Kanban is a simple and elegant Agile framework that helps to control and improve development processes. Originating in traditional 20th century manufacturing in Japan, Kanban has a renewed relevance today, being a crucial methodology in the world of software development. This book explores the key features of Kanban, and demonstrates how to put it into practice through exercises that will help you make the most of this unique approach to managing collaboration and production. Designed as a 30 day action plan, this book will help you understand and implement Kanban – and start seeing results – in a month. Analyze your current situation and define your goals and wider strategic aims, and begin developing a plan to help you and your team confidently work towards achieving them. Involve your team to drive cultural change, learn how to prioritize and organize tasks and projects to efficiently use your time and resources. Create your own value stream map to better understand your processes and identify improvement areas, and adapt and use the features tips and examples to overcome challenges you may face when implementing Kanban. Pick up this book and experience the full results of this vital Agile methodology – fast.

Summary Kanban in Action is a down-to-earth, no-frills, get-to-know-the-ropes introduction to kanban. It's based on the real-world experience and observations from two kanban coaches who have introduced this process to dozens of teams. You'll learn the principles of why kanban works, as well as nitty-gritty details like how to use different color stickies on a kanban board to help you organize and track your work items. About the Book Too much work and too little time? If this is daily life for your team, you need kanban, a lean knowledge-management method designed to involve all team members in continuous improvement of your process. Kanban in Action is a practical introduction to kanban. Written by two kanban coaches who have taught the method to dozens of teams, the book covers techniques for planning and forecasting, establishing meaningful metrics, visualizing queues and bottlenecks, and constructing and using a kanban board. Written for all members of the development team, including leaders, coders, and business stakeholders. No experience with kanban is required. Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications. What's Inside How to focus on work in process and finish faster Examples of successful implementations How team members can make informed decisions About the Authors Marcus Hammarberg is a kanban coach and software developer with experience in BDD, TDD, Specification by Example, Scrum, and XP. Joakim Sundén is an agile coach at Spotify who cofounded the first kanban user groups in Europe. Table of Contents PART 1 LEARNING KANBAN Team Kanbaneros gets startedPART 2 UNDERSTANDING KANBAN Kanban principles Visualizing your work Work items Work in process Limiting work in process Managing flow PART 3 ADVANCED KANBAN Classes of service Planning and estimating Process improvement Using metrics to guide improvements Kanban pitfalls Teaching kanban through games

Toyota's world-renowned success proves that just-in-time (JIT) makes other manufacturing practices obsolete. This simple but powerful book is based on the seminars given by Taiichi Ohno and other senior production staff to introduce Toyota's own supplier companies to JIT. It teaches the philosophy and implementation of what many call the most efficient production system in the world. Provides a clear structure for an introductory JIT training program. Explains every aspect of the JIT system, including how to set it up and how to refine it once it's in place. Shows how to use a simple visual system to control the production process. Every day more American companies are learning that JIT works outside Japan. Now you can get started with this step-by-step book which guides you through the implementation process. Every engineer, manager, supervisor, and worker should read this book to get the clearest, simplest, and most complete introduction to JIT available in English. Results at American companies after reading this book: Lead-time on one product was reduced from 12 weeks to 4 days. Setup time on a large blanking press was reduced from eight hours to one minute and four seconds. Work-in-process has been reduced 50 percent plant-wide. Factory floor space was opened up 30 to 40 percent in every on of their plants.

You know the Agile and Lean development buzzwords, you've read the books. But when systems need a serious overhaul, you need to see how it works in real life, with real situations and people. Lean from the Trenches is all about actual practice. Every key point is illustrated with a photo or diagram, and anecdotes bring you inside the project as you discover why and how one organization modernized its workplace in record time. Lean from the Trenches is all about actual practice. Find out how the Swedish police combined XP, Scrum, and Kanban in a 60-person project. From start to finish, you'll see how to deliver a successful product using Lean principles. We start with an organization in desperate need of a new way of doing things and finish with a group of sixty, all working in sync to develop a scalable, complex system. You'll walk through the project step by step, from customer engagement, to the daily "cocktail party," version control, bug tracking, and release. In this honest look at what works--and what doesn't--you'll find out how to: Make quality everyone's business, not just the testers. Keep everyone moving in the same direction without micromanagement. Use simple and powerful metrics to aid in planning and process improvement. Balance between low-level feature focus and high-level system focus. You'll be ready to jump into the trenches and streamline your own development process.

A guide to creating prioritized project pipelines and setting up improvement boards to maximize business success through the execution of continuous improvement projects.

Your team is stressed; priorities are unclear. You're not sure what your teammates are working on, and management isn't helping. If your team is struggling with any of these symptoms, these four case studies will guide you to project success. See how Kanban was used to significantly improve time to market and to create a shared focus across marketing, IT, and operations. Each case study comes with illustrations of the Kanban board and diagrams and graphs to help you see behind the scenes. Learn a Lean approach by seeing how Kanban made a difference in four real-world situations. You'll explore how four different teams used Kanban to make paradigm-changing improvements in software development. These teams were struggling with overwork, unclear priorities, and lack of direction. As you discover what worked for them, you'll understand how to make significant changes in real situations. The four case studies in this book explain how to: Improve the full value chain by using Enterprise Kanban Boost engagement, teamwork, and flow in change management and operations Save a derailing project with Kanban Help an office team outside IT keep up with growth using Kanban What seems easy in theory can become tangled in practice. Discover why "improving IT" can make you miss your biggest improvement opportunities, and why you should focus on fixing quality and front-end operations before IT. Discover how to keep long-term focus and improve across department borders while dealing with everyday challenges. Find out what happened when using Kanban to find better ways to do work in a well-established company, including running multi-team development without a project office. You'll inspire your team and engage management to make it easier to develop better products. What You Need: This is a case study book, so there are no software requirements. The book covers the relevant bits of theory before presenting the case studies.

Corey Ladas' groundbreaking paper "ScrumBan" has captured the imagination of the software development world. Scrum and agile methodologies have helped software development teams organize and become more efficient. Lean methods like kanban can extend these benefits. Kanban also provides a powerful mechanism to identify process improvement opportunities. This book covers some of the metrics and day-to-day management techniques that make continuous improvement an achievable outcome in the real world. ScrumBan the book provides a series of essays that give practitioners the background needed to create more robust practices combining the best of agile and lean.