Lean Kanban Practices

The core practices of the Lean Kanban method are as follows:

Optimize the Whole

• Optimizing part of a system will eventually optimize the entire system. This includes focusing on the entire value stream, delivering complete products, and implementing long-term thinking throughout the organization. A value stream is a list of steps to create value for both the customer and the team. The value stream must be as realistic and detailed as necessary to visualize and understand the workflow. It should also be able to adapt as the process and context change.

Eliminate Waste

• In the Toyota Production System (TPS), waste is termed "muda" and refers to anything in the system that does not add value to the customer. Visualizing the workflow or process is essential for identifying and eliminating waste. Accurately describing the current value stream and articulating the desired value stream for the product cycle is critical, especially in the early stages, to prevent failure due to early errors. Waste can arise from building the wrong thing, failing to learn, or practices that impede the process.

Build in Quality

• Frequent defects indicate flaws in the overall process. After identifying the starting point in the value stream, the next step is to categorize work types, such as features, bugs, tasks, and change requests. Improving quality involves:
• Determining workflow by modeling the work rather than the workers and representing activities in the order they are performed.
• Breaking dependencies and designing the system to accommodate feature additions at any stage, using historical data and empirical techniques to anticipate demand and adjust the system.
• Ensuring final verification of the system is error-free.

Learn Constantly

• Lean Kanban assumes that nothing is perfect, and there is always room for improvement. Continuous learning is facilitated by:
• Developing a system that responds rapidly to change.
• Making process or workflow tolerant of change.
• Clearly defining when and what changes are required, acknowledging the financial implications of decisions.
• Learning from mistakes and challenging preset standards to improve continuously.
• Using empirical techniques to reach conclusions, favoring quantitative over qualitative methods.

Engage Everyone

• Organizations gain a competitive edge through human resources, as insight, creativity, and intellect are scarce resources. To maximize these, organizations should:
• Encourage team autonomy.
• Promote specialization by providing challenges, constructive feedback, and growth opportunities.
• Engage individuals by showing the purpose of each task and its role in the bigger picture, thereby boosting productivity.