Kanban, Kaizen, or Scrum?

What do an Andon Board, Kanban, Kaizen, and Scrum have in common?  They are all Agile and Lean techniques that can be applied to manage projects.  This post briefly describes how these techniques work best when tuned to the type work-in-process found in your project. 

The Agile & Lean Glossary includes the following definitions:

• Andon Board – A Lean term for a visual control device that allows anyone to see and manage the status of the value stream.
• Kanban – A Lean term for a visual indicator that indicates when to execute an activity in a value stream.
• Kaizen Workshop – A Lean term for workshops to identify and implement improvements to a value stream.
• Scrum – An Agile term for a lightweight framework to manage complex projects.

Unfortunately, the above terms are not used consistently by all Agile and Lean practitioners. This in itself is not an issue, but common definitions are useful for clear communications. Current usage may be confusing the concepts behind some of these terms and their fit within organizations.

The term Kanban Board is sometimes used to describe an Andon Board for managing the work-in-process (WIP) of an organization. The board facilitates the movement of WIP from one queue to the next using rules to balance flow and minimize overproduction. It can be a useful tool to help prioritize work and minimize total cycle times.

Agile Scum also has an artifact known as a Scrum Board that is also an Andon Board for managing complex projects. Because of the similar look and feel between the two types of Andon boards sometimes Kanban and Scrum are considered two alternative approaches to accomplish the same goal.

A Kanban Board and a Scrum Board are similar. Both are used to help manage WIP. However the type of WIP that is managed by each is different. A Kanban Board helps to manage the WIP of a value stream or process. A Scrum Board helps to manage the WIP associated with a complex project. A Kanban Board is usually better suited to manage the WIP of individuals and a Scrum Board the WIP of cross-functional teams.

Scrum is actually closer to Kaizen than it is Kanban. Both Scrum and Kaizen are project management approaches to engage cross-functional teams to rapidly complete meaningful improvements within specific time-boxed iterations. In practice Scrum has advantages over the typical Kaizen. Scrum’s approach to managing WIP provides better visibility, prioritization, and predictability of project outcomes over time than Kaizen.

Regardless of what terms you use, managing the WIP of a value stream is different than managing the WIP of a complex project. Visual task boards are helpful for both; but pick the board best suited to your type of WIP. In any case, consider Scrum as an alternative to your next Kaizen.

The Agile Lean Enterprise

Agile was originally developed within the software industry and Lean was originally developed within the manufacturing industry. Given their diverse roots, they are not as different from one another as you might expect. In fact, if you peel back the layers of industry specific terms and perceptions, the two approaches are conceptually identical.
 
Agile and Lean both:

• Maximize value and minimize waste
• Manage time as an asset
• Establish a culture of continuous improvement
• Enable safe failures
• Increase predictability
• Proactively adapt to change
• Strive to achieve measureable results early and often

Traditionally, the difference between the two is that Agile focuses more on enhancing project management, whereas Lean focuses more on enhancing process improvement. However, in an era of almost continuous change the differences between project and process management are blurring.

Given project/process management convergence, rather than choosing between Agile or Lean, the opportunity is to pick the best of both. With the two approaches being conceptually identical, it is relatively easy to merge them to realize their combined strengths.

Agile’s strength is in managing the processes of how teams create customer value. Agile’s lightweight approach to self-organizing teams helps create flexible work cells that require less management overhead, have fewer handoffs, are less specialized, are more modular, and produce a greater diversity of products/services.

Lean’s strength is in managing the processes of how individuals create customer value. Lean’s focus on continuous flow helps to define the next most important thing to be done by each person in a process and provides techniques to ensure the maximum value is created from separate but interdependent resources.

Together Agile and Lean techniques can be applied to manage work environments with a continuously shifting mix of individuals and self-organizing teams. The resulting Agile Lean enterprise can:

1)  Operationalize both the execution and enhancement of a process as one management activity; and

2)  Leverage the best use of individual specialization for explicit linear tasks, and diverse teams for indeterminate non-linear tasks.