In this post, I give a short introduction to the Kanban as a tool for more efficient project management.
Until the mid 1990’s, project management of marketing projects was mostly performed in the Waterfall methodology (Schwalbe, 2015); a project management methodology where project tasks are defined upfront, and finalised in a linear order from start to finish.
The problem with planning any large project up front, like an international product launch or the development of a new e-commerce platform, though, is that it is impossible to foresee everything that can and will happen as soon as you start working. A matter of fact, during my 20+ year career in the creative industries, I have never worked on a large project in the Waterfall methodology which has not ended-up being delayed and costing more money than planned; many times for the simple reason that stakeholders when seeing a project slowly coming to live start to adding features or changing the scope.
As an example, I 2005 led the development of a bar- and restaurant guide for Jameson Whiskey. It was my first large-scale digital project and about half-through after painfully realizing we were running out of time and budget, one of my experienced developers suggested that we should start working in the Lean methodology of project management (Brechner, 2015; Ries, 2011; Stellman, 2014) which I then had no experience of. With nothing to lose, I agreed that we could give it a try and since then I have led more than a hundred projects, and around 30 International product launches in Lean, also using the Kanban for visualizing work.
While I in this post won’t go into detail about the Lean methodology, I below breifly describe how to work with a simple Kanban system as an efficient method to break down tasks, prioritize work, limit work in progress, and to identify potential bottlenecks in any project:
A simple example of a Kanban workflow
- 1. Creating the Kanban
- A Kanban can be as simple as a part of your office wall which you divide into three columns using white tape. In the first column which you name ‘todo,’ you add all tasks of the project written on simple post-it notes. In the middle column, ‘ongoing,’ you add tasks that you currently work on, and in the right column; ‘done,’ you move finalized tasks.
- 2. Writing down all tasks
- The first step is to break down all projects tasks into manageable components which then are written on post-it notes and placed in the to-do column.
- 3. Prioritizing
- When all tasks are planned, the next step is to select the two or three tasks which are most urgent and move these into the ‘ongoing’ column.
- 4. Starting the work
- You then start working on the tasks added in the ‘ongoing’ column. When a task is finalized you move it to ‘done’ and picking a new task that you recognize as most urgent from the todo column (which in the Lean vernacular is called a backlog), which you then add to the ongoing column. And so on…
Why the Kanban works
What makes the Kanban methodology efficient is that it clearly visualize all work that needs to be done. By never having more than two or three tasks in progress which you finalize before selecting a new task, you also work in short sprints of just one or two days, after which you prioritize remaining tasks in the backlog (the todo column); selecting only tasks that is most urgent at this particular time.
As with any project management methodology, there is no such thing as a one-fit-all solution and what works for me might simply not work for you. But if you never tried using the Kanban I highly recommend you to give it a try. For me and my teams, this method have enabled, not only a more efficient workflow—but more importantly—the method also has helped me finalize projects on time and with a lot less stress.
- References
- Brechner, E. (2015). Agile project management with Kanban. Redmond, Wash. D.c.: Microsoft.
- Liker, J. (2004). The Toyota way. New York: McGraw-Hill.
- Ries, E. (2011). The lean startup.
- Schwalbe, K. (2015). Information technology project management.
- Stellman, A. (2014). “Learning Agile: Understanding Scrum, XP, Lean, and Kanban”.
- The Economist. (2017). Taiichi Ohno. [online] Available at: http://www.economist.com/node/13941150 [Accessed 4 Sep. 2017].
- World’s Best Bars. (2017). World’s Best Bars. [online] Available at: https://www.worldsbestbars.com/ [Accessed 4 Sep. 2017].
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