Milk Kanban

Milk Kanban by Pawel Brodzinski When people say Kanban, they tend to think of a specific set of practices. Whiteboards & sticky notes (both almost universally virtual). Tasks moving through columns that represent workflow. Every now and then, WIP limits even. As often as we do it with other things, it reduces a broader principle to a set of oversimplified techniques, which, in turn, tend to underdeliver in many contexts. Kanban In its original meaning, Kanban represented a visual signal. The thing that communicated, well, something. It might have been a need, option, availability, capacity, request, etc. In our Kanban systems, the actual Kanban is a sticky note. It represents work, and given its closest environment (board, columns, other stickies, visual decorators), it communicates what needs, or needs not, to be done. If it’s yellow, it’s a regular feature. If there’s a blocker on it, it requests focus. If there’s a long queue of neighbors, it suggests flow inefficiency. If it ... Read full article.