Kanban for Process Improvement

Leader: Masa K. Maeda, Senior Consultant, Cutter Consortium

A recent Cutter Benchmark Review study on worldwide Kanban adoption found that among organizations currently doing or adopting Kanban, around 70% report productivity improvement, 65% report quality improvement, and 60% report customer satisfaction improvement over projects where other methodologies were used. Organizations are trying (and moving to) Kanban because it's been key in making new and ongoing projects successful and in rescuing failing projects. It is also a good fit for maintenance work. Furthermore, Kanban scales smoothly, without adding operational complexity, at a low cost.

Kanban’s effectiveness is due in part to:

• High visualization of the workflow
• Effective management of the workflow
• Control over the amount of work in progress
• Well-defined, explicit process policies
• Clear definition and understanding of the different activities within your project
• Quantification through statistical process control and other Kanban metrics such as cumulative flow diagrams
• Root cause analysis
• Continuous communication, collaboration, analysis, decision making and execution to foster and make improvements

Cutter's Kanban for Process Improvement workshop will familiarize your organization's teams with Lean-Agile, the core principles of Kanban, and its modus operandi. This two-day workshop is designed for project managers, development teams, and test organizations. With the knowledge your teams gain from this workshop, they will be positioned to effectively and continuously deliver value to customers. Through participation in diverse exercises during the workshop, your teams will become skilled at making new and ongoing projects successful, effectively doing maintenance work, and rescuing failing projects.

Workshop curriculum

1. Introduction
   • Lean Thinking
     • Wastes
     • Principles
   • Kanban systems
   • The Lean-Agile Prism
2. Bases
   • Theory of Constraints
   • Visualize workflow
   • Limit work in progress
   • Manage flow
   • Explicit communication
   • Prioritization
   • Kaizen
   • Value Stream Mapping
3. Kanban Systems
   • Kanban board
   • Classes of service
   • WIP
   • Policies
   • Flow generation and control
4. Quantification
   • Cumulative Flow
   • Statistical Process Control
   • Root Cause Analysis
5. Managing the project with Kanban
   • Board configurations
   • Scaling
   • Bottlenecks
6. Kanban game
7. Discussion of steps to roll out Kanban in your organization

Cutter's Kanban for Process Improvement workshop is customized to meet your organization's specific needs. For details, contact your Cutter Account Executive at sales@cutter.com or call +1 781 648 8700.