OKI Agile: Kanban – the dashboard of doing
Tryggvi Björgvinsson - August 3, 2017 in agile, kanban, Our Work
Less can lead to more
The opposite of Scrum in the agile world is perhaps Kanban. It’s designed to not interfere in any way with how the team already works. It may even be an addition to Scrum. It’s a form of what has been called Just-In-Time delivery/development.
Spreadsheet planning
In its essence, Kanban is progress visualised in a structured spreadsheet. You have columns that show different stages of progress or work. The different stages can include:- Incoming work
- Brainstorming/Specifications
- Implementation/development
- Ready for review
- In tests/proofreading
- Ready for deployment
- Deployed
Visualising progress
As work progresses on each requirement item, it moves between the different columns. This creates the Kanban dashboard, visualising progress of the project. Kanban encourages autonomy and leadership on all levels. Every team member can come in each day, have a look at what’s needed and just do some work and then once done, move it between columns. That’s part of the just-in-time attitude. We don’t need to plan everything in beforehand, things will be done just in time. That means for managers, who normally push schedules for work to team members, they now have to sit back and give the team autonomy over the process. Likewise, team members who are used to being told what to do, now have to take matters into their own hands and pull the work that needs to be done.

Principles
Kanban is really simple, it’s all about visualising the work flow and not overwhelming the team. It’s built around four principles:- It should work with whatever process is currently used by the team
- It helps the team make small incremental changes towards improvement
- It respects roles and responsibilities of each team member
- To each her/his own, team members are autonomous and leaders over their own work