" "

policies

A Game Board- Element #3 of the Kanban

Whether it's Parcheesi or trading individual stocks, we thrive on games. There are three commonly cited elements for all games: a goal, suspense, and rewards.But most games rely on something even more basic. They have flow - a mixture of structure, story, and events that pull you and peak your interest. As you get caught in the flow of a game, you know the goals you are working toward, the way the game has behaved in the past, and a bounded rationality of what to expect in the future. If something violently outside the rules or expectations of the game happens, you feel that is unfair.The kanban is a game board of work. There are definite goals, a variety of victory and loss conditions, suspense, and certainly flow.Flow is primarily achieved by two things:1. limiting work in progress2. policies or experiments we are running on the boardLimiting WIP is vital for the game to exist at all. All games run on an economy of movement, you must complete a task before you can move on to the next. There is no way to do things “faster”. Adhering to the rules of the game allows for flow which builds suspense and keeps people interest. Keeping true to the game also provides rewards like completion, quality, and continuous improvement.

" "