Friday, December 10, 2010
The Principles of the Kanban Method
As time goes by, I learn a lot about articulating my ideas. I’ve recently updated how I communicate the core principles of the Kanban Method and I first shared them via Twitter Core Principles of the Kanban Method.
The Kanban Method defines my approach to incremental, evolutionary change for technology development/operations organizations. It uses a work-in-progress limited pull system as the core mechanism to expose system operation (or process) problems and stimulate collaboration to improve the system. One example of such a pull system, is a kanban system, and it is after this popular form of WIP limited pull system that the method is named.
In my book, Kanban - Successful Evolutionary Change for your Technology Business, I identified 5 core properties that I’d observed to be present in each successful implementation of Kanban. These have become know as the Principles of Kanban - a term I first saw coined by Scott Ambler in his book review.
This new guidance expands on the 5 core properties to incorporate some of the guidance from Chapter 15 of my book where I discuss how to undertake a change initiative using the Kanban Method. So the principles now include 8 elements.
