Nine Myths About the Kanban Method
Since I started studying the Kanban Method, created by David J. Anderson, I’ve being seeing people disseminating myths about it everywhere, what urged me to enumerate nine of them here.
Although the Agile Manifesto starts with “We are uncovering better ways”, great part of the Agile community seems to be settled with already known ways and doesn’t really uncover other ways well enough, therefore losing the opportunity to know what Kanban truly is and continually evolve by using the method.
That part of the Agile community sees Kanban as a pull system and nothing more, without knowledge of what it means to efficiency and quality and are specially unaware of what Kanban really is:
Kanban is a change management method.
Kanban was originally conceived for knowledge work, taking from Toyota Production System and Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma the continuous improvement culture, while also adopting flow and queue theory. Kanban uses Theory of Constraints to improve only the system’s bottleneck, enabling global improvement with the minimum effort.
To the myths.
1. If I use a kanban board, I’m already practicing Kanban
A kanban board is a way to implement the following general practice of Kanban: visualize the work.
If a Kanban board is used to to manage a workflow, but with no care for Kanban principles and practices, it is not possible to affirm that the method is being used, so one doesn’t solve the problems Kanban is designed to solve.
In systems with a very high quantity of work items, it’s not always feasible to maintain a kanban board, but even so, Kanban can be used to analyse and improve the flow.
2. Kanban is for team level only
Kanban helps the team improve its flow, the business to meet customer criteria and robust outcomes, and the company to survive for many decades.
Kanban is used throughout the company’s hierarchy.
3. Kanban is an Agile method
Kanban is not under the Agile’s umbrella because it doesn’t requires the Agile Manifesto for anything.
Kanban is an alternative path to agility.
Instead of starting with a huge change like Agile does, imposing different roles and processes, Kanban’s approach is to start with the current roles and processes and pull changes for better (kaizen) only where improvements are needed. Therefore, Kanban is an evolutionary method that follows a path of small changes with faster results and less risk, differently of Agile’s revolutionary approach (kaikaku).
That said, I point that the very creator of Kanban considers irrelevant the issue of sorting Kanban as Agile or not.
4. Kanban vs Scrum
Scrum teams could and should use Kanban to improve continuously. Scrum.org has published the Kanban Guide for Scrum Teams that enables the PSK I - Professional Scrum with Kanban certification, adopts Kanban’s four out of six general practices while shifts Scrum’s events to be flow-based.
5. The team must be mature to use Kanban
One of Kanban principles is to start with what you do now, not putting any maturity as a ticket to start kanbanizing. Kanban Maturity Model suggests adequate practices for all maturity levels.
6. Kanban doesn’t care for people, only for processes
Since work is performed by people of all hierarchical levels, Kanban works with the following agendas:
- For teams to gain relief from abusive environments with overburdening, low quality and low job satisfaction;
- For middle managers to answer hard questions with confidence and make hard decisions with confidence;
- For senior managers to deliver strategic objectives with confidence, to lead the competition and to make the company survive on the long run.
7. There are no meetings in Kanban
Without imposing format or frequency, Kanban establishes seven cadences for decision-making that enable: to deliver the work, to improve processes, and to make the right things (the more lucrative options).
8. Kanban people are obsessed with flow
With the initial maturity levels, Kanban aims to achieve efficiency. Once flow is stabilized, Kanban aims for efficacy, by improving customer satisfaction and the company’s robustness.
Going deeper on the maturity levels, Kanban focus on leading the market and being antifragile; at this point flow ceased to be a problem a long time ago.
9. KMM is as complex as SAFe
KMM and SAFe are different things and shouldn’t be compared.
KMM is not a framework for scaled agile like SAFe. It’s a maturity model where each level suggests practices for teams, business units and the whole company.
SAFe is a scaled framework that prescribes: the organization of teams around value flows, time boxed events within which planning and execution are performed, and specific roles for people working on different levels.
You scale Kanban with more Kanban.
To scale Kanban one must identify connected services and promote dependencies management in each Kanban system. A kanban board can be used for coordination where needed. Kanban practices and kanban boards can be used for strategic portfolio management.
In order to learn more, please visit the resources linked throughout this article and read the books Essential Kanban Condensed and Essential Upstream Kanban.
Acknowledgment
This article would never have been written without Kanban University official training offered by Aspercom Educação Corporativa and the support from the Brazilian Kanban community, to whom I thank very much.
Also available on: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/nine-myths-kanbanmethod-gustavo-cocina/.
And in Portuguese on: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/nove-mitos-sobre-o-m%C3%A9todo-kanban-gustavo-cocina/.
