Top 7 Things to Stop Doing in Kanban
The right way to use Kanban for managing work efficiently
Kanban is a software development framework. It leverages the JIT (just-in-time) principles by matching the amount of work in progress (WIP) to the team’s capacity. This gives teams more flexible planning options, faster output, clearer focus, and transparency throughout the development cycle.
Many software organisations use Kanban to implement Agile, DevOps, IT and even customer related tasks. But only few get the benefit of using Kanban.
If Kanban is not implemented in the right way, you will not see its benefit. Kanban itself will become a bottleneck in execution flow.
This is because of the following 7 pitfalls, that you may be doing while using Kanban.
Pitfall#1: Kanban is a technique not a process
Kanban provides a framework to manage flow of tasks. The team who uses Kanban board to execute every step in the process then, Kanban will start becoming a bottleneck. The use of Kanban board should be easy and the team should not keep going back to the board every time there is progress.
If there are many stages in the board, then it will be tedious for the team members to move the task card across stages. Due to this, instead of moving the cards, team members will just progress in their task. This takes away the benefit of understanding the progress.
Pitfall#2: Communication is ignored
Kanban should not be viewed as just assigning tasks to team members and forget. The team meetings should occur, the tasks to be taken up should be agreed. If there are risks or dependencies, it must be highlighted.
Kanban is a Agile process, so all the communication that are relevant should be scheduled and tracked. Without this, Kanban will not be effective. One difference from Scrum based Agile versus Kanban based Agile is that the meeting may not be required to occur on a daily basis.
Pitfall#3: Tasks detailing is not carried out
Kanban will help you to track and control any type of task. But it will be of no benefit if the tasks are not detailed. Like any other process, the tasks should be detailed to agree on definition of done.
Poorly defined task will not lead to desired result. Look at how the tasks are detailed and reviewed before it is assigned to a team member.
Pitfall#4: Prioritisation of tasks is ignored
Having tasks in the board and not prioritising based on the current needs, is not the mistake of Kanban. The person who is driving the board, should assess the situation and prioritise the tasks as per the up coming release needs.
This is where many team go wrong. Task prioritisation is important irrespective which tool or technique is used. It applies to Kanban as well. So, review the strategy to prioritise the tasks in the board.
Pitfall#5: WIP Limits are not used
Kanban should be used to control the flow of task according to the capacity of the team. The team who uses Kanban incorrectly, they will be focusing on something else other than finishing the work.
The Work In Progress (WIP) limit will help you to optimise the flow by having maximum number of tasks in a particular stage. This will help the team to complete single work items faster by ensuring focus on finishing current tasks before starting new ones.
If you are not using the limits, many tasks starts piling at a stage where there is lack of capacity, in-turn delaying the release. This is why many teams go wrong in using Kanban effeciently.
Pitfall#6: Due dates are not honoured
Since many feel that Kanban is not Scrum, no due date are set. This will create lot of issues. The objective of Kanban is to reduce the cycle time (time taken from task start to finish).
If you do not have a due date in place for every task, how will you measure what was planned vs actual. Without this information, team cannot evaluate what is going wrong in the flow and how to improve it.
Pitfall#7: Kanban board is treated like a Task board
Kanban board looks like a task board. But there is a subtle difference. Kanban technique helps to control the flow, improve release cycle time, identifying bottlenecks in the process.
Many teams treat it as a simple task board, and fail to get the benefits.
As a wrap up, it is important to realise that Kanban’s purpose is to optimise the way we work without defining the exact steps we take.
The team members should provide importance to continuous improvement. This can be achieved by optimizing cycle time. This will help the team to forecast the delivery of future work.
The team’s goal should be to reduce the amount of time a task takes to move through the entire process. If the average cycle time drop, then it is an indicator of success.
