One of the most common myths I hear about kanban is the “Are you doing scrum or Kanban?”. The assumption is these things are mutually exclusive. Kanban is not something that you “start with” – you start with your existing process – whatever that is – and apply Kanban over the top.
I’ve found that one of the sources of these misconceptions, at least in my local market in Australia, is the use of tools like Jira. When folks who are new to agile see the option to choose a scrum or a kanban board, they immediately think that the two things are mutually exclusive. Even though there may be a few articles floating around saying otherwise, the effect of this mechanism in the software has lasting impacts on teams. These impacts take some time and effort to unwind and can prevent teams from maturing to greater capability.
Indeed, the first change principle of Kanban is “Start with what you’re doing now“. This implies that you have an existing process. It doesn’t have to be massively complicated, but with whatever you’re doing in your business you can find services and the process to create / provide them. When applying Kanban, your looking to this, examining the key problems, and starting the evolutionary road continually becoming fitter for purpose.
Kanban can be applied to your existing services. Although it was originally trialled / used in software teams, you can use it for your existing services for all kinds of knowledge work. For example:
- Marketing
- Sales
- HR
- Legal
- Product Development
- Technology
- Operational support
Indeed, often you may have a purpose or outcome that requires the interaction of many / all of these services. Kanban not only applies to the application of these services individually, but how these services interact.
You don’t need large transformation teams, just a little kanban knowledge and you can start tomorrow! If you’re not sure how, come along to one of my upcoming courses and we can get you started.