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Fun fact: The way kanban is used in project management is different than the original kanban used in manufacturing plants. In "IRL" kanban cards are handed _bac

by sly010 6y ago

Fun fact: The way kanban is used in project management is different than the original kanban used in manufacturing plants. In "IRL" kanban cards are handed _backwards_ to the previous station to signal demand, so things don't get worked on, unless they are needed downstream.

lucisferre 6y ago
Lean kanban was never meant for project management, it is a process management and demand leveling technique. Agile card boards like this bear little resemblance to Kanban, but the name caught on with the original Kanban software book. It is still a decent book though, and does in fact cover many of the principles of lean kanban. That said, I've rarely met a team using a kanban board that is familiar with the book or the principles of kanban. https://www.amazon.ca/Kanban-Successful-Evolutionary-Technology-Business/dp/0984521402 https://www.amazon.ca/Kanban-Successful-Evolutionary-Technol...
- ebiester 6y ago
  I would say a large number of people also understood it from The Phoenix Project.
deskamess 6y ago
Suddenly things make sense... I would look at a pile of (virtual) cards in a spot and wonder why there was a pile of cards when a goal was not too have a pileup.
karmakaze 6y ago
The non-kanbanness of software project boards is the lack of limits or limits applied to the wrong resource. E.g. the number of items of in-progress or in-review should be limited to the number of developers who perform these actions. Setting a column limit irrespective of this doesn't make sense. Also shouldn't have N cards assigned to one person and none assigned to N-1 others. In short column/state != limited resource.
peterwwillis 6y ago
Yep, but it's logically the same. The Todo/Ready pile is the "demand" that is waiting to be fulfilled, and the worker "pulls" a new card from the ToDo/Ready pile, rather than "pull" a part to assemble a car. If anyone is using Kanban for tech work and hasn't read the wiki page, the concepts behind Kanban are far more important than the actual process. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban The idea of Scrum Sprints applied to this has always seemed ridiculous to me. Scrum Sprints box the time for a given set of work ("We're going to get these 3 items done in a sprint") rather than just dynamically allocate work in a steady stream. In Kanban, you just take work and execute it as it appears for you, and it gets done when it gets done. They don't make one car a day, they make a dynamically shifting amount of cars per day, as needed. (Incidentally, I just found this adorable Toyota Production Children's Questions page https://www.toyota.co.jp/en/kids/faq/b/01/ https://www.toyota.co.jp/en/kids/faq/b/01/)
- fidrelity 6y ago
  Scrum sprints limit work in progress just like kanban. It's just that with kanban you can set more granular WIP limits. I wrote about this here: https://andreschweighofer.com/agile/kanban-as-an-evolution-of-scrum/ https://andreschweighofer.com/agile/kanban-as-an-evolution-o...

by sly010 6y ago

lucisferre 6y ago

Lean kanban was never meant for project management, it is a process management and demand leveling technique. Agile card boards like this bear little resemblance to Kanban, but the name caught on with the original Kanban software book. It is still a decent book though, and does in fact cover many of the principles of lean kanban. That said, I've rarely met a team using a kanban board that is familiar with the book or the principles of kanban. https://www.amazon.ca/Kanban-Successful-Evolutionary-Technology-Business/dp/0984521402 https://www.amazon.ca/Kanban-Successful-Evolutionary-Technol...

ebiester 6y ago
I would say a large number of people also understood it from The Phoenix Project.

deskamess 6y ago

Suddenly things make sense... I would look at a pile of (virtual) cards in a spot and wonder why there was a pile of cards when a goal was not too have a pileup.

karmakaze 6y ago

The non-kanbanness of software project boards is the lack of limits or limits applied to the wrong resource. E.g. the number of items of in-progress or in-review should be limited to the number of developers who perform these actions. Setting a column limit irrespective of this doesn't make sense. Also shouldn't have N cards assigned to one person and none assigned to N-1 others. In short column/state != limited resource.

peterwwillis 6y ago

Yep, but it's logically the same. The Todo/Ready pile is the "demand" that is waiting to be fulfilled, and the worker "pulls" a new card from the ToDo/Ready pile, rather than "pull" a part to assemble a car. If anyone is using Kanban for tech work and hasn't read the wiki page, the concepts behind Kanban are far more important than the actual process. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban The idea of Scrum Sprints applied to this has always seemed ridiculous to me. Scrum Sprints box the time for a given set of work ("We're going to get these 3 items done in a sprint") rather than just dynamically allocate work in a steady stream. In Kanban, you just take work and execute it as it appears for you, and it gets done when it gets done. They don't make one car a day, they make a dynamically shifting amount of cars per day, as needed. (Incidentally, I just found this adorable Toyota Production Children's Questions page https://www.toyota.co.jp/en/kids/faq/b/01/ https://www.toyota.co.jp/en/kids/faq/b/01/)

fidrelity 6y ago
Scrum sprints limit work in progress just like kanban. It's just that with kanban you can set more granular WIP limits. I wrote about this here: https://andreschweighofer.com/agile/kanban-as-an-evolution-of-scrum/ https://andreschweighofer.com/agile/kanban-as-an-evolution-o...