Field service work has a variety of constraints and special characteristics that may influence how the flow of field service work is managed using kanban. What is different about field service and what should we take into account when using kanban to manage field service work? Many of the issues that I will describe may […]
kanban board
Using spare time
There is a strong contrast between the traditional management view of spare time and the kanban view. Traditional managers1 view spare time as something to avoid, as a sign of inefficiency or even laziness. One important responsibility of such managers is to keep workers busy. In contrast to this, network queuing theory—and kanban in particular—show […]
When is a kanban tool not a kanban tool?
An indicator of the increasing popularity of kanban is the number of software tools and online services that claim kanban functionality. For those practitioners who have seen the tremendous benefits of kanban, this should be a gratifying development. But what does it really mean for a tool to support or to enable kanban? And what […]
How to select kanban tools
I am often asked what software tools are available to support the use of kanban. Many lists of such kanban tools already exist (see the end of this article) and I do not intend to repeat the same information here. Instead, I would like to explain my view of the architecture of kanban tools and […]
A Value Stream for Service Management
One of the main benefits of a lean/kanban approach to IT is the simplification of processes expressed in the value stream of each team. But IT teams are sometimes indoctrinated with process frameworks coming from approaches such as COBIT® or ITIL®. They may be at a loss to understand how a single value stream can […]