Starting Small with Kanban: Embracing Incremental Change

This week, your host, Dan Neumann, welcomes Mike Guiler to discuss a recent course on Kanban Essentials they experienced together. By the end of the classes, they encountered a common feeling in some participants: fear of failing. Often, acquiring new knowledge, embarking on a new journey, or using a new tool can trigger insecurities: What could happen if it is not right? Where do I begin?

In this episode, they encourage Agilists to face this first stage of hesitation, analyze the limitations, and consider the best scenarios for using a new tool or enforcing an innovative strategy through implementing Kanban.

Key Takeaways

• Kanban Essentials:

• Agilists might hesitate to incorporate Kanban into their projects for the first time. It is common to feel insecure and doubt whether it is implemented correctly and how effective it would be.

• The whole Team has to take ownership of trying Kanban to solve an existing problem.

• How to start using Kanban?

• Start Kanban with matters you can control.

• Make sure you identify the expected result from implementing Kanban and have a way to measure its effectiveness.

• First, start using Kanban to solve a small problem. After solving it successfully, the Team will earn much more credibility and encouragement to use it to solve a more complicated issue.

• You can start using your personal Kanban board and convince the entire Team to use it for the whole system.

• The Problem of Local Optimization:

• Sometimes, a Team optimizes its work, but this does not translate to the entire organization, resulting in one Team working more effectively when the rest isn’t on the same page.

• There is a need to start small and locally but have the bigger system in mind.

• Make your work visible.

• It is crucial to agree on the definition of used terminology (for example, what does a Team define as “done”?).

• A Team must stop and think about how they are doing what they are doing, and ways to improve it.

Mentioned in this Episode:

Kanban Essentials

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