How Kanban can help your team and your business and why YOU should be looking at it. If you like the presentation, you can learn more at www.swiftkanban.com

1. WHY YOU SHOULD CARE ABOUT
KANBAN
JP Patil
Director, Strategic Initiatives - Digite, Inc.

2. Some Questions to Ask Yourself
 Is your team constantly improving? Do you wish it would?
 Is it hard to agree on what to change? Is it even harder to
implement change?
 Do you find your team is constantly task switching? Is your
team getting burned out?
 Are you playing the guessing game and missing deadlines?
 Are you delivering the value you know you are capable of?

3. What Can Help?
KANBAN!

4. History
 Kanban was created by Taiichi Ohno for Toyota
 Kanban is a driver of Just In Time and Lean in the Toyota
Production System
 Kanban has been widely used in manufacturing for more
than 50 years
 Applying Kanban to Knowledge Work? The Kanban
Method
 Combines aspects of the Theory of Constraints and Lean
and other production techniques with Kanban
Taiichi Ohno W. Edward Deming Eli Goldratt David J. Anderson

5. What is Kanban?
Kanban – Japanese term for
“signboard” or “Billboard” that
indicates “available capacity (to
work)” or a visual cue to begin
work.
Kanban System - A visual system for
managing work moving through a
process – the “value stream”

6. Thirsty? Hungry?

7. So Why Should you Care?
 Kanban will Help you Get Lean!
 Visualize and Map your Value Stream
 Continuous Flow
 Incremental Change, Continuous Improvement
 Be Data Driven

8. Visualize

9. So Why Is Everything Text Based?

10. A Kanban Board – What’s Going On in my Value
Stream?
What is in Development or Testing? What is blocked? Who is
overloaded? Are we heading for problems? Who can help? What is
ready to ship?
Testing is a
bottleneck. Going
to have issues.
TFS Integration is
held up.
WIP violation Critical defect still
being tested
Ready to be
released!

11. The Importance of Continuous Flow
 Prevent the
Bullwhip Effect
 Variations in flow
have a greater
impact in
downstream activities

12. Multitasking is Bad
“It’s unequivocally the case that workers who are doing multiple things at one
time are doing them poorly,” said Clifford Nass, director of the Communication
Between Humans and Interactive Media Lab at Stanford University.
“The human brain just really isn’t built to switch rapidly from one task to
another. Workers who constantly multitask are hurting their ability to get work
done, even when they are not multitasking. People become much more
distracted, can’t manage their memory very well.”
Companies that demand multitasking may be damaging productivity. “It would
be a total tragedy if when we have so much potential to make the work force
more intelligent, we are actually making the work force dumber,” Nass said.
“Companies that are demanding that workers multitask might not only be
hurting their productivity, but may be making the workforce worse thinkers.”
*Ruth Mantell, Wall Street Journal Market Watch, July 12, 2011, “Multitasking:
More work, less productivity”

13. Stop Starting and Start Finishing
 Pull
 Work can be started when there is capacity
 Team members “buy in” when pulling a task
 Unplanned tasks do not disrupt the system
 Limit WIP
 Balance demand with throughput
 Establish Cadence – Continuous Even Flow
 Reduce task switching and multitasking
 One Piece Flow/ Minimum Marketable Features
 Transfer of one piece of work at a time rather than batches
 Reduce partially done work and overload
 Deliver more often with higher value

14. Revolutions are Bloody
 Kanban is Not
 Prescriptive
 Revolutionary
 Top Down Change
 Kanban is
 Evolutionary
 Transparency
 Team Based Change
 Scientific Experimentation

15. If You Can’t Measure It, You Can’t Fix It
 Measure Quality and System Performance
 Implement Feedback Loops
 Focus on the Right Metrics
 Cycle Time and Lead Time
 Cumulative Flow Diagram
 Control Charts
 Electronic Kanban Tools Capture Data Automatically

16. Why Guesstimate, Predict!
 Historical data available
 Statistics applied to Cycle Time
 Use Class of Service for greater
granularity
 Don’t guess, you can predict
within defined standard
deviations of when a task will be
completed

17. What is Lean?
 Preserve and deliver value
 Eliminate waste
 Any resources not being used to drive value are being
wasted
 Continuously reflect and improve

18.  The 5 Pillars of Lean
1) Map the Value Stream
2) Pull
3) Continuous Flow
4) Continuous Improvement
5) Deliver Value
How Do you Become Lean?

19. Kanban to Lean
Kanban Applied The 5 Pillars of Lean
Value Stream Mapping ✔
Pull ✔
Continuous Flow ✔
Continuous Improvement ✔
Deliver Value ✔

20. Am I Lean Now?

21. We Improved 300%
Hear our story
Thursday at 1:45pm –
Visual Requirements
Management with
Kanban

22. Kanban Knows No Boundaries
 Internally We Also Use Kanban for
• HR
• Finance
• Sales
• Marketing
 People use Swift-Kanban for
 All of the above plus
 Legal Transaction Management
 Book Publishing
 Video Game Development
 Personal Kanban
 And more

23. Kanban for Kids
https://micknelson.wordpress.com/2012/10/03/kanban-for-kids/

24. Tackle Those Questions with Kanban
 Constantly Improve
 Incremental Change
 Less Task Switching, Smooth Out Flow
 Deliver on Time for Higher Value
 Be Lean

25. Want to Learn More?
© Digite, Inc.
25
 Contact Information
 jpatil@digite.com
 @jpatil
 Learn more at
 www.swift-kanban.com
 www.digite.com
 Connect with us
 Twitter - @swiftkanban/
@digite
 Facebook –
www.facebook.com/digite
 Our Blog, http://swift-
kanban.com/blog.html
 The Yahoo Group kanbandev
 David J. Anderson’s
Book, Successful Evolutionary
Change for Your Technology
Business
 Al Shalloway’s
Blog, http://www.netobjectives.c
om/blog
 Jim Benson’s
Blog, http://www.personalkanba
n.com/pk/blog
About us About Kanban