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  1. title: Get a Kanban! (or Scrum board)
  2. url: http://mauveweb.co.uk/posts/2015/08/get-a-kanban.html
  3. hash_url: c19e223dd32e16a27f3d3909bb736ef5
  4. <div>
  5. <p>I continue to be staggered at the effectiveness, as a process management
  6. technique, of simply sticking cards representing tasks onto a whiteboard.
  7. Whatever your industry or project management methodology, the ability it offers
  8. to visualise the <em>flow of work</em> is immensely powerful. It lets us plan the
  9. current work and the near future to maximise our productivity.</p>
  10. <img alt="/2015/kanban-example.png" class="align-center" src="http://mauveweb.co.uk/2015/kanban-example.png"/><p>It's valuable whether you're working on your own or working as a team. When
  11. working as a team, it can be used to schedule work among team members. When on
  12. your own, it merely helps with clarity of thought (we'll look at why a little
  13. later).</p>
  14. <p>Yet this is largely unknown outside of software development. All sorts of
  15. industries would benefit from this approach, from farming to law.</p>
  16. <div class="section" id="terminology">
  17. <h2>Terminology</h2>
  18. <p>There's lots of variation in the terminology around kanbans, so let me lay out
  19. the terms as I use them.</p>
  20. <p>The idea of a <strong>kanban</strong> originates in manufacturing in Japan. The word itself
  21. means <em>sign board</em> and refers to the board itself. Specific processes built
  22. around a kanban are called <strong>kanban methodologies</strong>. Scrum calls the kanban a
  23. "Scrum Board" and naturally there are all manner of other terms and practices
  24. for using a similar approach in other methodologies too.</p>
  25. <p>Onto the kanban we need to stick cards representing <strong>tasks</strong> - small pieces of
  26. work that are easy to pick up and get done. Sometimes tasks will relate to
  27. bigger projects. Some call these bigger projects <strong>epics</strong>, and may use
  28. additional cards to represent the relationship of tasks to epics.</p>
  29. <p>A <strong>backlog</strong> is the totality of the work yet to do (and again, terms differ;
  30. some practices may exclude work that is already scheduled).</p>
  31. </div>
  32. <div class="section" id="how-to-run-a-kanban">
  33. <h2>How to run a kanban</h2>
  34. <p>First of all, get yourself a real, physical whiteboard. If you can get a
  35. magnetic whiteboard, you can stick task cards to it with magnets, which is nice
  36. and clean. But otherwise your tasks can be cards stuck to the board with
  37. blu-tak, or post-it notes. I favour index cards of a weighty paper density,
  38. about the size of your hand when flat. This lets you write large, clear letters
  39. on them, which are easier to see from a distance, and they are somewhat
  40. resistant to being scuffed as you stack them into a deck and riffle through it.</p>
  41. <p>Next, you need to come up with your backlog. If you're in the middle of a piece
  42. of work, you can start by braindumping the current state. Otherwise, get into a
  43. quiet room, with the appropriate people if necessary, and a stack of index
  44. cards, and write out cards, or break them down, or tear them up, until you have
  45. a set of concrete tasks that will get you to your goal. Make sure everyone
  46. agrees the cards are correct.</p>
  47. <p>The cards can include all kinds of extra information that will help you plan
  48. the work. For example, you might include deadlines or an estimate (in hours,
  49. days or your own unit - I like "ideal hours").</p>
  50. <img alt="/2015/kanban-task-metadata.png" class="align-center" src="http://mauveweb.co.uk/2015/kanban-task-metadata.png"/><p>Sometimes tasks are easy to describe on a card but if you were to pick up the
  51. card as something to work on, it wouldn't be immediately obvious where to
  52. start. These should be broken down into smaller pieces of work during this
  53. planning phase. This allows you to see with better granularity how much of the
  54. large piece of work is done. I like tasks that are of an appropriate size for
  55. each person to do several of them in a week. However, it's OK to break down
  56. the card into smaller tasks later if the task is probably going to be something
  57. to tackle further in the future.</p>
  58. <p>Now, divide the whiteboard into columns. You will need at least two: something
  59. like backlog, and <strong>in progress</strong>. But you could have many more. Kanban is
  60. about flow. Tasks flow through the columns. The flow represents the phases of
  61. working on a task. You might start by quoting for work and finish by billing
  62. for it. Or you might start by making sure you have all the raw materials
  63. required and finish by taking inventory of materials used.</p>
  64. <img alt="/2015/kanban-flow.png" class="align-center" src="http://mauveweb.co.uk/2015/kanban-flow.png"/><p>None of these practices are set in stone - you can select them and reselect
  65. them as your practices evolve. For example, you could focus on longer-range
  66. planning:</p>
  67. <img alt="/2015/kanban-schedule.png" class="align-center" src="http://mauveweb.co.uk/2015/kanban-schedule.png"/><p>So with your whiteboard drawn, you can put your tasks on the board. Naturally
  68. many of your cards may not fit, so you can keep your backlog stack somewhere
  69. else. Choosing what to put on the board becomes important.</p>
  70. <p>Now, just move the cards to reflect the current state. When a task is done, you
  71. update the board and choose the next most valuable task to move forward. You
  72. might put initials by a card to indicate who is working on it.</p>
  73. <p>Visit the kanban regularly, as a team. Stop and replan frequently - anything
  74. from a couple of times a week up to a couple of times a day - especially when
  75. new information becomes available. This might involve pulling cards from the
  76. backlog onto the board, writing new cards, tearing up cards that have become
  77. redundant, and rearranging the board to reprioritise. Make sure the right
  78. people are present every time if possible.</p>
  79. <p>Less frequently you might make a bigger planning effort: pick up all the cards
  80. from your backlog pile or column, and sit down again with the relevant people
  81. to replan these and reassess all their priorities. Some of the cards may be
  82. redundant and some new work may have been identified.</p>
  83. <p>The value of the kanban will then naturally begin to flow:</p>
  84. <ul class="simple">
  85. <li>Higher productivity as you see how what you're working on fits into a whole</li>
  86. <li>A greater ability to reschedule - for example, to park work in progress to
  87. tackle something urgent</li>
  88. <li>Team collaboration around tasks that seem to be problematic</li>
  89. <li>Estimates of when something might get done or which deadines are at risk</li>
  90. </ul>
  91. </div>
  92. <div class="section" id="tips">
  93. <h2>Tips</h2>
  94. <p>A physical whiteboard seems to be very important. A lot of the practices don't
  95. seem to evolve properly if you use some sort of digital version of a kanban.
