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 project manager, improving your team performance is always at the forefront of your mind. Without knowing how fast your team is working, 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…
Get Started with Kanban using Trello Boards
The Kanban Method has been used to improve productivity and optimise processes – with great success since the 1940s. No longer confined to the factory floor where it was first implemented, people now apply Kanban to studying, retail management and software development. Using a Kanban board to visualise your workflow is a key component. Trello is free, simple and easy to use project management tool ideal for getting started with Kanban. What is Kanban Kanban, meaning “signboard” or “billboard” in Japanese,…
Staying Sharp: 5 Team Benefits of Project Status Tracking
Whether you’re a two-person startup or the director in a Fortune 500 giant, real-time project status tracking is critical. Modern analytical software means that there’s no excuse for losing track of a project, missing a deadline, or running over budget. But there’s more to effective project management. In this article we’ll take a look at 5 ways in which effective project status tracking can keep your team productive, your projects organised, and your deliverables on-schedule. Project Updates at a Glance…
