What is Kanban methodology?

Understanding the philosophy and how it works

Note: In the video, the instructor defined the lead time to be the time taken to move an item from Ready to Develop stage to Done. It should be the time taken to move an item from Backlog to Done.

Kanban utilizes the power of visualization to increase team efficiency and deliver value to the customer faster.

• It enables a highly motivated team to visualize the progress of their work and the process through which the project has to flow through.
• It enforces a limit on the maximum number of items that can be in a particular stage of the process, and by helping the team see that clearly, Kanban methodology enables the team to swarm and figure out how to unblock the team
• The team focuses on taking the work from start to finish as fast as possible, which is called lead time.

Lead time vs. Cycle time

When you add a new item to the Backlog of your Kanban board, it needs to be reviewed and discussed before it is Ready to Develop. Cycle time refers to the time a ticket takes to go from the Ready to Develop stage to being Done. Lead time, on the other hand, is the time taken to take the ticket from Backlog to Done.

Here are a few additional readings that discuss Kanban in further detail:

• https://www.atlassian.com/agile/kanban
• https://www.agilealliance.org/glossary/kanban/#