Lean Kanban project management is a dynamic approach combining the principles of Lean and the practices of Kanban to streamline processes, reduce waste, and enhance team collaboration. Let's take a closer look at the core concepts behind Lean and Kanban, delve into their origins, and distill a step-by-step roadmap to implementing Lean Kanban in your projects.
The powerful Lean practices originated under the banner of the Toyota Production System (TPS). Developed by Toyota in the 20th century, TPS revolutionized the automotive industry by creating a culture of continuous improvement and unwavering customer focus, for which the car makers are still known today. The driving force behind Lean is the relentless pursuit of eliminating all kinds of waste (muda, mura, muri) and maximizing value delivery across all process steps. It is most commonly applied to industries such as manufacturing, healthcare and software development.
Kanban - on the other hand - emerged as a visual management system within TPS. Its roots lie in the Japanese term kanban which translates to visual signal or card. Kanban provides a systematic way to manage work as it flows through a process, making it visible, limiting work in progress, and optimizing throughput. Over time, Kanban has transcended its manufacturing origins to become one of the most popular methods for implementing Lean thinking - initially in software development - and then across all other knowledge-based work.
When combined, the Lean and Kanban approach promotes achieving a transparent and visual workflow that is easy to streamline and focus on efficiency through a team's continued improvement efforts. The benefits of using Lean Kanban project management are:
Begin by forming small, cross-functional teams that match your project's requirements and maintain some level of autonomy.
Decide on the iteration's length to align with the work's nature, product vision, available resources, and success criteria.
Create a set of policies or strategies that your team can follow. These policies will work to ensure everyone is on the same page and can access the big picture in real-time. That, in turn will increase the team's motivation and preparedness to meet the — possibly ever-changing — demand.
Visualize your Lean Kanban process on a task board, breaking the workflow into columns representing different process stages. Work items move through these columns as they progress.
Limiting work in progress is a crucial aspect of Lean Kanban project management. Adherence to WIP limits prevents multitasking, allowing your team to concentrate fully on specific tasks, reducing delivery time, and boosting job satisfaction.
Execute your project while keeping policies and WIP limits in mind. Appoint a Kanban sponsor or change manager to oversee the process, increasing the project's likelihood of success.
Monitor the process and measure its properties, including throughput, lead time, cycle time, and other relevant metrics. Many online Lean Kanban project management tools offer readily available analytics, e.g. time reports, cumulative flow charts, breakdown charts or lead and cycle time graphs.
Regularly review the process's performance based on the board's metrics. Determine whether it aligns with your expectations and be ready to make necessary adjustments. Continuous improvement — the forever-evolving streamlining of the process — is a core goal of Lean Kanban, one worth underscoring, as it sometimes gets overlooked by new adopters.
While reviewing the work, in some cases, you may decide to pivot or even abandon the new process shape. Experimentation is a valid part of Lean Kanban, and both success and failure offer lessons to learn from.
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