Kanban

Info

In Japanese, kanban literally translates to “visual signal”

History of Kanban §

• Kanban methodology dates back to 1940s when Toyota began optimising its engineering processes based on the same model that supermarkets were using to stock their shelves.
  • Supermarkets stock just enough products to meet consumer demand to optimise the flow between the supermarket and the consumer.
    • Because inventory levels match consumption patterns, the supermarket gains significant efficiency in inventory management by decreasing the amount of excess stock it must hold at any given time.
• When Toyota applied this same system to its factory floors, the goal was to better align its massive inventory levels with the actual consumption of materials.
• To communicate capacity levels in real-time on the factory floor (and to suppliers), workers would pass a card, or “kanban”, between teams.
• The signalling technology of this process has evolved since the 1940s, this same “just in time” (or JIT) manufacturing process is still at the heart of it.

Kanban Boards §

• All of kanban revolves around the Kanban Board — a tool used to visualise work and optimise the flow among the team.
• The board provides a clear visual overview of the current work within the team and clearly defines the workflow through a number of columns representing steps
  • Typically the processes contains three main steps: To Do, In Progress, and Done, but teams can add additional columns to better represent their processes.
• The kanban methodology relies upon full transparency of work and real-time communication of capacity. Therefore, the kanban board should be seen as the single source of truth for the team’s work.

Kanban Cards §

• Kanban cards have become synonymous with “tickets” in the world of software development.
• Their main purpose is to represent a unit of work as a card on the Kanban board and allow team members to track the progress of work through its workflow in a highly visual manner.
• The card contains all the critical feature information about a particular work item:
  • What needs doing
  • Who requested the task
  • Who is assigned to the task
  • How long the task will take
• Allowing team members to see the state of every work item at any given point in time, as well as all of the associated details, ensures increased focus, full traceability, and fast identification of blockers and dependencies.