plants, particularly in the automotive industry.
History reveals that at some point after the Second World War, the American automotive industry couldn't understand how the Japanese could be so productive with high levels of quality and reliability using so few raw materials. The Kanban system was one of the elements in their toolbox.
Kanban is NOT:
- "The tool (e.g. Jira, Azure DevOps, Trello, etc.)!
- A common misunderstanding of a Kanban system is to associate it with a board with columns to be filled with Post-It notes or " Product Backlog Itime » dans un outil électronique tel que Jira ou Azure DevOps.
- These are the digital tools used to implement the Kanban system.
- A "To-Do list" ...!
- It's not a methodology or a framework, it's an approach!
- This is a management approach that can be applied to an existing process or working method.
- It's never a question of using Kanban in relation to a given methodology or framework.
- It's more a question of adding Kanban to an existing methodology, framework or work method.
Six clear benefits of Kanban
Image source: https://kanban.university
Whether at the level of your teams or across your organization,
1. The Kanban approach promotes "Just in Time" (Just in Time)
which is based on the visualization and limitation of the work-in-progress (WIP) contained in the system, in order to achieve better cadence, better work prediction and enable the implementation of continuous improvement actions (Kaizen).
Teams or your organization focus on priority tasks, increasing throughput and enabling faster delivery of value to customers.
2. Identify bottlenecks within your company. value chains
Workflow visualization and measurement gives you a precise view of the system, enabling you to identify and
reduce the work overload (or lack of it) for teams, while improving responsiveness to change.
3. Promotes communication and collaboration
Thanks to work visualization, each team member can quickly understand the current state of play in real time, which promotes communication and eliminates misunderstandings.
By identifying problems and delays in the system, teams are encouraged to make continuous improvements to their work. Ways of Working encouraging continuous improvement.
4. The Kanban approach optimizes current processes and enables scalable change management
Without changing people's roles and responsibilities, or the organization's policies and standards, or having to deploy a new framework in project mode...!
5. The Kanban approach improves lead times and predictability
The quantity of work in progress (WIP) is directly linked to Lead Time, and there is a direct correlation between Lead Time and a non-linear growth in the rate of defects (anomalies).
6. Deliver better quality
Kanban allows you to focus on quality by limiting the quantity of work in progress (WIP) by defining policies on what is acceptable before work items are transferred to the next stage of the process. These policies can include quality criteria.
A common Kanban anti-pattern among customers!
Below is a simple example of a context I've often observed in at least 80% teams I've worked with.
The "board" (the tool) is present and used by the teams, but without taking into account all the general design principles and practices (adapted to the context) of a Kanban system.
The " Visualization "But this practice alone will not achieve the goal: deliver value fast...!
It often happens that this kind of "table" (the tool) is designed in the wake of events when an initiative or project is launched, by someone with a modicum of knowledge of Jira, ADO or similar.
A full order book, no commitment points, a multitude of competing activities on the rise (WIP), limited production capacity, bottlenecks and unmet customer expectations...
Result: " My teams have trouble delivering on time ", " My teams lack pace (predictability) ", " there are regular quality problems in production "etc."
The work in progress (WIP) is stagnant, hardly moving at all, like the congestion on this highway!
Image source : https://www.dangerousroads.org/asia/china/4964-world-s-worst-traffic-jam-100km-and-12-days.html
Under such conditions, can you predict how long it will take a car to reach its destination? Mmmm... No!
The more cars there are on the freeway, the denser the traffic, the slower and more unpredictable a car will get from point A to point B.
The more a resource is used, the longer the waiting time.
Image source : https://itrevolution.com/articles/learn-more-about-concepts-in-phoenix-project/
A well-designed Kanban system, following and respecting the principles and practices of the art, maintains a perfect balance between work demand and team capacity, thus avoiding overload or unnecessary waiting.
The fewer cars there are, the less traffic there is, and the more room there is for speeding like an F1 car on Montreal's Circuit Gilles Villeneuve!
Image source : https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article.why-we-love-the-canadian-grand-prix.67pRce504IfRLtT2AHmgmV.html
From Worst to Best in 9 months - The Microsoft XIT Sustaining Engineering Story
Implementing a Drum-Buffer-Rope Solution in Microsoft's IT Department
By David J. Anderson & Dragos Dumitriu, Microsoft Corporation,
http://images.itrevolution.com/images/kanbans/From_Worst_to_Best_in_9_Months_Final_1_3-aw.pdf
I had the opportunity to study the above case study by David J. Anderson & Dragos Dumitriu. It's the story of the first Kanban system (known & recorded) implemented at Microsoft in the XIT business unit, which serves Microsoft Shared Services by providing IT support and applications for operational value chains such as Finance and Human Resources.
Some takeaways from history:
- The first (recorded-known) implementation of Kanban at Microsoft resulted in triple productivity an outsourced team, a cuts lead times by more than 90 % and improved punctuality of 98 % deliveries.
- Lead time: 145 days (despite a development time and good quality between 3 & 10 days) ==> 25 days or less (reached at 98% of the time).
- Evolutionary processes of change can leave behind strange historical artifacts or obsolete practices. These are known as evolutionary relics. (Traditional estimates Project by ROI combined replaced by Delay costs).
The (6) general design practices of a good Kanban system that are little or not respected/applied in the organizations that use it.
1. Visualization
2. Limit work in progress (WIP)
" Start finishing, stop starting "!!!
3. Manage flow (Flow)
4. Make the mechanisms (policies) explicit.
5. Implementation of feedback loops
6. Collaborative improvement, experimental evolution.
Kanban is fundamentally an improvement method. It starts with the organization as it is (Start where you are), followed by incremental continuous improvement (Kaizen).
Examples: using models such as Little's Law, theory of constraints, scientific approach (observation-experimentation)
The Kanban approach is an "Evolutionary" one, focused on improving "Ways Of Working" rather than a deterministic "Revolutionary" approach (Big up front BigBang rollout). In particular, this mitigates the risks of change management in the context of a "Big Bang" project. transformation to agility.
Additional resources of interest:
In conclusion
Kanban is much more than a simple task management tool. It's a scalable, dynamic and proven approach to managing work at both team and team level.organization-wide. Whether your business unit manages solution (product) development initiatives, your organization operates a Lean portfolioor a PMO managing projects, whatever the industry,
Thanks to its simplicity and power, a well-designed Kanban system enables teams and organization-wide work smarter, empower them, manage workflow with precision and adapt quickly to change.
Do you know your current Kanban maturity level? Would you like to take them to the next level and benefit from the full potential of state-of-the-art Kanban systems?
Don't hesitate to contact us to design, improve or scale up your Kanban systems and make the most of its potential in your company.
Éric Auger
is a professional IT consultant specializing in Lean-Agile management. He is a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt, Kanban Management Professional (KMP)Project Management Professional (PMP), SAFe Agilist and Professional Agility Coach. He is a change agent.
It helps teams and organizations that really want to compete and thrive in the digital age - organizations that are open to change and ready to adapt to respond quickly to market changes and emerging opportunities.
