How Kanban methodology enhance successful companies or teams?

Are you wondering how the Kanban Methodology helps the project team to successfully deliver the projects within the timeline? You do not need to look further! This blog provides a straightforward explanation of How Kanban Methodologies enhance successful Project Teams. By the time you finish reading this article, you will clearly understand the workings of Kanban and its contribution to successful project execution.

The secret to every successful project lies in the framework or principles based on which the Project has been initiated. And, the Agile Methodologies have been considered as the secret to most modern successful projects. Kanban is one such methodology that makes project experts capable of enhancing their workflow and team collaboration.

So let us learn how Kanban enhances the Project Teams and Companies in terms of their project planning and execution learning to customer satisfaction.

What is Kanban Methodology?

Kanban is a visual tool to manage the project using a Visual Workflow that can be easily managed and updated. It captures the various project tasks in the form of issues in a visual card in the dashboard along with various execution metrics such as timeline, concerned team member, and current status. Offering flexibility and continuous delivery, Kanban is one of the popular choices among project experts for their project requirements.

The Kanban method is an approach to evolutionary and incremental systems and process change for organizations. A work-in-progress limited pull system is used as the central mechanism to uncover system operation (or process) complications and encourage collaboration to improve the system continuously.

How the Kanban Methodology Works?

• Kanban manages the workflow using a digital board called the ‘Kanban Board.’ It has multiple columns that denote various workflows such as current tasks, completed tasks, or ongoing tasks.
• The columns contain the swimlanes in which a task can be created. Kanban provides an easy drag-and-drop interface in which the flow of tasks is maintained. In the Kanban Board, the tasks can move from left to right as per their progress.
• Kanban provides a backlog feature in which the upcoming tasks can be created so that they can be pulled at the time of need. This approach focuses on the tasks only at need or capacity and is called the Pull-Based Approach.
• The whole idea of Kanban is the same as that of Agile which breaks down the large project into smaller tasks. Kanban Methodology allows us to break down a task into multiple subtasks for convenience. Since maintaining the smaller task is easy for the teams, the efficiency is improved using Kanban.

This was the basic working of the Kanban. Now, let us move onto the principles of Kanban.

Basic principles of Kanban:

Kanban was originally formed as a method to reduce waste, optimize resource usage, and increase the efficiency of the Toyota Automotive system. But soon it became popular in other sectors as well for serving the same purpose of improving efficiency and resource utilization. Thus, it has been evolving for many decades, bringing various principles for managing the project with optimum efficiency.

Let us first briefly understand the principles of Kanban so that we can easily identify its contribution to the project’s success.

• Accept the change when required: Kanban focuses on accepting the change only if it is required. This is important to reduce unnecessary activities or tasks in the workflow. It is called as Pull System Approach.
• Make Small continuous changes: Project Managers make small changes or updates throughout the project so that the continuous workflow can be managed.
• Adopt Visual Workflow Management: Kanban keeps the Visual approach of managing the task on priority. Thus, Kanban Principles are implemented using the visual board called the ‘Kanban Board.’
• Limit the Workload: Project Stakeholders cannot execute more than a specified number of tasks in the workflow. This is followed to keep the project hassle-free. This is called the Work-In-Progress(WIP) Limit.
• Collaborate effectively: The flexible roles and responsibilities in the Kanban require efficient communication among the team members so that the tasks can be smoothly executed.

Now, you are clear with the above principles. Let us understand how these principles of Kanban Enhance the Project Teams.

Enhancing Team using Kanban: Examples:

We have already seen how Kanban enhances a successful project team. But it is very important to see some practical examples in which Kanban is improving the Project Management Workflow. The examples are briefly discussed as mentioned below.

1. Pre-planning the Workflow using Backlog

Suppose that we have limited the number of tasks in the workflow using the Work-In-Progress(WIP) Limits. And, we want to plan the tasks for the upcoming project activities. In this case, Kanban allows us to keep the required tasks in the backlog list. When the existing tasks are completed, we can easily pull them from the backlog to the Board. This is how the Pull System approach of Kanban smoothens the workflow of the Teams.

2. Delegating Flexible Roles across the Team

In many projects, the Project Lead dynamically assigns the tasks across the team without any fixed responsibilities. Thus, Kanban allows assigning the task to specific members in real-time. Also, we can tie a piece of work to a specific organizational goal for easy workflow management.

