Many Scrum teams use Kanban to organise their project work. In fact, these teams use Kanban as a visual management tool to deliver work faster and more often. Let’s see what is Kanban and how it is evolving over time.
What is Kanban?
Kanban is a lean method that aims at managing and improving work across systems. This approach has the objective to manage work by balancing demands with available capacity. In addition, it helps to handle bottlenecks at system level.
Taiichi Ohno developed the first Kanban system for Toyota automotive in Japan. It was created to allow Toyota to achieve a flexible and efficient just-in-time production control system. This system was able to increase productivity while reducing inventory cost of materials and products.
To achieve higher throughput, Kanban requires continuous monitoring of the process. In addition, it is important to avoid bottlenecks that could slow down the production process.
What is Kanban Method?
David J Anderson first developed in 2005 the Kanban Method for knowledge work and service work. The Kanban Method is a set of principles and practices that are applied to an existing process. It is a way to design, manage, and enhance flow systems for knowledge work.
Basically, the method allows organizations to change their existing workflow by visualizing their flow of work, limit work in progress (WIP) and stop starting and start finishing. In fact, Kanban incorporates concepts such as pull systems, queuing theory, and flow.
Gradually, Kanban has become an effective tool to support running a production system and an excellent way to promote improvement. Today, Kanban is a popular method for managing software development.
Keep in mind
Teams use the Kanban method to improve areas such as productivity, efficiency, quality and so on. Kanban works well when used with Scrum. In fact, Kanban helps to visualize and improve the flow of work, in spite of the methodology being used to do the work.
