Continuous Improvement: Kaizen
Improvement is not a one-time event. There is no shortage of techniques, tools and software that present themselves as the solution to all of your problems, but real-world business environments are never that simple. Lasting change happens in increments, over time, each new improvement building on the one before. Today we’ll look at how applying the Japanese concept of Kaizen brings continuous improvement to your business practices, increases productivity and improves team morale. What is Kaizen? In Japanese, Kaizen is…
The Top 10 Benefits of Kanban
Kanban is a method applied across all fields of work to help teams drive down costs and become more efficient by visualising and improving workflows. Kanban gives you the flexibility to build sustainable competitive advantage and empower your team to accomplish more, faster. In this article we’ll take a look at 10 benefits of Kanban for your business. 1. Better visibility Visualisation is an important Kanban practice, and the most recognisable feature of the method is the Kanban board. Every…
Understanding Your Data: Kanban Analytics
Kanban processes improve by continuously making incremental changes. Effective changes are built upon intelligible and unambiguous data. A picture is worth a thousand words – how many data points does a chart convey? In this article we’ll take a look at how you can use Kanban analytics to understand your data, spot issues and make your process more efficient. Cumulative flow diagram The cumulative flow diagram tracks the total amount of tasks in progress. Each coloured band shows a different…
Evaluate Team Productivity: Throughput Histogram
Project managers are ultimately assessed by how fast and how much their team delivers. In the Kanban Method, throughput is the key measure of team productivity. No matter how many tasks are being worked on, throughput only measures what has been completed. While kanban throughput is commonly displayed as a bar chart, you can gain much better insights into your process by using a throughput histogram. Histograms display the frequency distribution of your data. Learning to read these charts enables…
Keeping Things Clear: Kanban Rules
In any project, work items need to be prioritised above others. Classes of Service (CoS) are a way of setting up parallel workflow streams in Kanban projects to handle tasks with different levels of priority. For Classes of Service to work correctly, however, you must set Kanban rules on how different classes should be treated. So what does this mean for you and your team in practice? Prioritisation The first step to implementing Kanban rules is to define your Classes…
Do Less to Do More: Kanban WIP Limits
Have you felt like your team is always busy, but nothing is ever quite finished? With a constant stream of new requests from clients and management, it’s easy to jump from task to task without delivering results. Kanban WIP limits stop too many tasks from getting stuck in the “Doing” stage – and get more Done. Apply them to your Kanban board to improve team focus, reduce cycle times and increase customer satisfaction. What are Kanban WIP limits? Work In…
Productive Project Management: Kanban Team
A smooth, efficient workflow is essential to a successful project. The Kanban Method has exploded in popularity as a way to optimise processes in all kinds of teams, especially in Agile software development. But what is Kanban and what makes a Kanban team? What is Kanban? Kanban – sometimes translated as “signboard”, “billboard” or “visual signal” – is a workflow management method with a long history. Invented in the 1940s as a way to improve manufacturing productivity, it has since…
Maximise Customer Satisfaction: Kanban Cycle Time
The one question that project managers hate to hear – “How long will this take?”. Being able to estimate how much time is needed for a team using the Kanban method to complete a client request lets project managers plan ahead and inspires client confidence. Kanban cycle time tracks the average time taken and the probability to complete any type of task within a project. While cycle time can be used to assess your team’s efficiency, it can also be used…
Boost Team Performance: Kanban Throughput
As a product manager, improving your team performance is always at the forefront of your mind. Without knowing how much your team delivers results, it’s impossible to evaluate your performance and give accurate delivery estimates to your customers. Kanban throughput measures your team’s capacity to deliver and enables you to make data-driven decisions about your future performance. What is throughput? Throughput in Kanban refers to the amount of work delivered over a certain period. No matter how many work items your…
What to Measure and Why: Metrics in Kanban
You might have heard the saying “what gets measured gets managed”. Monitoring progress and measuring performance is a key component of Kanban – both for tracking your project and making your process more efficient over time. Here we will explain the specific metrics & analytics in Kanban that you should be using to monitor your team performance and your process efficiency and delivery times, as well as the red flags to watch for that signal trouble ahead. Average cycle times Kanban…