3. Visualizing Multiple Plans Simultaneously

When the project involves parallel activities or plan executions, it becomes challenging to visualize those parallel plans under a single workflow. Therefore, Kanban enables us to create multiple columns to represent parallel workflows. These columns are visualized at a single place so manage multiple workflows.

4. Increasing Customer Satisfaction

It is easy to get the project approved from the stakeholder’s side. However, the end-user experience cannot be ignored. Hence, the continuous delivery of the Kanban-based project helps us in faster delivery so that we can get customer feedback quickly. Therefore, Kanban helps the Project Teams to involve the customers and project stakeholders which earns them a higher customer satisfaction in the market.

Benefits of Kanban Agile Methodology:

1. It allows us to visualize the workflows

Documentation, Log Management, and record-keeping are lengthy and complex to manage across multiple teams. Thus, there is a need for a visual workflow that can simplify workflow. Although the Scrum framework of Agile has burndown charts and sprint backlogs to visually manage the tasks. But they are not visually appealing to the users.

Therefore, the Kanban Boards are more interactive for task management in the Project. The tasks or issues are visible in the swimlane which is movable to different columns. Due to this, the management of tasks is improved.

2. It improves efficiency

Kanban focuses on the continuous delivery of the project in which the deliverables or releases are planned throughout the project. There is no need to deliver the project at the end of the end of iteration or sprint which enhances the Team’s Efficiency in maintaining a continuous workflow. We can also import the existing workflow in the Kanban which promotes reusability.

3. It improves team Collaboration

In the Kanban Framework, there are no rigid roles defined for the team members. Thus, roles are flexible, and responsibilities are assigned based on the availability and skill set. As a result, team members can collaborate easily with each other. This results in an easy cross-functional interaction which means a person with one role learns from another person with a different role.

4. We can easily Monitor Project Progress

The various features such as Cycle Time (time for single task completion), Throughput( number of tasks at a given time), and Lead Time(time to complete workflow) are available in Kanban Boards which highlight the status of progress. Hence, the team does not need to manage a separate analytical workflow for monitoring the project.

5. It can easily manage the Dependencies and Scale

By visualizing the Tasks and issues, the project managers can easily map their dependencies to gain a better understanding of relations among them. Also, the companies can customize the Kanban Workflow as per the increasing customer base and scale it up to multiple workflows.

When to use Kanban Methodology:

After getting so many insights on how Kanban enhances successful projects and teams let us now learn about the use cases in which we should prefer the Kanban Methodology. You should use Kanban if:

• The team has limited planning during the project initiation and they want to start the project with limited upfront planning.
• The Project is large and cannot be executed as a whole. It needs to be broken down into smaller tasks.
• You want to focus on continuous delivery in which the deliverables have to be managed continuously, not at the end of the iteration or sprint.
• The project team wants to manage the project in a simple way with a visual tool. Or, they do not have any complex skill set regarding project workflow management.

Conclusion:

The Kanban Framework in Agile enhances the teams and Companies for managing the Project. It is known for its continuous delivery, Workflow limits, flexible roles, and focus on necessary actions. Also, we can integrate our existing workflow in Kanban to reuse the already created workflow. You now have successfully learned how the Kanban Principles help us in executing the project deliverables. Thus, you can easily enhance your team and organization using the Kanban methodology.

FAQ’s:

Q1: What is Kanban methodology?

Ans: Kanban is a way of organizing work using a visual board. It helps improve how things get done, started in manufacturing, and is now used in software and other industries. The main idea is to show work visually, limit tasks in progress, and make the workflow more efficient.

Q2: How does Kanban enhance team collaboration?

Ans: Kanban uses a visual board to show work. This helps team members easily see what tasks are being worked on, who is doing them, and what’s coming up. This makes communication and teamwork better.

Q3: What are the key benefits of using Kanban?

Ans: Kanban brings several advantages like getting things done faster, having a clear view of work processes, reducing the time it takes to complete tasks, and making customers happier. It also helps teams adjust to changes quickly and keeps improving the way they work.

Q4: Can Kanban be applied to different types of projects?

Ans:Yes, Kanban is flexible and can be used in various projects, not just in software. It’s effective in manufacturing, marketing, customer support, and more. Its adaptability makes it suitable for different kinds of work.