What it means to be DOING Kanban

So I’ve been thinking about this question for a while… what does it mean to be doing Kanban? Obviously I’ve been committed to Kanban for a while as we’ve built a solution around it, but even though we have all kinds of wonderful Kanban and other metric dashboards going, we haven’t always been on top of our Kanban game and receiving the results we wanted. And really it is a great game to play, and the rules are super easy to remember.

Did you know- just because you use a Kanban board, it doesn’t mean you’re using Kanban methods? CW Kanban has many powerful use cases, but only those who adopt Kanban concepts in their workflows will see the efficiency gains and reduced waste promised by Agile (working in short cycles and adjusting as you go; it suits service and project teams, not only software) methods.

Here’s a few quick questions to help you know if you’re using Kanban methods:

1. Is there someone, anyone, in your team who regularly prioritizes new tickets in a column in Kanban?
2. When a technician wants to start working on a new ticket, does he or she pick the top card in one specific column in Kanban?
3. Before a technician starts a new ticket, does he or she review already-started work to see if anything can be moved towards completion?

If you answered NO to any question, you haven’t fully adopted Kanban methods in your organization and aren’t seeing ALL the benefits. If you answered YES to each one- congratulations, you’re an all-star and we would love to hear from you 🙂

If you’re not yet using Kanban methods, don’t worry- we’d love to help you get on track using Kanban. Here are a few resources we offer to help:

• Read about the 2 important roles in Kanban and how technicians work in Kanban. If you apply these tips, you’ll be able to answer YES to the questions above. These articles are part of our 12-week plan to adopting Kanban.
• Schedule a training call to learn how to adopt Kanban