kanban-scrum-vorlagen-16zu9. Titel

Agile management with Kanban - here's what you should know!

|Tom Schweitzer
Kanban – a term you hear again and again in management circles. No wonder, as the method is enjoying increasing popularity and is being used in more and more areas. So, you should know a little about it if you want to join the conversation. What exactly is Kanban? Where can it be used and what are its benefits? And how is Kanban implemented? Here are the answers:

What is it and where does it come from? A Kanban definition

Kanban is one of the most widely used agile management methods today. It was originally developed for logistics control in production, back in the 1950s. At that time , engineer Taiichi Ohno was looking for a way to optimize production logistics for the Toyota factories in Japan . The goal was to achieve an improved production flow without compromising quality or creating production bottlenecks or surpluses.
Ohno drew his inspiration from supermarkets, where products are reordered when stocks are running low. He successfully applied this pull principle to production. The method was soon adopted by other companies and adapted to other areas, particularly project management and software development, thus expanding the Kanban definition. Employees and teams—or even individuals managing themselves—process tasks according to the pull principle. The method is simple, effective, motivating, and ensures a smooth workflow.

Kanban stack board template

Central element of the Kanban application: the Kanban board

So how does Kanban work? The Kanban principle is actually surprisingly simple. The central element gives the method its name. The word "Kanban" means something like "card" or "board" in Japanese. And in this method, a board visualizes the tasks and their status. A classic Kanban board has three columns: "to do," "in progress," and "done." Colored cards contain the different tasks and move from column to column depending on their progress.
The Kanban board is flexibly adaptable. This means that Kanban templates can use more or fewer columns to represent the stages of a development process. Employees and teams work according to a pull principle. They "pull" tasks to be completed and process them. These tasks then move to the next column. In this way, all tasks are processed quickly, and the agility of Kanban becomes readily apparent.
This provides the basic Kanban guidelines. Today, the Kanban board is no longer necessarily analog, but is used in digital or hybrid forms. Those who want to use Kanban in project management can easily do so with software solutions and appropriate Kanban templates, for example, in PowerPoint.

Kanban PowerPoint template
You can download the Kanban PowerPoint template here: https://www.presentationload.de/kanban.html

Rules of Kanban application: four principles and six practices

To ensure and increase the functionality of the system, it was supplemented by David Anderson, who transferred Kanban to software development in 2007, with four basic principles and six practices as a Kanban guide.

The four principles are:

  • Start with what you are doing now:
    Kanban doesn't change processes; it's applied to them so they adapt automatically. Therefore, it can be implemented at any time without major changes.

  • Tracking incremental, evolutionary changes:
    Kanban is intended to bring about profound changes. However, these changes are not meant to be implemented once, but rather developed gradually. This minimizes uncertainty, unrest, and resistance.

  • Consider current processes, roles & responsibilities:
    Since Kanban is not a revolutionary innovation, existing structures and approaches do not necessarily have to give way to the method if they prove to be meaningful and valuable.

  • Encourage leadership at all levels:
    Kanban should not only encourage improvements at the management level, but should be adopted and implemented by all involved so that the everyday, practical level also benefits.

The six practices are:

  • Visualize the workflow:
    Process steps or tasks must be visualized on the Kanban board for everyone to see. A consistent workflow must be in place and visible.

  • Limit the number of tasks:
    The number of tasks being processed must be appropriately limited to prevent too many tasks from being processed simultaneously or losing focus, thus preventing bottlenecks that could lead to a ticket backlog.

  • Define clear rules:
    The requirements and rules of the process (for example, when a task is considered completed) should be clear to all involved.

  • Promoting leadership:
    Employees at all levels should be seen as responsible and activated.

  • Use models:
    Models are useful tools for better understanding and for finding more efficient approaches.

  • Continuous improvement:
    To achieve sustainable, continuous improvement, processes and practices must be regularly analyzed and adapted.

What can Kanban (not) do?
Nothing in life is perfect, and Kanban is no exception. Like all methods, it has its advantages and disadvantages, strengths and weaknesses. It's not the best choice for every work environment from among the many available methods. Therefore, careful consideration is necessary.

What works well with Kanban and where is the method advantageous?

  • Kanban's agility becomes evident in its approach to workload management. The high degree of self-organization and personal responsibility increases both work motivation and speed.
  • With Kanban, work distribution and management are largely autonomous. This reduces management tasks.
  • Kanban is relatively flexible. It can be easily adapted to individual processes and can also be combined with other management methods.
  • The agile method promotes fast processes and makes problems and negative developments visible just as quickly.

And what are the weaknesses of Kanban?

  • For Kanban to work, work steps and tasks must be clearly distinguishable from one another. Highly intertwined processes cannot be handled very efficiently with this method.
  • Since tasks are not delegated appropriately with Kanban, time management can sometimes become a problem.
  • Therefore, where very rigid deadlines apply, other methods may be more advantageous.
  • In teams with highly specialized employees, Kanban can lead to bottlenecks and varying levels of employee workload when completing tasks.
  • Therefore, the range of skills required for Kanban should be covered as evenly as possible.
  • The Kanban board requires careful attention to maintain an overview.

Similar yet different: Kanban and Scrum

Scrum is just as well-known and widespread as Kanban. Scrum is also an agile project management method. It shares many similarities with Kanban, but also some unique features that differentiate it. Many potential users who want to use Kanban or Scrum in project management wonder which method is better suited to them. This question cannot be answered definitively – and it doesn't really need to be, because the methods are not mutually exclusive, but can certainly be combined, as a look at their similarities and differences shows:

The similarities:

  • Both methods are agile and work with a pull mechanism (tasks are selected from a task pool), with a limited work in progress.
  • Both Kanban and Scrum promote and emphasize transparent processes and the accountability of those involved at all levels.
  • Improvements in both methods are expected to be achieved through regular analyses of the ongoing process.

Here's where Kanban and Scrum differ:

  • Scrum has a more robust methodological foundation and is more complex than Kanban. This applies to processes (for example, in the form of iterations) and rules.
  • Scrum assigns fixed roles to the participants (Product Owner, Scrum Master, and Team). This means that Scrum requires a certain team size, whereas Kanban can even be used by individuals to organize their work.
  • Scrum includes a backlog as an additional category for task allocation, allowing for the identification of priorities and higher-level tasks. It takes precedence over the tasks to be completed. In Kanban, this tool is optional.
  • A Scrum board is reset after a sprint, while the Kanban board can, in principle, be continuously updated.
  • Scrum, by its very structure, is only suitable for project work and hardly for routine tasks, whereas Kanban can be applied to both.
Differences between Kanban and Scrum

Hybrid solution: Scrumban

The idea that Kanban and Scrum can be effectively combined is nothing new. And that's why a hybrid model exists: Scrumban. It combines elements from both methods. Meetings, sprints, and feedback loops from Scrum are linked with the Kanban concept of cross-functional responsibility and continuous improvement. Ultimately, however, the methods can be flexibly combined anyway, so an explicit decision for one approach isn't necessarily required.