The concepts of just in time was developed by the Toyota group for competing with the western rivals. One of the tools employed to make this happen was the use of Kanban boards. The ever-evolving IT industry greatly employs multiple methodologies to deliver products timely and meet deadlines. One such popular software development model is Agile model. It involves a heavy usage of the Kanban boards. Kanban is one of the major agile software development methodologies. The other is scrum. These methodologies provide constraints and guidelines to enable agile software development. Here's a brief overview of the elements of kanban: • • • • • • • • • Means “sign board” in Japanese and is a scheduling system for lean production. Its goal is not to change your existing processes, but rather to visualize your existing workflow, and expose areas for improvement (e.g. bottlenecks). No prescribed iterations; the workflow is continuous. No defined roles. Requires that you set an explicit upper limit for each step in your workflow. New work is “pulled” into the system when there’s capacity, rather than being “pushed” into it based on demand. This avoids overloading the system. Defective work cannot move to the next process, thus reducing defect rate. No prescribed planning event, however most mature teams conduct ondemand planning when there is capacity to select new items for development. Other teams conduct scheduled reoccurring planning sessions. Estimation isn’t required; the focus is on predictability. However teams often benchmark their performance by tracking “cycle time” for an average item (time from when you begin work on a item until it is completed). This focus on cycle time often leads to a reduction in batch size, which results in faster feedback and a reduced defect rate. Teams generally conduct daily meetings, however it is not imposed. This is one such operational tool that anyone who has worked at any capacity in a traditional IT set-up must have come across.
