Agile fundamentals for teams

Kanban is all about continuous flow. It originated from lean manufacturing principles, emphasising efficiency, flexibility, and continuous improvement. Toyota developed this approach to optimise their production processes. 

It focuses on three key practices: 

• Defining and visualising a workflow 
• Managing items in a workflow 
• Improving a workflow 

Roles in Kanban are more fluid compared to Scrum. There isn't a need for specific roles like a Scrum Master or Product Owner. Instead, everyone on the team collaborates to ensure a smooth flow of work. In Kanban, the emphasis is on shared responsibility and continuous improvement. 

Instead of fixed iterations, Kanban aims to visualise and improve workflow. Teams use a Kanban board, to do this. Here is a very simple example, using 3 columns. The To do column contains a list of tasks, sorted by priority. Tasks move through the stages until they are 'Done'. This creates a visual representation of the workflow. The goal is to manage and optimise the flow of work. 

With Kanban, there's no specific planning event like in Scrum. Instead, the team will set a limit on the number of tasks they can work on at once. They then "pull" work when they have capacity.  

For example, once they complete a task, they move it to "done".  

This creates capacity to pull a task from the "To do" list. This approach ensures they're working with a steady, manageable flow. This makes Kanban useful for teams dealing with varying workloads or unpredictable tasks.  

There is also no need to run events like a daily scrums or retrospectives. Although some teams who switch from Scrum to Kanban do still use these. It's up to the team to decide whether they will be beneficial to them. 

In Kanban, the team can handle changes at any time. 

Teams add new tasks to the To-do list and prioritise them. They can then start to work on them, as soon as they have capacity. This flexibility makes it easy for teams to adapt to shifting priorities. 

Kanban teams use 4 metrics to measure performance. 

• Lead time: The total time from creating a task to completing it. 
• Cycle Time: The amount of time between when a task was started and when it's finished. 
• Work in Progress: The number of work items started but not finished. That is the number of items the team is currently working on. 
• Throughput: The number of tasks or work items completed over a period of time. For example, over a week or a month. It allows a team to measure their productivity and helps them track how much work is getting done over time. 

These metrics help teams identify bottlenecks and enable team to optimise their processes. 

So how do you decide whether Kanban is right for you? It's flexibility makes it suitable for various contexts. The continuous flow approach aligns well with the need for adaptability. Especially since this is often required in the delivery of public sector product or services. 

Kanban is great when work items vary or priorities shift often. It's also useful if you need quick responses to change. This could include fixing bugs or maintaining live products. This is often the choice of more experienced Agile teams. 

To summarise, Kanban is an Agile framework with less structure than Scrum. This makes it more flexible and adaptable. It enables teams to visualise their workflow. They use metrics to identify ways to optimise this.