Kanban Social Technologies

My journey with Kanban and why I actively recommend it to clients.

Published on 23 February 2024

Written by Martin Hinshelwood

4 minute read

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Embracing Kanban for Enhanced Workflow and Predictability

Introduction

My journey with Kanban began with the guidance of Daniel Vacanti and Steve Porter during the first Professional Scrum with Kanban class back in late 2017 and early 2018. At that time, I didn’t fully grasp the value of this unique approach—an observational tool that provides a different way of thinking about workflow. Understanding Kanban as a strategy, not a system, has been crucial in appreciating its full potential.

The Core of Kanban: A Strategy for Optimization

Kanban is best understood as a strategy for examining and optimizing your existing workflow. It’s not a standalone system but a means to understand and actively manage the flow of work through your current system. This approach is particularly beneficial when integrated with Scrum teams to enhance their processes, improve predictability, and ultimately deliver greater value to the business.

Addressing Common Challenges in Scrum Teams

Many Scrum teams struggle with predictability and consistency in delivering working products by the end of each sprint. This inconsistency often leads to business stakeholders feeling uncertain and frustrated because they perceive the output as erratic and unpredictable. They may feel that the deliverables are not meeting expectations in terms of cost, quality, and timing.

Lack of Transparency:

Traditional Scrum teams often fall short in providing the level of transparency needed by the business. Without clear visibility into the process and progress, stakeholders’ fear and uncertainty grow. This fear drives a desire for more control, which can lead to regression into old, less effective practices.

Kanban: Enhancing Transparency and Reducing Fear

A Kanban strategy provides the necessary transparency to alleviate these fears. By using Kanban metrics, teams can offer valuable insights into their workflow, helping stakeholders understand the process and make informed decisions. This increased transparency reduces the desire for control and fosters trust in the Agile process.

Key Learnings from Kanban:

Improving Predictability:

Kanban metrics help teams understand and enhance their predictability.
Actively managing the flow of work leads to more consistent delivery.

Building Trust through Transparency:

Providing clear data and insights reassures stakeholders.
Transparency enables better decision-making and reduces fear.

Applying Kanban Across Contexts:

Kanban is versatile and applicable to any team in any industry.
From marketing teams to software development and factory production, Kanban enhances workflow and predictability.

Kanban: A Universal Strategy

Kanban is not limited to software teams. It can be applied to any team, delivering any type of work, in any context. Whether you’re in marketing, software development, management, or manufacturing, a Kanban strategy provides the metrics and insights needed to optimize your workflow. These metrics lead to better decisions, more effective flow, and the ability to stop ineffective practices.

Why Every Team Should Use Kanban:

Marketing Teams: Streamline content creation and campaign management.
Software Teams: Enhance Scrum processes and improve software delivery.
Management Teams: Optimize portfolio management and decision-making.
Manufacturing: Improve production workflows and efficiency.

Conclusion

Kanban is a powerful strategy for any team, in any industry, aiming to optimize their workflow and increase predictability. By providing the necessary transparency and data-driven insights, Kanban helps teams make better decisions, ask more interesting questions, and achieve more effective outcomes. Embrace Kanban to transform your team’s approach to work and deliver greater value consistently.

Thanks for reading! If you found this post helpful, please like, follow, and subscribe. I always reply to comments, and if you want to chat about Kanban, Scrum, or any other Agile practices, feel free to book a coffee with me through Naked Agility.

Recommended Resources:

Kanban Training: Explore our advanced Kanban training programs to dive deeper into Kanban practices.
Consulting Services: Need help implementing Kanban at scale? Our experts are ready to assist.
Further Reading: Check out more articles on Kanban and agile methodologies on our blog.

If your current system of work is failing you, then you would benefit from creating and applying a Kanban strategy. Our professional Kanban trainers and consultants are ready to help. Don’t wait. The sooner you start, the sooner you will improve. Get in touch below.

I got introduced to Cban by Daniel Vante and Steve Porter when I did the participated in the first professional Scrum with Cban class back in 2018, late ‘17, early ‘18. I didn’t fundamentally understand at the time the value of this different way of thinking, of this observational tool. I think it’s quite important to understand that Cban is not a system itself. That’s why Pro Cban and the Cban guide talks about it as a strategy. It’s a strategy for understanding your existing system and then actively managing the flow of work through that existing system.

We talked about it in that context, within the context of a Scrum team, and how we can actively manage the flow of work within the system, use the Cban metric to augment our existing, perhaps awesome, Scrum process in order to really understand the predictability that we’re getting and increase that predictability for the business. Because lots of teams do struggle with their ability to deliver. They struggle with getting to the end of the Sprint and having working product. They struggle with consistently getting working product. They struggle with the quantity of working product, and that creates fear in the business because the business are paying a lot of money to get stuff, and they feel like they’re getting that stuff in fits and starts in an unpredictable way. They feel like it’s not what they asked for, it doesn’t cost what they thought it would, and it’s not delivered when they thought it would.

Part of that is because they can’t see what’s going on. We’re not giving them any information. The standard Scrum team is not giving the business any information to reassure them. They’re not doing transparency right. They’re not increasing the transparency to a level where the people viewing who need to understand actually understand what’s going on, and that creates that fear. That means that we want to have more control. When we fear something isn’t working out, when we fear that our money isn’t being spent well, we want to take more control of that thing. That’s the knee-jerk regression that we get from a lot of teams in organisations when a lot of teams move towards Scrum because they take away some of the tools for measuring productivity from the teams.

Because in Agile, we don’t measure productivity, they take that stuff away, but then they don’t replace it with anything. Because they don’t replace it with anything, transparency drops, fear increases, and then we want to go back to the old way. So a Cban strategy, and this is something that I’ve learned really over the last five years of working with Daniel Vante and the Cban guide and Pro Cban, is that the only way to be successful is to use a Cban strategy. Because we need to understand our predictability, we need to understand and actively manage the flow of work through the system, and we are not going to be successful if we don’t do that.

So I recommend a Cban strategy for any team doing anything in any context. That’s right, any team doing anything in any context. If you’re a marketing team delivering marketing content, if you’re a software team delivering software and you’re using Scrum, you’re a software team using SAFe, you’re a software team using something else that you made up yourself, or you’re a management team managing a portfolio, or I don’t know, I’m trying to think of other things. If you work in a factory and you’re delivering stuff, you should be using a Cban strategy in all of those contexts. That is the metrics you need in order to then be successful.

Because those metrics create transparency. Transparency allows you to make better decisions and ask more interesting questions, and those interesting questions and better decisions result in more effective flow or stop doing the thing that you thought of. That’s why Cban is so important to the strategy for every team building anything in any company. If you want to have a discussion about your unique needs or situation, then please book a call or visit us at Naked Agility. We also have our immersive and traditional public classes on our website, and we’d love to hear from you.

Strategy Transparency Metrics and Learning Transparency and Accountability Software Development Agile Strategy Agile Project Management Practical Techniques and Tooling Flow Efficiency Agile Frameworks

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