The basic kanban: Waiting, Working, Done
A quick trip through personal kanban design patterns demonstrates how they can be created using any number of materials. This tutorial illustrates how to build the most common personal kanban.
Step One: Establish Your Value Stream
Value Stream (v
l
y
str
m): The flow of work from the moment you start to when it is finished. The most simple value stream possible is Backlog (work waiting to be done), Doing (work being done), and Done (yes, that’s right, work that’s done). While you can set this up on a white board or even a piece of paper, a white board is preferable. Why? Because as you grow to better understand your value stream, you will want to change your kanban. You will add steps, or refine how you think about work. A white board provides permanence, yet allows ultimate flexibility: you can always erase and draw something new.
Step Two: Establish Your Backlog
Backlog (bkl
g
, -lôg): The work you haven’t done yet. All that stuff you need to do that you haven’t done – that’s your backlog. Everything you need to do, start writing it down onto Post-its. Big tasks, small tasks, get them all down. Write them onto post-its and start populating your backlog. Don’t sweep things under the rug. Don’t lie to yourself. Your first backlog-fest should be a painful experience. You should, at some point say, “god, there’s way too much of this.”
Step Three: Establish Your WIP Limit
WIP (hw
p, wp): Work in Progress Limit – The amount of work you can handle at one time. We have a tendency to leave many things half-done. Our brains hate this. Part of what makes kanban work is finding the sweet spot, where we are doing the optimal amount of work at the optimal speed. Set an arbitrary number in the beginning, let’s say no more than 5 things. Add this number to your Doing column.
"Pull" tasks from one kanban stage to the next
Step Four: Begin to Pull
Pull (p
l): To take completed work from one stage of the value stream and pull it into the next. You’re ready to go! That’s right – step four is Begin Working.
Beyond Step Four: Prioritize, Refine, and Reduce
Past step four, it’s all about prioritization of work, refinement of the value stream, and reduction of waste.
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my husband has been trying to talk me into this forever! thanks for laying it out in a simple, understandable way. he’s putting up our white board right now
So is WIP a subjective, ever changing number? How can it best be optimized?
My understanding is that it isn’t important to manage a certain number of tasks as WIP – this isn’t a system set up by your Teacher or Boss, with certain targets, expectations or SLAs you have to be able to manage. Instead I think that the amount of WIP is “optimised” for today when you feel you’re working efficiently. You learn to notice when you have too many things on the go at once (or not enough), and deal with that situation. The number of things which is too much/too little right now isn’t important. That’s how it seems to me, anyway.
That could be true. For most people, however, we recommend that there is a hard number there. You can use your judgement at any time, of course, but if there is no number or target then there is no control at all.
When that happens, you’re back where you started. You can’t communicate your burden or workload to others.
So, the number is flexible – you can change it – but it should be explicit at any given point-in-time.
Thanks for the reply Jim! Maybe it’s relevant that I’m self-employed, and unlikely to show my kanban board to my clients. So I don’t have to worry that anyone is going to make a faulty decision about how busy I am from counting the kanban there are on my board (e.g. “you’ve only got x tasks on – surely you can also do this”. ).
Jim, are you advising that people set themselves a target (“I like to have x kanban in my ‘doing’ column”) and tune that target with experience?
I totally see the point of not allowing too much WIP. But I don’t think I’ve understood what the problem might be in having too few kanban in the WIP section, provided they are enough to keep one occupied…
For example, most of yesterday I had 1 kanban (about managing a software deployment we were doing) as WIP. That kanban represented my personal involvement in the task. There was also a flow of other kanban in and out of the “pen” – (e.g. “get Fred to test subscription module” is WIP for me while I’m asking him, then in the Pen until he gets back to me with the result). I think I had 6 kanban in my “pen” at one point. A kanban for scrum meeting was in my WIP briefly, and so on. So I was busy, and my boar was really helping me not to forget to check in on Fred if he took too long to test the subs, and lots of sub-tasks like that. But time-lapse film of my board would have shown mostly 1 kanban there, with blurs as other kanban passed through transiently. I suppose I could have broken down my “manage the deployment” kanban into smaller tasks (e.g. I’ve decided that I like 3 kanban in WIP and am sizing the tasks to Make That So), but that didn’t seem terrifically useful. Does that sound about right, or am I missing a point here?
Thanks again
Chris,
Yes, I’d say this sounds right … but you’ve thought a lot about this and have a good enough grasp on your work to describe it.
For most people (especially ones building their first Personal Kanban), the first acts are centered around discovery.
What is my work?
Who is it for?
What interrupts me?
Does this really take this long?
Why am I tired and upset?
So, most people (and I still use one) a hard number is useful to see when work starts to get out of hand and to be a flag when you should be saying “Whoa, I need to pay attention to WIP”.
The number also sets a firm restriction which compels people to finish. Without it, most people will rationalize extra work and, insodoing, totally disregard limiting their WIP.
Jim
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How do you deal with work you have started and then passed to someone else and are waiting for their input before you finish the task?
Stuart,
I actually do a combination of personal kanban and GTD (Getting Things Done). I added a “Waiting for” column to my kanban to address your question.
Stuart and De Angela,
Please also check out The Pen.
It’s in the book as well.
Thanks to my school what a great way to get my schooling and my life on a better track might just keep me from being confused
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Very interesting stuff. Curious how to handle tasks that must be accomplished every day, and every week / month. With those sorts of things in the mix I’d have way over 5. Do you just move them around and around in a circle each day– even if they are 15 minute tasks? Thanks for this– looking forward to experimenting with the ideas…