Introducing Kanban to a team or organization

Starting something new is never an easy task. You know you may face resistance. Besides, there is so much information on the Internet, but what are the actions to take? If you are thinking about getting started with Kanban, keep reading. Our expert advices will help you with introducing Kanban to your team or organization.

Our expert:

Anna Radzikowska, Accredited Kanban Trainer and Coach (Kanban University and David J Anderson School of Management), Kanban Maturity Model Product Manager. Anna specializes on teaching beginners. 

Start with what you do now. This is Kanban’s “magic” that you can apply it to any existing process. Therefore, it doesn`t require any severe change or reorganization. It can also be used together with other methods of frameworks. There are two ways we recommend introducing Kanban to teams or organizations:

1. Start with your Individual Kanban.

Doing individual Kanban is a good place to start. It is a very safe place to start as the only resistance you may face is your own. That is why, if you decide so, you can easily overcome it. Individual Kanban is not a Personal Kanban – these are 2 different things. Personal Kanban is the work of Jim Benson. It is a great tool to use to plan your daily work or some type of life project. at the same time, Personal Kanban is used to visualize and organize work.

For instance, I observe a lot of personal Kanban among colleagues. It is an easy way to gain great visualization of things to be done. It does introduce some WIP limits and buffers. Moreover, individual Kanban can take you up to Maturity Level 4. However, it should have good visualization, WIP (Work in Progress) limits introduced, and metrics applied. You can use some complex practices for Individual Kanban. That is how you can do a serious Kanban just for yourself. 

If you want to learn more – there is a separate class about it: Individual Kanban for Enterprise that you can take with David J Anderson School of Management. Later you can share your results with colleagues, explaining from your personal experience what your Kanban system helped you to achieve.  

In most cases, people already have some sort of visualization of their work. You can start by improving it. In other words, you may already have some kind of retrospectives, i.e., meetings where you discuss what you are doing and what you can improve. This is the moment when you can start introducing Kanban by suggesting some Kanban solutions and improvements, depending on the problems you observe.  

For example, you and your colleagues see the problem with overburdening. You have overtimes, there are hundreds of tasks in your backlog, and you don’t know where to start – then introducing WIP (Work in Progress) limits may be the best first step to start. It will help you to reduce the workload and focus on the work.  

A lot of people think that if they introduce the WIP limits, they will stop working. That is not true. You limit WIP to stop starting and start focusing, start finishing the work and deliver it. Because there is no point to start hundreds of tasks, the point is to deliver them. In other words, if you limit WIP, you focus on things that are on your plate right now. You deliver one and start the next one. And that`s how you deliver all hundred.  

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