KANBAN PRACTICES

Mastering Kanban: The Ultimate Guide To Defining Workflows

How to step up our game in optimizing the teams’ work by adding some secret Kanban sauce

Maria Chec

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Let’s dive into the usual hiccups the software teams face with the development. Got tasks piling up in states like “Ready for PR” or “Ready for QA”? Board statuses gathering dust? And let’s not forget the classic: starting a bunch of things but wrapping up zilch.

Mastering Kanban Video on YouTube

As a freshly-baked ProKanban Trainer, I’m inviting you for a little Kanban adventure. Join me as we explore how weaving some Kanban magic can tackle these challenges head-on!

Defining and visualizing a workflow

Kanban, as described in The Kanban Guide, revolves around three fundamental practices. Today, we delve into Practice #1: Defining and visualizing a workflow.

Now, let’s get one thing straight: Kanban, as defined by ProKanban, isn’t just another framework or method; it is

“a strategy for optimizing the flow of value through a process that uses a visual, pull-based system.”
The Kanban Guide

“A strategy for optimizing the flow of value” not a framework, not a method, a strategy.

Visualize the workflow

So, what exactly does it mean to define and visualize a workflow?

Essentially, it entails mapping out the journey of your work from start to finish. It’s not just for support teams or factory floors. According to the guide,

“Kanban can work with virtually any workflow. its application is not limited to any one industry or context.”
The Kanban Guide

What proves particularly effective to me is integrating Kanban elements to the work of development teams. Doing so enables them to better manage their flow, limit work in progress, and keep boards and backlogs organized.

In order to help the teams improve the workflow, we need to start with defining and visualizing it.

“The explicit shared understanding of flow among Kanban system members within their context is called a Definition of Workflow (DoW).”
The Kanban Guide

It is a fundamental concept of Kanban, so let’s take a look at what the Definition of Workflow should contain. Let’s examine the key elements of the Definition of Workflow:

1. Units of value

“A definition of the individual units of value that are moving through the workflow. These units of value are referred to as work items (or items).”

This means we need to define what is the value we are providing, what our user stories, epics, features, etc. will contain. Imagine we’re a pizza place — our value would be the pizzas. If we are a software company our value may differ, we need to be able to define what it is.

2. Start and finish points

“Defined points at which work items are considered to have started and to have finished.”

This is very important as this will determine our work in progress (WIP) and its limits. It will also help to understand what “done” means. Remember Scrum and its Definition of Done (DoD)? When we create a Kanban board it is really important to define when the work starts and when it finishes.

3. States of WIP

“One or more defined states that the work items flow through from started to finished. Any work items between a start point and an endpoint are considered work in progress (WIP).”

If you start doing Kanban, you will hear a lot about WIP — work in progress. Yes it is another acronym and you’ll see that you’ll learn to appreciate it.

In order to improve the workflow we need to map it out first. At this step we flesh out the states our work goes through from start to finish.

Workflow States

4. Control Work in Progress

“A definition of how WIP will be controlled from started to finished.”

How are you going to control your WIP, so it doesn’t get out of hand. And we all know how easy that is to do and have an uncontrolled work in progress. You are free to define it as a team. Will you have a WIP limit in each of the columns

or just one for the whole?

5. Policies of the states

“Explicit policies about how work items can flow through each state from start to finish.”

How do we know the work item can move from one state to another? Those are some polices that are worth defining as well. It’s like defining the DoDs for each transition.

6. A service level expectation (SLE)

“which is a forecast of how long it should take a work item to flow from start to finish.”

This is when we use empiricism, like in Scrum. SLE, or Service Level Expectation, is our go-to metric for gauging system health. Unlike a formal Service Level Agreement is a metric based on the historial of our work. What’s the percentile, e.g in 85% of the cases we finish our work in 7 days. If item age goes significantly past this expectation, it means we might have a problem. Know your SLE.

Visualization through Kanban Boards

“The visualization of the DoW is called a Kanban board.”

The old, good Kanban board.

The Guide suggests that Kanban system members may need additional elements beyond the basic Definition of Workflow, such as values, principles, and working agreements. These supplementary elements are tailored to the specific circumstances of each team.

Think of it as a giant map tracing the journey from start to finish. Having all the crucial stages of our workflow laid out on the board is key. This transparency gives us a clear view of the action, helping us track progress and spot areas for improvement.

Flexibility

It’s all up to the team how they want to make their policies transparent. As I said, Kanban won’t get prescriptive. It provides the ground rules on which you can build your own workflow. You are only limited by your imagination and creativity.

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!

Stay tuned for the next episodes, we have two more Kanban Practices to cover!

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Maria Chec

Agile Coach and Content Creator at Agile State of Mind https://www.youtube.com/c/AgileStateofMind and Head of Agile Practice in Fyllo