What is Kanban?

Agile development methodology provides the highest utility value to product development. It focuses on Adaptive planning and change management. Alongside this, it focuses on developing and deploying the working software quickly in an iterative manner. A major subtype of Agile Development is the Kanban methodology which emphasizes visualizing the entire product development on boards. This article delves into the core concepts and in-depth explanation of Kanban Development Methodology in Agile with its benefits, key functionalities, and importance.

What is Kanban Methodology?

Kanban is one of the widely used software development methodologies along with Scrum. The Kanban Methodology was developed in the 1940s by Toyota for manufacturing purposes. However, for software purposes, it was released in 2001 after the release of the Agile Manifesto.

• Kanban is a development framework that involves the use of a Kanban Board to visualize the workflow of the entire project.
• A Kanban board is nothing but a work board that is divided into several columns. The individual columns represent the workflow phases of the project. The set of these phases are – To-Do, In-Progress, Validation, and completed. These phases are briefly described in the later section of this article.

The way students organize and manage handwritten sticky notes to optimize their study schedules and pending tasks is the best application of Kanban in real life. Apart from this, tasks like Planning a vacation, Managing projects, restaurant and fast-food shops, etc.

Kanban Workflow

The Kanban Workflow is composed of four Phases. The tasks are managed and organized in these 4 columns over the Kanban board during the entire development phase.

• The user stories are written on sticky notes, which are later pushed to their respective columns as per the current status of the tasks.
• The Kanban Board could either be a Physical board which includes whiteboards and sticky notes or a Digital Kanban Board which allows the team to track multiple workflows at the same time.

Kanban Board

4 Workflow Phases in Kanban:

1. To-Do: The workflow is started with an empty clear board where all the tasks are meant to be listed. A To-Do list is formed in the first column of the board which consists of all the user stories. The individual cards must provide a brief description and necessary details of tasks like due date, functionalities, nature of task, etc.
2. In-Progress: As the name suggests, the In-Progress column consists of all the tasks that are currently under progress and under development phase. It acts as an indication that a team is currently operating working on it.
3. Validation: In the validation phase, the code is reviewed, and the model is tested against several sets of tests like unit testing, acceptance testing, system testing, etc. All the functionalities are reviewed and verified. Apart from this, all the bugs and inconsistencies found are rectified in the validation phase itself.
4. Done: After all the functional and system tests are performed and quality assurance is reviewed, the task is shifted to Done state (4th column on the board). All the tasks move column to column towards right until they reach the last column i.e. Done phase. The done column reflects all the tasks that are finished and deployed without any errors.

Kanban Principles

Kanban methodology is based on Lean Development approach. Every single product being developed using the Kanban methodology must adhere to some set of key principles and guidelines. Usually, Kanban is composed of 4 major principles:

1. Start with the existing process: The fundamental emphasis of this principal is to value the existing workflows and practices instead of setting up the environment from roots in the beginning. Although the professionals carry out a review of the existing workflow to point any changes. This principal helps to reduce the cost and time utilization.
2. Agree to continue evolutionary and incremental changes: The emphasis of team should be on incremental and small change improvements instead of bulk changes all at a time. This is because handling bulk changes could disrupt the flow of development and may reduce the performance of the system.
3. Admire current roles, processes, responsibilities & titles: Since there are no such formal roles in Kanban team, yet every individual must be responsible for his/her work. In industrial terminologies, it could be said that Kanban emphasize on incremental change so as to avoid emotional resistance. This helps the team to gain confidence as they get started with Kanban.
4. Leadership at all levels: In Kanban big decisions are not always proposed or taken by big leaders only. This principal emphasizes on the fact that even if the lowest ranked team member has a creative idea, that idea should be appreciated, embraced and acknowledged by everyone. This helps to embrace leadership qualities at all levels of the team.

Kanban vs Scrum

Kanban vs Scrum

Parameters	SCRUM	KANBAN
Origin	Scrum methodology is associated with software development fundamentals.	Kanban’s origin is assumed to be following the lean development methodology.
Team Roles	Scrum teams has 3 roles – Product Owner, Scrum Master and Development team.	There are no formal roles in Kanban team. Although for complex projects, some teams may require agile coach.
Duration	The life cycle of a project is broken into several sprints. Each of the sprints have a lifespan of 2-4 weeks.	There are no time boxes as Kanban emphasizes on continuous delivery of product.
Work Board	It uses scrum boards having columns like product backlog, sprint backlog, in-progress and done phase.	It uses Kanban board which includes columns like to-do, in-progress, validation and done phase.
Sprint Cycle	Scrum projects are always developed in incremental cycles known as sprints.	Kanban does not involve the concept of sprints during the development phase.
Meetings	After the end of every sprint cycle, the team members gather for Sprint Retrospective Meeting.	Since there is no such concept of sprints, no retrospective meetings are held in Kanban methodology.
Applications	Scrum concept is fundamentally used in software development and product releases. It is also used in HR domains and Dutch railways.	Kanban methodology is widely used in HealthCare, Manufacturing and marketing. It is also used in restaurant and fast-food shops.

Conclusion

To summarize, Kanban is a project development framework which is based on lean development approach. The emphasis of Kanban development is thoroughly on visualizing the workflow on boards. It enhances the team building and increases the productivity and efficiency of the project. All the stages of the workflow involved in Kanban development are monitored through the use of Kanban board in which individual phases are divided into separate columns. The Kanban board includes columns like to-do, in-progress, validation and done phase. This helps to provide transparency throughout the development cycle. Also, due to these reasons, this methodology has wider applications in the field of marketing, manufacturing and healthcare.