MARTYHAUGHT

Kanban vs Iterations

In my exploration of lean processes, I have recently focused on Kanban, Japanese for ‘visual board’. This is the pull system developed by Toyota for their just-in-time manufacturing system. It has been applied to software development and more specifically it has been listed as a core principle in Lean Start-ups. Just last week I attended an Agile Denver meeting where Frank Vega and Brad Swanson presented on Kanban and their experiences with it.

Though I have yet to use it on my software team, I was struck by how many issues that I’ve seen recently in classic timeboxed iterations that Kanban solves. I’m only going to reflect on these issues and not talk at length what Kanban is. Please visit here and here to learn more or check out this page that contains links to all sorts of resources on Kanban applied to software development.