  96. There are lots of reasons for this. One obvious one is that physical
  97. whiteboards offer the ability to annotate the kanban with little hints,
  98. initials, or whatever. Another one is that an online whiteboard doesn't beg to
  99. be looked at; a physical whiteboard up in your workplace is something to notice
  100. frequently, as well as offer a designated place to get away from a screen and
  101. plan work.</p>
  102. <p>Naturally, having a physical whiteboard is only possible if your team is not
  103. geographically distributed. Geographically distributed teams are challenging
  104. for a whole host of reasons, and this is just one. A digital version of a
  105. kanban may be a good approach in those cases. Or perhaps frequent photos of a
  106. physical whiteboard elsewhere in the world can help to keep things in sync.</p>
  107. <p>Readability from a distance helps get value from your kanban. Write in capital
  108. letters because these are more readable from a distance. Use a broad felt pen.
  109. Use differently coloured index cards or magnets to convey additional
  110. information.</p>
  111. <p>It's somewhat important to ensure that the kanban captures all streams of work.
  112. There's a tendency to think "This isn't part of the project we're planning;
  113. let's not get distracted by it". But that reduces the value of the kanban in
  114. tracking what is actually happening in your workflow. Obviously, different
  115. streams of work can be put in a different place on the kanban, or use
  116. differently coloured cards.</p>
  117. <p>You can also track obstacles to delivering work on the board. I like to reserve
  118. red cards to indicate obstacles. Removing those obstacles may require work!</p>
  119. </div>
  120. <div class="section" id="why-kanbans-work">
  121. <h2>Why Kanbans work</h2>
  122. <p>Kanbans are certainly a form of process visualisation. Enabling you to
  123. visualise how tasks are flowing will let you spot problems in the process, such
  124. as too much work building up that only a certain team member can do. You can
  125. design workarounds to a problem like this also right there on the kanban.</p>
  126. <p>Stepping back from this, the reason I've found having a kanban useful even for
  127. solo work may be related to the psychological idea of <a class="reference external" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transactive_memory#Extensions_to_other_domains">transactive memory</a>,
  128. where we use our memory not as a primary store of information, but as an index
  129. over other stores of information, such as those in other people's heads, or on
  130. paper. The model of thought is then very much like a database transaction - we
  131. might "read" a number of facts from different sources into working memory,
  132. generate some new insight, and "write" that insight back to an external source.</p>
  133. <p>By committing our understanding of our backlog of work to index cards, we can
  134. free our memories to focus on the task at hand. And when that task is done, we
  135. waste no time in switching back to a view of our workflow that can tell us
  136. immediately "what's next". Or say we encounter new information that we suspect
  137. affects something in the backlog - being able to go straight back to that card
  138. and recover exactly how we defined the task turns out to be useful: it allows
  139. us to quickly assess the impact of new information to our existing ideas and
  140. plans.</p>
  141. <p>The final reason I believe kanbans work so well is that both the kanban and the
  142. stack of cards that represent your backlog are artifacts that are constructed
  143. collaboratively in a group. Taking some concrete artifact out of a meeting as a
  144. record of what was said cuts down a lot on misremembered conclusions
  145. afterwards. Some people try to take "action points" out of meetings for the
  146. same reason, and then quote them back to everyone by e-mail afterwards. This
  147. doesn't seem to work as well - I often find myself thinking "I don't recall
  148. agreeing that!" One reason for this is that the record of the action points is
  149. not written down for all to see and approve/veto, but a personal list written
  150. by the person taking the minutes.</p>
  151. <p>Writing tasks out on index cards in front of people, and reading them out
  152. repeatedly or handing them around (or laying them out on the table for people
  153. to move around and reorganise - related in principle to <a class="reference external" href="http://mauveweb.co.uk/posts/2014/01/crc-cards.html">CRC Cards</a>), means
  154. that everyone gets a chance to internalise or reject the wording on the card.</p>
  155. <p>Similarly, the organisation of kanban is not only a concrete artifact that is
  156. modified with other people standing around: it is ever-present to consult and
  157. correct. Nobody can have an excuse to leave the kanban in an incorrect state.
  158. Thus the kanban is a reliable source of truth.</p>
  159. <p>So whatever your industry, whatever your process methodology, set yourself up
  160. a kanban and give it a try. Happy kanbanning!</p>
  161. </div>
  162. </div>