- Many organizations think of kanban as a way
to replace their existing processes,
but kanban stays true to lean manufacturing.
It's not a prescriptive method like project management,
instead, kanban just tries to expose your problems.
It puts spotlight on inefficient processes.
It starts by trying to understand why things
are the way they are.
What are the justifications and ideas behind
your existing process?
That's why at the very beginning of using kanban,
you should start with your current process.
You'll want to create a process map of how work goes
through your organization.
This is also called mapping the value stream.
When you map your value stream, you're looking at all
the steps in your process to figure out which one
adds the greatest value.
In most organizations, this is a difficult thing to do.
In fact, most processes just evolve over time.
Often, organizations don't consider the cost
of following their process, instead, they just focus
on how it might just solve their immediate problem.
I once worked for an organization that was trying
to map a value stream to their development process.
It was a financial company, so they had many regulatory
hurdles to overcome.
The team accepted many of the processes,
even though they seemed strange and inefficient.
When someone would ask, they would just get the response
that someone from legal told them that it was necessary.
At first, the organization had a difficult time
thinking about their own process.
They knew their process was inefficient,
but they didn't feel like broadcasting that
to the rest of the organization.
It took weeks for the organization to fully deconstruct
their own process.
They taped dozens of three by five cards to a whiteboard.
Then they put little sticky notes that branched out
from the larger cards.
They showed different sub-processes in their justifications.
When the team was close to finished, they were frustrated
with what they saw.
Their process map looked like a gnarled branch,
twisted and turned and went backwards.
Sometimes it would branch off in directions that would
lead to many new challenges.
Everyone could see how frustrating it could be
to try and deliver a product.
Once in the process map, the team had a great visualization
of how they could deliver the product.
Their next step was to try and get all the players
in the organization to sit in the room and figure out
how to optimize the process.
The team laid out which part of the process
added the most value to their customer.
They did this by creating a long blue line on the whiteboard
that showed the clearest path from beginning to end.
All the work items outside the value stream might
be necessary, but they didn't add value.
The team pointed out areas of improvement
and looked for ways to eliminate waste.
The value stream mapping is a key part of your effort
to benefit from kanban.
Once you can see your process, you'll find a bunch
of new ideas on how to improve.