Visualize the workflow using Kanban.

If you can Visualize it, you can Improve it.

Kanban is a 🚀 system that emphasizes the flow of work and the stages involved in delivering value to the customer. It is based on short-duration iterations and requires us to define the value accurately. Thus, it is important to understand how our customers will utilize our services. 💡

What steps should the team complete to deliver the desired service to our customers?

Let’s take an example.
While developing the software, we should remember that finishing development is not valuable to the customer. It just finishes one stage of the workflow. After completing an iteration, ask yourself,

“Did the increment deliver any value to the customer?”

Sometimes, we name them increments or even Sprint Goals.
Kanban helps you understand the system's reality and the flow of work. When you implement Kanban, you 🏃‍♂️ “start with what you do now” and then bring an 🌱 “Evolutionary Change”.

Visualization — One of the six general practices of the Kanban Method

One of the general practices of Kanban is to "visualize" 🌅 the flow of work. This means you can see how the work progresses from start to finish until it is considered "Done." 🏁 To improve your team's ability to visualize work and workflow stages, you can use the KMM Practice map 🗺️ to measure and evolve their maturity. 📈

Kanban’s visualization practice can help you explore the details of the workflow. It can also help you think beyond the limits of SDLC or Software Development Life Cycle.🤔🔍🌅

The teams with lower maturity may detail the workflow as
“To Do → In Development → In Testing → Done”

After applying the Kanban Lens, you can visualize the workflow as value delivery to the customers. Your workflow may look like this:
“Ready for Development → In Development → In Review → Merged to Dev Environment → Ready for testing → In Dev testing → Ready for QA Verification → In Stage testing → In PO Acceptance → Approved for Production → Ready for Release → In DevOps → Delivered”

TL, DR

Define a detailed workflow and visualize delays, dependencies, and risks. It will also help you manage the stakeholders’ delivery expectations. You can optimize the flow, improve your process (like automation), and make your delivery lean. You can measure the time in status, lead time, aging of the work items in several workflow stages, time spent in queues, time spent in working and even delay due to dependencies and blockers. Once you know the time and delays, you can remove the causes of delay and improve your flow of work.