What’s Kanban?

Too often the methodology is reduced to the implementation of a visual task management board (Trello, ClickUp, a Planner, you name it), which remains underused and which people struggle to see the significance of.
That’s because Kanban is a whole system and the bpard itself isn’t enough to drive innovation.

Here’s a list of 10 principles you should keep in mind.

👁 Visualize the Workflow: the visual board has the aim to represent the workflow stages, making it easier to see work in progress (see next point) and identify bottlenecks.

🙅‍♂️ Limit Work in Progress (WIP): set limits on the amount of work that can be in progress at each stage to ensure focus and prevent overload. In other words: do not start too many things at once.

🚦 Manage Flow: continuously monitor and optimize the flow of work through the system, for instance removing the bottlenecks you previously indentified.

☝️ Make Process Policies Explicit: clearly define and communicate the rules and policies that govern the workflow to ensure everyone understands and follows them. If nobody follows what you’re saying, you might be the problem.

👍 Implement Feedback Loops: use regular feedback mechanisms, such as stand-up meetings and reviews, to gather input and make necessary adjustments.

⚗️ Improve Collaboratively, Evolve Experimentally: foster a culture of continuous improvement through collaboration and small, incremental changes based on empirical evidence. Standards are awesome as long as they don’t prevent us from exploring new things.

🔎 Focus on Customer Needs and Expectations: prioritize work based on customer value and requirements, ensuring that the most important tasks are completed first.

📏 Measure and Optimize for Efficiency: use metrics to measure performance and identify areas for improvement. Data gathering is crucial for the continuous business justification of improvement.

💪 Empower the Team: encourage team members to take ownership of their work and make decisions that improve the workflow and outcomes. Note: this calls for the right company culture, or it will be rejected.

♻️ Minimize Waste: identify and eliminate activities that do not add value to the customer, gold-plating and redundancies.

How about you? Do you work in Kanban, or do you simply use a kanban board?