Growing popularity of kanban boards

- How come? Tobias Andersson

COO Projectplace International AB

What is a kanban board?

Kanban is derived from the Japanese words: kan = visual signal, ban = card  

Lean and Kanban is spreading from production and product development to many industries and business areas.

the digital Kanban board is spreading via Lean & Agile uptake in IT

Nonlinear Management (NLM) techniques and strategies started to appear 40 years ago. Examples: Systems Theory (CAS), Concurrent Engineering, Toyota Kaizen, Lean Production Important principles & methods •  Self-organized teams •  Control through transparency and “pull” of work items •  Workflows should be visible for everyone •  Kanban-inspired Visual Management Tools

Visualization accelerates learning and the ability to prioritize

•  Kanban is visualizing work and limit work-in-progress.

•  Visualizing work allows us to transform our

conceptual and threatening workload into an actionable, context-sensitive flow. (We see what we are doing.)

•  Limiting our work-in-progress helps us complete what we start and understand the value of our choices.

Ability to self-organize is the key to high-performance teams

•  The board is a natural gathering point to discuss issues, solve problems and learn

•  Psychological projection onto the visual cards makes uncomfortable feelings more easy to handle

•  The kanban board makes behavior clearly visible

Collaborative Planning reinforces efficient project behavior

Group psychology and modern behavior science can explain why!

The Zeigarnik effect promote follow though

“The psychological tendency to remember an uncompleted task rather than a completed one” •  Dragging a card to the second column on the kanban board communicates

that you have commited and started to do something. It increases accountability and reduces procrastination.

•  Dragging a card to the last column, representing finishing a task, reduces cognitive load and perceived stress.

Connecting and tracking work on kanban boards with scheduled deliverables

The Technology is Ready “The digital kanban board fits like a glove on smartphones, tablets and large TV-screens.”

Growing popularity of kanban boards - How come?

•  Lean and Agile uptake in IT is spreading the digital kanban board concept in general

•  Visualization accelerates learning and the ability to prioritize •  Collaborative planning reinforces efficient project behavior •  Transparency provides management control with less overhead •  The technology is ready

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