What is Kanban in agile?
Closely connected to Lean, Kanban is the lightest of the Agile frameworks. It is an incremental, evolutionary change for technology development/operations organizations. Kanban is all about visualizing the work, limiting work in progress, and maximizing flow.
Origin of Kanban
Kanban is not a new concept; it has been used by the manufacturing units since 1940. Toyota, the famous car company in Japan developed Kanban to improve manufacturing efficiency. It is a scheduling system built for Just in Time manufacturing.
Based on this concept, Kanban was adopted by the knowledge work organizations. In 2011, David J. Anderson framed the Kanban method as a method to incremental, evolutionary process.
4 principles of Kanban –
- Start with what you do now
- Agree to pursue incremental, evolutionary change
- Respect the current process, roles, responsibilities & titles
- Encourage acts of leadership at all levels in your organization
6 practices of Kanban –
- Visualize (the work, workflow and business risks)
- Limit WIP
- Manage Flow
- Make Process Explicit
- Implement Feedback Loops
- Improve Collaboratively, Evolve Experimentally (using models & the scientific method)