Unlike Scrum, which takes the whole project into account, Kanban focuses on one specific task. It is particularly suited to:

• Maintenance projects
• Teams with changing priorities
• Hard-to-manage projects

Transparency, balance, collaboration, workflow, leadership, and customer focus are values that are deeply entrenched in Kanban and are the reason for its success. This is why your teams have to be particularly diligent and mature to reap the benefits, which include:

• Easier task selection and prioritization
• Increased project transparency
• Focus on workflow and service delivery
• Enhanced problem-solving and decision-making abilities
• Improved predictability and inter-team communication
• Better adaptation to change

In practice, Kanban is based on six rules that everyone involved in the project must know and apply:

1. Visualization: to promote transparency and communication, all teams visualize the same workflow, which can be changed as often as required.
2. Reduction of WIP (work in progress): teams define a workload capacity that enables them to reach objectives easily without slowing down the project.
3. Workflow management: time spent on a task (lead time) is analyzed, with the goal of optimizing your teams’ work time.
4. Explicit rules: the purpose is to avoid any misunderstandings that might slow down the project.
5. Feedback loop: quickly testing the product results in equally fast feedback, which the team can act on to optimize workflow.
6. Improving collectively, learning by trying

We can only apply the Kanban method using the Collaboration Framework. It’s one reason why Pentalog’s projects are so successful.

The Collaboration Framework is the fruit of Pentalog’s many years of experience in project management. It combines all of the best working practices to ensure total transparency at every stage of the project, thanks to various indicators that the client approves. Some are an integral part of Agility (velocity, burn down chart), while Pentalog has specifically created and added others like team mood, budget, and an HR vision.

More than 1,000 Pentalog clients have tried and tested this work support system, making it possible to break down communication barriers caused by cultural, language, or habits-based issues, guaranteeing the project’s success and satisfaction of both the customer and team.
 

Create business value fast by setting up agile layers

How can you quickly generate business value? A Pentalog Product Owner must answer this question to prioritize backlog.

Having 1,300 IT experts located across three continents means we can inject specific capabilities into your product (UX design, security, and DevOps, among others) in a short amount of time if the Product Owner thinks it will improve ROI.

To improve visibility, the team uses a task board divided into three sections: to-do, in progress, and done. We cap the number of tasks in each section to prevent a build-up of tasks in one particular area and ensure rapid delivery.

The team decides beforehand under what circumstances a task is deemed to have changed status.

As tasks are completed in a short amount of time (two days as a rule), adding a new request to suit user needs is quick and easy to do.

Pentalog does all it can to supply the necessary capabilities at just the right time to quickly generate ROI. By adding skills like UX/UI design, Ethical Hacker, DevOps, or digital marketing only when they’re needed, we respect your budget and time-to-market, while your product quickly increases in value.

Kanban is for any business that wants to reduce cycle length and costs while improving product quality. The method is well-suited for support and maintenance projects that have a continuous flow of elements combined with a dynamic workload.

Kanban helps to visualize tasks clearly while remaining focused on your strategy.

It’s worth keeping in mind, however, that this is a disruptive method that requires highly skilled team members – in the end, these are the people who will ensure the project is a success. Note, also, that the Kanban method does not define roles in as much detail as the Scrum method. This is why we recommend experienced Kanban Masters to our customers – they’re able to manage this aspect of the method with ease.

 
Is the Kanban method the best approach for your project? Do you want to build an agile team that works according to the Kanban method? Let’s talk about it!