KANBAN

Agile method for the Software Development

1. A Presentation on
KANBAN
30
th
October 2013
IT PROJECT MANAGEMENT

2. AGENDA
Limitations in the current system
History of Kanban
What is Kanban?
How does Kanban works?
Kanban Principles
Kanban Practices
Benefits of Kanban
Limitations of Kanban
Few Kanban users
IT PROJECT MANAGEMENT

3. Limitations in the system
Unidentified bottlenecks
Too much work stuffed into one sprint
Burnout
Frequent bugs on production
Complaints about productivity
30
th
October 2013
IT PROJECT MANAGEMENT

4. History of KANBAN
Developed by Taiichi Ohno at Toyato in 1940‘s
Materials requirement planning technique
developed by Toyota Corporation
Designed after the shelf-stocking techniques used
by the supermarkets
Demand controlled system where replenishment
happened based on the market conditions
Based on the pull based system rather than a push
based system
Use of the visual signals was essential to the system
30
th
October 2013
IT PROJECT MANAGEMENT

5. What is Kanban?
Kanban is a way for teams and organizations to visualize their
work, identify and eliminate bottlenecks and acheive
dramatic operational improvements interms of throughput
and quality.
Scheduling system used in manufacturing to help companies
to improve their production process
Work-In-Progress limited pull system which exposes system
problems through visualization
A big board with story cards
Board represents the state of the project at any point
Tries to limit the amount of work at any stage
Easy identification of bottlenecks in system
Aims at minimizing waste
30
th
October 2013
IT PROJECT MANAGEMENT

6. Kanban in Software and IT
Kanban is a new technique for managing a
software development process in a highly
efficient way.
David J. Anderson developed Kanban Method for
software development.
Kanban reinforces Toyota's "just-in-time" (JIT)
production system. Although producing
software is a creative activity and therefore
different to mass-producing cars, the underlying
mechanism for managing the production line can
still be applied.
30
th
October 2013
IT PROJECT MANAGEMENT

7. In software development, Kanban is “a method for
developing products with an emphasis on just-in-
time delivery while not overloading the developers.
It emphasizes that developers pull work from a
queue, and the process, from definition of a task to
its delivery to the customer, is displayed for
participants to see”.
-- WIKIPEDIA

8. Fig. One typical Kanban board
30
th
October 2013
IT PROJECT MANAGEMENT

9. How does KANBAN works?
An event driven Kanban example
The board layout looks as follows:
To Do with three categories
Backlog – things to do at some time in future
Waiting – limited number of selected tasks waiting for
some event to happen (approval or rejection)
Ready – things ready to start working on
In Progress with limit to keep you from doing
too many things at the same time
Done for reference and to track your
performance
30
th
October 2013
IT PROJECT MANAGEMENT

10. KANBAN Principles
Start with what you do now
Agree to pursue incremental, evolutionary
change
Respect the current process, roles,
responsibilities and titles
Leadership at all levels
30
th
October 2013
IT PROJECT MANAGEMENT

11. KANBAN Practices
Visualize the workflow: Visualizing the flow of work
and making it visible is core to understanding how
work proceeds. Without understanding the
workflow, making the right changes is harder.
Limit work in process: The critical elements are that
work-in-process at each state in the workflow is
limited and that new work is “pulled” into the new
information discovery activity when there is
available capacity within the local WIP limit.
Manage flow: The flow of work through each state in
the workflow should be monitored, measured and
reported.
30
th
October 2013
IT PROJECT MANAGEMENT

12. Make process policies explicit: With an explicit
understanding it is possible to move to a more
rational, empirical, objective discussion of issues.
Implement feedback loops: Organizations that
have not implemented the second level of
feedback - the operations review - have generally
not seen process improvements beyond a
localized team level.
Improve collaboratively: The Kanban method
encourages small continuous, incremental and
evolutionary changes that stick

13. Benefits of KANBAN
Simple to implement, use and improve
Reduce inventory
Reduces waste and scrap
Provides flexibility in production
Increases output
Reduces total cost
30
th
October 2013
IT PROJECT MANAGEMENT

14. Limitations of KANBAN
Keeping the Kanbans resized as demand
changes can be slow and difficult to manage.
Lost of hardcopy tags/forms and Kanban
cards leads to difficult situations.
Utilizing the Kanban system results in less
opportunity to work ahead of schedule
placing performance pressures on staffs.
In order to facilitate the logistics process of
moving the materials to other work stations,
a well organized is needed.
30
th
October 2013
IT PROJECT MANAGEMENT

15. The name of the few companies that are really
satisfied being a Kanban user.
30
th
October 2013
IT PROJECT MANAGEMENT

16. “As a Project Manager with Kanban Software , I always know
what actually is going on with my project, problems need to be
solved and what my team is working on.”
-- Christopher Harris
30
th
October 2013
IT PROJECT MANAGEMENT