Kanban Back to Basics: Stop Starting, Start Finishing

Last week was Scrum. This week Kate Megaw, Anu Smalley and Ryan Smith turn to Kanban, the framework most teams think they already know because they have a board. They trace it back to Toyota and just in time manufacturing, then walk through the part that usually gets skipped: the three change principles, the three service delivery principles, and the six general practices behind the board. Ryan explains why work in progress limits are the practice people blow past first, and how he uses Kanban to calm a chaotic team. Anu orders a pizza to show why no organization has only one workflow. Kate shares the client board that showed a client it had the wrong mix of roles, and all three take on the practice everyone forgets: making policies explicit. Along the way: the theory of constraints, Kanban for refinement alongside Scrum for development, and why your teams do not all need the same process.