Kanban Boards

What is a Kanban board – a brief explanation

The Kanban board is part of the Kanban method. This is now standard in most manufacturing companies worldwide.

The Kanban board is a board that is divided into several columns. The columns correspond to the intended workflows. The work orders are distributed across the columns in the form of cards, with the worklist on the far left.

The adjacent column represents the subsequent work step. With each completed processing step, the cards move one column further to the right. The completed items are on the far right.

Physical boards

In practice, both physical Kanban boards and their digital counterparts are used. A whiteboard is often used as a physical board. The structure is drawn on it with felt-tip pens. A piece of paper is then stuck in the appropriate Kanban board column for each work order.

Agile boards are also frequently seen in companies, which are used for window surfaces, glass partitions or office walls.

Digital Kanban Board

Companies are increasingly buying digital boards that can be used online. Instead of MS Excel, Planner or OneNote, specialized apps such as Trello, Confluence or humbee are usually used. In software development, Confluence is often used online for a Kanban board. This is well suited for technicians and engineers who are increasingly collaborating online. Trello is also often used as a personal Kanban board.

A digital Kanban board replicates the physical board. It follows the same rules and principles. The digital version is particularly suitable for distributed teams. They also allow access to extended information on the work order. Evaluations, e.g. on the productivity of the team, can also be carried out quickly and easily.

Advantages and disadvantages of Kanban boards

Advantages

The advantages of Kanban are manifold, regardless of whether a physical or digital agile board is used:

• Improved productivity:
  Thanks to the high level of transparency and regular meetings, work obstacles are immediately identified and resolved. In addition, quick feedback ensures that undesirable developments are avoided. The team's productivity increases.
• Improved quality:
  Open and regular feedback exposes quality deficiencies. By setting Definitions of Done (criteria for when a work step has been successfully completed), a card can only be moved to the Kanban column once the completion criteria have been met.
• Improving transparency:
  The Kanban board displays all work orders. The distribution of cards in the columns is immediately visible to every team member. Uneven filling levels in the columns indicate problems in the workflow.
• Improved self-organization:
  Thanks to the high level of transparency, all team members have the same level of information. This means that good decisions can be made quickly, even without a central decision-making authority.
• Improved responsiveness:
  Like all agile methods, a Kanban board also enables a faster response to external changes or problems. This allows orders to be quickly reprioritized or new orders to be brought forward.

Disadvantages

The following disadvantages must be considered for agile boards:

• Lost cards:
  With the physical Kanban variant, there is a risk of Kanban cards being lost and therefore important processes not being processed or being processed too late. The workflow then suffers as a result. Software-based solutions have a clear advantage, as nothing can get lost.
• Rejection by employees:
  Kanban boards quickly uncover weak points in the workflow. If this is taken personally by individual team members, it can result in rejection of the method or arguments within the team.
• Limited complexity:
  The column-oriented organization of the to-do board can be further structured, as shown above. However, the complexity is limited. The Kanban board should therefore only be used for manageable team sizes and tasks whose complexity is not too high. This is why it is often only used in project management for certain types of projects.

Structure

Kanban boards have a fixed structure. They consist of columns that represent the various processing steps from left to right. You can find out more about the individual elements below.

Kanban board columns

The columns represent the workflow in production from left to right. The left-hand column contains the pending tasks. The tasks that have already been completed are on the far right. Whenever a task is completed, it moves to the last column. The free space in the previous column is then filled with a card from the column to the left. In this way, a column pulls tasks from the previous column (pull principle).

WIP

The WIP limit (Work in Progress) is a prerequisite for the pull principle to work. The WIP limit defines the maximum permitted number of cards in a column. As soon as the WIP limit is reached, no further orders may be pulled into this column. The amount of the WIP limit depends on the limits of the production capacity in this production step.

The WIP limit prevents too many orders from being started at the same time. It makes a significant contribution to stabilizing the work flow.

Swimlanes

This refers to rows that offer the option of further subdividing the columns. The tasks on the to-do board are assigned to these rows according to certain criteria.

For example, the team board can be divided into two horizontal areas. The upper section contains the regular production flow, while the lower section becomes the fast lane. Prioritized tasks are mapped in it.

Create and introduce a Kanban board with examples

You have now learned a lot about the advantages of Kanban boards and their structure. Now let's take a look at how you can actually create and introduce a Kanban board.

1. First step: Involve employees

   Explain the Kanban method and the principles behind it to your employees. Go through the following steps together with your employees. It is best to ask the team to buy a suitable whiteboard with Kanban cards and pens first.

2. Second step: Visualize the process / workflow in columns

   Now start with the first column. Name it worklist. Now add the columns on the right with the following work steps. Do not select steps that are too small. Keep the number of columns to a minimum so that the board remains clear.

   Kanban board templates are a great source of inspiration for beginners and help them to develop their own ideas in a short space of time.

3. Third step: Swimlanes / Flight Level

   If required, you can create swimlanes. This adds more structure and allows you to better visualize the workflow. Especially at the beginning, you should make the Kanban Team Board as simple and clear as possible. You can add more structure at a later stage. It can further support the workflow.

   This also applies to the concept of so-called flight levels. If other teams use an agile board later on, coordination and strategic control issues may arise. You should only deal with the scaling of Kanban once you have gained initial experience.

4. Fourth step: Create cards / tickets

   Different colors can be used when creating cards. In addition, the teams determine what information is written on the cards. Cards that have already been processed can be reused for recurring tasks. This prevents you from creating new ones unnecessarily.

5. Fifth step: Define rules

   In this step, you define the WIP limit and the Definition of Done for each column. Due to the pull principle, the board is processed from left to right. Control is therefore based on the result: if a card moves to the Done column, a new task can be moved to the vacated space.

   If you have defined a fast lane (horizontal area with the highest priority), it is best to set the limit to 1 here.

   One column contains the cards in descending order of priority. According to the “first things first” principle, the top card is processed first. This is comparable to working on a scrum board.

6. Sixth step: Kanban meeting

   Regular Kanban meetings ensure short feedback cycles. The meeting is best held before the board. Every participant can see the current status immediately. In the Kanban meeting, tasks are distributed, problems are discovered and blockages are resolved. Tip: Train your team to read the board from right to left. This way, they internalize the pull principle and focus on completing tasks instead of constantly starting new ones.

   Cadence definition: The rhythm of meetings is also called cadence. The classic here is the daily Kanban meeting. It represents the heartbeat of the system.

7. Seventh step: Draw conclusions – optimize

   Kanban reveals problems in the process. Bottlenecks in entire teams or individual employees, which can lead to deadlines being exceeded, become visible and solutions can be found.

   The Kanban process itself should be adapted to new findings as required. In this way, continuous improvements are introduced that increase the performance of the entire team.