MASTERING KANBAN
Mastering Kanban: Keeping Your Workflow In Check
How active management of the workflow can step up your team’s effectiveness game.
How do we keep our workflow in check? Actively, I mean.
Which practices can give us that extra edge? And what really impacts how effective our work is? Bring more focus and enhance collaboration and reduce waste?
Today we’re diving into actively managing the items in a workflow. Kanban practice number two. Remember my last video about defining and visualizing the workflow? Well, consider this a sequel.
I’ll present the four golden rules for keeping those items in check, meaning actively managing our work in progress.
The Story of My Life
Work in progress. One of our favorite expressions in Kanban. We mention it a lot. Let’s dive in!
I remember back in 2021, when I read the Kanban Guide for Scrum Teams guide by Daniel Vacanti. The author of The Kanban Guide. Watching his videos on the active management of workflow items felt like a revelation, you know? One of those “AHA!” moments that just click.
Suddenly, everything about Kanban made perfect sense. It was like the missing puzzle piece in our quest for flow optimization.
I vividly recall a pivotal moment during one of my Scrum teams’ Daily Scrum meetings. It was when we decided to start actively managing the workflow. While the Kanban Guide doesn’t mandate any meetings, I found that walking the board on the Daily Scrum worked wonders. You can catch my take on it in my “Walking the Board” video — one of the most watched videos on my channel.
I remember this one team, struggling with an outdated board and a sea of items stuck in limbo — the infamous “blocked” column.
I suggested a daily walk-the–board exercise. And they were open to try it. A half-hour affair initially, with a team of just five! We reviewed all the items on the board. Some were missing info, needed a look at afterwards. I assured them it will get better. Slowly but surely, they got the hang of it. Within a week, those daily meetings became more efficient, the team got a better understanding of their work in progress and started managing itself. I could withdraw myself from the mix.
It’s one of my proudest success stories. Seeing the team’s productivity soar, PMs singing praises — it was a blast! And all it took was a little nudge in the right direction. The joys of effective Scrum mastering!
Use what you want to have updated
Now, even though Kanban doesn’t explicitly mandate it, sometimes a little extra help goes a long way. Through my years of experience, one thing’s become crystal clear: if we want something to stay relevant, we’ve got to use it. And that rings especially true for our Kanban board. Once the team started using it daily, magic happened — they took charge of their work like never before.
Four ways to manage your workflow, actively
Since the daily meeting is optional as per the Kanban Guide, let’s look at the four practices to help actively manage the workflow. Those are:
- Controlling Work In Progress
- Avoiding work items piling up in any part of the workflow
- Unblocking blocked work
- Ensuring work items do not age unnecessarily, using the SLE as a reference
1. Controlling work in progress
Controlling WIP is a core component of Kanban. Why’s it so crucial? Well, it’s the antidote to those pesky challenges like work piling up and distractions.
So, how do we work this magic? By applying the WIP limits. They’re like our secret weapon, nudging the team to finish what they started before diving into something new. They pave the way for powerhouse practices like pairing, swarming, and mobbing — where team members rally together to get stuff done.
To avoid any misconceptions, WIP limits aren’t set in ston — You can tailor them to fit your team’s needs — whether it’s one per column or one for the entire board. No restrictions here. After all, it’s about boosting efficiency, not to boss the team around.
2. Avoiding work items piling up in any part of the workflow
Let’s talk about avoiding those dreaded work item pile-ups. Ever heard of Little’s Law? In Kanban, it’s the link between throughput, cycle time, and work in progress in one neat formula .the longer the queue, the slower things move, and our cycle time shoots up. So, we’ve got to keep an eye on those piles to keep things flowing smoothly. Which leads me to the next practice…
3. Unblocking blocked work
Sometimes the aforementioned the long queues of work items happen due to blockages. Before abandoning the work item and moving on to start a new one we should try to do something about the blockage. Is there anyone that can help me? Can anything be done?
Retrospectives to the rescue! They can help to create policies of what to do when we get blocked.e.g. Many teams get blocked due to outside dependencies. Can we find patterns there and resolve the most recurrent dependencies? Other example is that we tend to create big work items? Can they be sliced? Retrospectives are our chance to spot trends, brainstorm solutions, and sometimes, just realize that we can let go of certain items altogether. Let’s unblock that workflow and keep the momentum flowing!
4. Ensuring work items do not age unnecessarily, using the SLE as a reference
SLE, or Service Level Expectation, is our go-to metric for gauging system health. Unlike a formal SLA, Service Level Agreement where we seem to be looking at a crystal ball and predicting the future, it’s more about the expectation. what our metrics, history, and experience tell us so we can forecast the future with a cetrain level of probability.So, when we notice items aging beyond their prime, it’s a red flag waving at us — a cue to take proactive action.
This is awesome, isn’t it? With just four simple tricks, we can unlock a world of improvements. It’s truly amazing to witness how Kanban transforms people’s work for the better.
I hope you now grasp the significance of actively managing your work. Reach out on LinkedIn if you’re interested in joining my ProKanban training or hosting a session at your company!
Thanks for tuning in. Until next time — bye!
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