Description
A Kanban Board is a visual work management system that enables understanding and optimization of continuous work being performed by a team or functional group. The board depicts the state of work across the top, and the flow of work as it goes through each state. A basic Kanban Board has states for “waiting,” “in progress,” and “completed.” Teams are free to adapt the board and can define as many states as needed to understand how much work is to be done, being done, and is done. A major goal of Kanban is to limit work in progress to drive improvements in efficiency and throughput. Choose Kanban when the work in the “waiting” state is not easily predictable, or when the type of work is driven by demand.
Kanban works well in many settings, and it is popular with teams that do application support and maintenance activities.
Typical Roles
Agile Team
Desired Behaviors
- 1.
Define the desired work states for the Kanban Board.
- 2.
Use visual information management systems to create, maintain, and display the board.
- 3.
Define team rules for limiting the work in progress.
- 4.
Add work to the “waiting” queue.
- 5.
Record basic information, such as the name of each team member who is doing the work in each state, and how much time the work item was in each state.
- 6.
Periodically analyze data from the Kanban Board to make improvements and increase the amount of work that can be “in progress.”