Kanban self-assessment

Although there are many important metrics related to kanban, flow efficiency is an important way of showing how kanban helps to reduce various types of waste, such as the waiting due to context switching.

A cumulative flow diagram is a inverted area chart that graphically shows the changes in volumes of ready work, work in progress and completed work for a team over time. The mean volume of work at a given date is seen by the height of the WIP band at that date. The mean duration of work at a given date range is shown by the width of the WIP band. Trends are easily seen in the change in height or width of the WIP band, as well as changes to the volume of ready items.

Since kanban assumes the team is using some form of continual improvement, it requires a means of gathering information about possible improvements and deciding what to change. Daily stand-up meetings and operations reviews are possible examples of such meetings.
A steering committee meeting is typical of a project in which work is pushed according to a project plan rather than pulled. It is not typical of the kanban method. A sprint planning meeting is typical of the scrum method. Many would consider such planning meetings as opposed to the spirit of kanban, wherein decisions about committing to doing work are made based on the immediate situation and not so much based on advanced planning. While kanban boards might be used by scrum, scrum is not at all a part of kanban.

Although replenishment is done by the customers of a team, when those customers belong to an external organization the team may need to support the logistics of replenishment. The specific replenishment method used might be documented in an SLA—or not. In any case, organs like a PMO play no role in replenishment, according to kanban.
Furthermore, although some of a team’s work might be identified by the team itself, the team would not exist unless it were providing work that supports the outcomes required by customers.
Finally, distinguish between replenishment, the submission of items that customers say they want, and commitment, the agreement by the team to perform the requested work.

This method is based on advice originating in Eliahu Goldratt’s book The Goal.
When work is blocked due to insufficient resources, for example, a single employee with the required knowledge to perform the work, start by identifying that resource (c). Next, protect that resource by making sure that it is used only for tasks that no other resource can perform (e). Ensure that you do not pile up work upstream from that resource (a). In addition, buffering work upstream will help to regulate and smooth the flow of work to the capacity-constrained resource (d). If, in spite of all these steps, there is still a blocage due to that resource, consider allocating more resources to the tasks (b).

Note that the final step is often the very first step taken by organizations that do not manage flow effectively.

There is no ISO standard for kanban.
The adaptation of kanban from manufacturing to knowledge work has been the principal advance in flow management of recent decades.
Kanban as a flow management technique originated with the Toyota Production System which became the basis for lean management.
Single piece flow is not realistic in a knowledge work environment, wherein a high degree of variability would make single piece flow unfeasible.

Testing work before delivering it may be a good idea, but it is not an aspect of kanban. Kanban concerns managing the flow of work, not the technical details of how to perform individual tasks.
Planning work in advance is typical of a method where work is pushed according to a project plan, rather than pulled according to current supply and demand.
The remaining practices are all characteristic of kanban.

While most columns on a kanban board do have WIP limits, the exceptions are the Done column (there is no limit to how much work can be completed) and buffer columns, which may, or may not, have WIP limits. Of course, some organizations do have “doing” type columns without WIP limits. While their intention may be to use kanban, no WIP limits means that they are not really pulling work at that point.
Assuming that the Ready column represents work the team has committed to perform, the team should not (yet) commit to work that it cannot deliver according to the needs of the customer and the expectations of the team’s performance. Therefore, the Ready column should have a WIP limit.