Kanban Board: Building Your Leadership Tool Box
Come on in…The water’s warm.
Being a child of early Information Technology, I was raised on the Waterfall Methodology. Having a very logical and linear mind, it made perfect sense. Projects started at the top of the system development life cycle and fell to the bottom like a waterfall.
Every project started the same way. Standing at the top of a project, looking over the edge at the pool of bubbling success below. Adrenaline pumping as I dove off the top, dropping straight down through the phases of conception, initiation, analysis, design, development, testing, deployment and maintenance. Sounds smooth right? Wrong!
These heart pumping plummets often resulted in hitting rock ledges on the way down. Entering the pool of success at the bottom only to discover the pool was only knee-deep. Ouch!
Hello Agile Methodology
Being an IT Professional means constantly climbing the educational ladder and attempting to stay up-to-date on current trends. I found myself sitting in a classroom full of other eager IT beavers learning the processes, tricks and tips of Agile Methodology.
The master mechanic at the front of the room opened his Snap-On quality toolbox and pulled out a new tool I’d never laid eyes on before. He called it a Kanban board. It glowed like the holy grail! It promised to answer all my prayers.
What’s all the Hoopla?
The Kanban board can be as simple as a physical board with post-it notes, a white board using markers or a more sophisticated digital Kanban board using one of many software systems.
Kanban boards focus on less starting and more finishing. The master mechanic actually used the phrase “Stop Starting & Start Finishing.” This phrase resonated with me. My current work environment has changing priorities and bottlenecks continuously interrupting productivity. Sound familiar? I bet!
Kanban was introduced as a tool to track Agile Sprints, but I quickly saw its potential to track, organize and schedule just about anything; work or personal.
Setting up a Kanban Board
Kanban boards are simple and easily adaptable to your current workflow processes and best part…No Rules!
- All About the Buckets: Identifying buckets is easy. We all have them. Whether your buckets are months on a calendar, functional groups of an organization/team or workflow processes. In the case of workflow buckets; To-Do, In-Progress, Testing, and Completed buckets may be used. Tasks move from bucket to bucket while navigating thru the workflow.
- Hey! Don’t Push: Try pulling! Team members pull tasks from the To-Do bucket to the In-Progress bucket. When a task is complete, team members can assist someone else on their task or pull another one from the To-Do bucket. Interruptions are a thing of the past. Work and productivity just keep flowing! New tasks are not pulled until the current one is complete; hence the phrase “Stop Starting & Start Finishing.”
- Okay! Open Your Eyes: Visualization is one of the huge benefits of the Kanban board. Work can be visually represented and process bottlenecks quickly identified. The team sees the entire workload and has the autonomy to take action on driving the work to the finish line. Leaders see the entire project, where tasks are at, and can take action accordingly when roadblocks/bottlenecks are identified.
Check It Out
Take a look at a sample Kanban board for workflow/requests-type implementations.
What is a Task Anyway?
A task can be a simple item on a list or as complex and detailed as you like. Take a look!
- Assigned: The team member claiming the task as it gets pulled from the To-Do bucket to the In-Progress bucket.
- Checklists: Indicates the “Definition of Done.” Completion is clear and concise, reducing confusion and miscommunication issues.
- Attachments: External files holding pertinent user stories, documentation, models, etc.
- Activity: Tracked actions and comments.
- Due Date: Clear and concise deadline.
- Tags: User-defined indicators of priority, status, work complexity or anything else of meaning.
- Watching (or Following): Users to be notified of task actions. Usually Project Managers and Team Leaders.
Putting it to Work
During the Agile Methodology training, the master mechanic sold me on the benefits of Kanban boards. With my leadership toolbox in hand, I skipped back to the office to put my latest and greatest gadget to work.
After selecting a Kanban tool, I configured my new Kanban board. But how was I going to successfully introduce this to the team?
Why, in our Daily “Stand-Up” meeting of course! Don’t be shy — check out my article.
At our next Daily “Stand-Up” meeting, I shared my newfound knowledge of the Agile Methodology. While my team was not able to incorporate fully staffed Agile projects, we were able to incorporate many flavours of Agile into our work. One of those being Kanban boards.
As I opened my own toolbox and let the holy grail shine, I could see their eyes getting bigger and ideas starting to churn.
I was still swimming at the bottom of the waterfall but with a touch of Agile, the pool became deeper, and I waved to the team and yelled “Come on in…The water’s warm!”
Scott Kennie is a metro-redneck. He’s worked in corporate information technology management for over 15 years. He considers himself a sarcastic realist. He’s also a Dad. He lives with his wife, three dogs and his alter ego; Bat Hubby who’s a racecar driver. His motto: live life and laugh all the way to the grave.
