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KANBAN CHEAT SHEET

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SECOND EDITION

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Kanban is a highly tactile and visible approach to orchestrating work across [email protected]
organisations. It works at the team level, straddling departmental boundaries (aka
Silo’s) as a highly effective organisational change tool. The ‘Kanban effect’ results in WWW.SOLUTIONEERS.CO.UK
profound changes in the behaviours and interactions of individuals, teams, and
sometimes entire organisations.
PRINCIPLES
1 2 3 5 • Start with what you do now
• Agree to pursue incremental,
evolutionary change
• Respect the current process, roles,
responsibilities & titles

CORE PROPERTIES
6
• Visualise the workflow, make all work
visible
• Limit Work-In-Process (WIP)
• Measure and Manage Flow
• Make Process Policies Explicit
4 • Improve Collaboratively (using
models/scientific method)

USUAL OUTCOMES
• Release value earlier
4• • Value discovery through
1• Visualise the BACKLOG. Organise by demand Use LIMITS to subordinate activities to
type or by product feature area. For multiple bottlenecks and improve flow. For individuals accelerated learning
stakeholders some teams organise by new to Kanban, when limits are hit the hardest • Maximise throughput
stakeholder. For sprint focused teams organise thing is to not blow the limit (essentially stopping • Reduce multi-tasking & task
the backlog into sprint. work) and going downstream to help unblock
switching
the pipeline. Limits help you to stop starting and
start finishing. • Reduced variation, improved
2• The NEXT column is an extremely powerful
predictability
mechanism for selecting the next items to be
delivered. Powerful due to the conversations 5• In Kanban we visualise the whole pipeline • Create ‘safety’ for the team
and clarity on value. Extremely useful when including UAT, DEPLOY, MEASURE. This is often • Open up capacity absorbed in
dealing with multiple stakeholders with an effective way to bring together dev and IT wasteful activity
conflicting perceptions on priorities. Use this Ops teams. Measure is a critical step in
• Improved collaboration by cutting
mechanism for sustainable long-term understanding if our anticipated value was
recognised, or whether we need to feedback through org silo’s
organisation change.
into the backlog. • Clarify macro & micro prioritisation

3• DONE columns are used as queues for two

main purposes – 1) to remove ‘chuck it over the 6• Use Magenta post-it notes to visualise blocked METRICS
wall syndrome’ and thus drive better work. Write the reason for the blocker on the • CFD – Cumulative Flow Diagram
collaboration and induce a pull, and 2) avoid post-it. Focus on unblocking the work.
• SPC Chart – Statistical Process
work starvation downstream and thus
Control Chart aka Control Chart
encourage flow. TIPS
• Keep the card wall TIDY!!! It’s a system not a
• Cycle Time, Lead Time, Waiting time
notice board. Straighten cards, redraw faded • Flow efficiency
CONCEPTS lines, refresh tatty icons and avatars. • Throughput
• How we visualise the world dominates how we • Don’t change the card wall design without
perceive the world buy-in and support from the team. It’s not your BACKGROUND & FURTHER READING
• Pull work across the wall, don’t push it card wall it is the team’s card wall.
• Focus on unblocking blocked work instead of • Use arrow icons to show movement on the
• Theory of Constraints, Eliyahu M.
starting more work board and ‘reset’ them after each stand-up Goldratt
• Make all work visible irrespective of ‘type’ • Laminate, laminate, laminate! • Kanban, David Anderson
• Stop starting, start finishing • Use ‘classes of service’ to service tech debt or • Queuing Theory, Little’s Law
• Use column limits to limit work in process to other types of demand such as BAU • Systems Thinking, John Seddon
increase flow • Run retrospectives on your physical card wall to
• Nothing has value until it’s live encourage improvement by working on the
• Lean Software Development – Mary
• All work before live is cost with no value other system. & Tom Poppendieck
than learning • Get your stakeholders to run some stand-ups • Toyota Production System (TPS), W.
• Walk the wall (right to left) at the daily stand-ups and rotate on a daily basis who hosts the stand- Edwards Deming
focusing on finishing work up • The Lean Start-up, Eric Ries
• Value trumps flow, flow trumps waste elimination • For teams new to Kanban stick rigidly to the
• De-coupled cadences – release on demand, rules initially in line with Dreyfus Model for skills
plan on demand, real-time retro’s, real-time acquisition RECOMMENDED WORKSHOP
showcase. • Watch out for cards sat in queues (done
• Encourage swarming to resolve blockers and columns) incurring excessive waiting times.
bottlenecks
• ‘Stop the line’ defect resolution
• Each team member must only have one avatar
on the card wall. Lean Agile Boot Camp
• Continuous improvement https://www.solutioneers.co.uk/lean-agile-boot-camp
• End-to-end flow is more important than individual MYTHS
activity • No need for planning as we now use cycle time
• Use NEXT column to have the right conversations instead of velocity
about value and prioritisation • No need for estimation in Kanban
• Items to the right of the card wall have higher • Cards can only go one way (left to right)
priority than cards to the left • Limits cannot be broken – it’s the LAW!
• Kanban overlays on top of your current practices • To the left of the ‘select’ (prioritisation) column
– it doesn’t replace them. is not the delivery team’s concern
• Efficiency vs effectiveness – don’t deliver more of • We don’t do iterations in Kanban
the wrong thing quicker! • Kanban is all about eliminating waste
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