Kanban Methodology: Achieving Agile Project Success

Back in the 1940s, a Japanese Toyota engineer Taiichi Ohno, was fascinated by the system American grocery stores used to stock their shelves. They stocked only as many items as that day's customers needed.

This inspired him to apply the method in Toyota's production system and deliver the same level of efficiency on their assembly line. Their goal was to keep their inventory low but always adequate to meet the demand for the parts. They named it Kanban (Khan-Ban), also known as the “just in time” system.

Although initially gaining popularity in manufacturing industries, it has undergone some changes over the last few years and has been modified by David Anderson. With the rise of IT world and the digital age we are all part of, the Kanban method is usually presented online as visual panels with virtual sticky notes that you can move around to organize tasks and to-do items.

The six rules of Kanban include never passing defective products, taking only what’s needed, producing only the required quantity, leveling the production, fine-tuning the production or process optimization, and stabilizing and rationalizing the process. Toyota laid out these rules in their production process and are followed by the book to achieve the Just-in-time production system. If you think of an assembly line, these rules make perfect sense. When you look at them through the prism of Agile principles, they can also be applied to the digital industry.

Never passing on defective products— This rule has much to do with the concept of waste in Agile. The product must meet the standard quality protocols throughout each process stage. Otherwise, the defects will come up later during production and cause the team to take a step back and fix issues, which is much more costly than solving problems immediately before letting the product develop further.

Taking only what’s needed— In the manufacturing business, this rule indicates that you should only employ as much input as needed to produce the necessary quantity. Once again, we refer to Agile's “no waste” principle, meaning that you shouldn’t employ all the resources at once but rather adapt to the demanded quantity.

Producing only the required quantity— The Just-in-time concept can be best explained through the example of shelves in a supermarket, which is where Toyota’s industrial engineer and manager, Ohno Taiichi, found the inspirational idea. The concept is to put out only what’s demanded. You’ll display your products on the shelf, but only restock what’s been bought. You won’t burden yourself with inventory space, outdated products, storage costs, etc. This would mean working on tasks by their priority and within scope in the digital industry. So, if the client asked for a Valentine’s Day campaign on social media, you shouldn’t also throw in a strategy for the entire year.

Leveling the production— Leveling means reducing fluctuations. Kanban is a system that consists of sequential stages in the production process. If the output of stage two is overwhelming for stage three or vice versa, you’ll have a bottleneck on your hands. This is one of the most challenging aspects of product development as you need to either reduce the output on one end or increase the capacity at the other. No matter the solution you choose, practicing Lean means you can’t end up with a surplus or shortage at any point. A useful tool in this decision-making process is WIP (Work In Progress) Limit, which will allow you to maintain an uninterrupted and constant workflow.

Fine-tuning the production— Once you start implementing Kanban, it’s not time to congratulate yourself yet. Implementation is only the beginning of the optimization process. You and your team will have to work on discovering pain points and opportunities for improvement through regular feedback. Some metrics can help you with that: lead time, cycle time, and throughput. In time, flow diagrams will also show where the bottlenecks are. You can use all this information to optimize your process, implement the best practices, and reduce waste to a minimum.

Stabilizing and rationalizing the process— After using Kanban for a while, you’ll spot some issues, solve them, and eventually end up in a predictable system that can be standardized. Document your processes and standards and let everyone in the company access them easily. This way, the team will know how to work, and you’ll lay the ground with a solid foundation that will help you overcome future challenges with ease.

Experts say the main reasons for inefficiency are poor communication and lack of transparency. This causes delays, an unsynchronized team, and misunderstandings. Managers are focused on making the team as efficient as possible, but also keeping the activities effective. It’s irrelevant to be efficient if you’re doing the wrong thing! This is one of the reasons Kanban is so important for your workflow.

Visualizing the tasks and their progress helps teams stay focused and in tune. Minimizing the dispersion of efforts on multiple activities means reducing the risk of wasting time on context switching. It’s also easier to identify bottlenecks and remove roadblocks, improving the team’s workflow overall.

Some people still use whiteboards, but the common practices today suggest managers and scrum masters mostly use software to apply project management methodologies. ActiveCollab is a project management app that lets you organize your work and simplifies your processes. The column view in ActiveCollab is also called the Kanban view because it’s best suited for this framework’s implementation. You can name the task lists “To Do”, “In Progress”, and “Done”, and then fill the first column with tasks that you will later drag and drop through their stages. The system is very intuitive, and it lets the team interact and exchange feedback in the comment section within tasks, so information doesn’t get lost in emails.

Kanban is one of the most popular project management methodologies because it doesn’t require much extra effort to implement in any organization. This is one of simplest ways to increase the team’s efficiency. All you need is a board or a free online tool, and you can start organizing tasks through the columns To Do, Doing, and Done.

Kanban prevents miscommunication problems as it’s visually clear and leaves no room for misunderstandings. The team is synced and focused on one activity at a time. Implementing Kanban is very beneficial for teams with repetitive tasks and those that struggle with productivity and inefficiency.

The reason Kanban works best for repetitive and sequential activities lies in the origins of this methodology: the assembly line. Nevertheless, we have proved that Kanban can be implemented effectively in all industries. For example, the creative industry is made up of tasks that depend on each other. Publishing a post on social media requires collaboration between social media managers, designers, and video editors. Each has its own step to complete before the next can take over. Publishing a blog post is similar. Planning, drafting, editing, and publishing are all activities that can be easily followed through the columns of a Kanban board!