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Agile Kanban Journal: Kaizens on Day 1

Avatar photo By Jon Miller Updated on April 25th, 2023

Kaizen emphasizes making small changes every day and retaining the ones that bring positive outcomes. With the help of friends, my agile kanban board evolved on its first day of use. After organizing my projects and tasks on an erasable magnet board, I began my day by focusing on the right side of the board and worked my way left. Despite some interruptions, it was a successful day.

The Delegated to Column: More Space for Tasks

The right column is now labeled “Delegated to” and can hold an unlimited number of tiles. In theory, 50 items could be delegated per 500-minute workday, assuming each follow-up email takes 10 minutes. However, practically speaking, only 7 items can fit in a single column, or 14 if doubled up. There’s very little space on the board for notes. Regardless, I’m willing to allocate more board space for delegated tasks. If all 20 items end up in that column, it means I’ve successfully worked myself out of a job.

Prioritization and Categorization Made Simple with Color-Coding

Upon realizing the need for task prioritization and categorization, I followed David J Anderson’s advice and kept it simple. I used readily available materials – colored whiteboard markers. The board now has three task categories: green for near/mid-term revenue tasks, blue for long-term/company-building tasks, and red for urgent or overdue tasks. This allows me to tackle tasks in priority order: red, green, then blue. There is a risk of not getting to the blue tasks. Today, I spent only four hours on the board and accomplished two green and one red task, with three tasks moved to different categories and one new blue task added. Here’s a summary of what happened:

  • Movers = 3 (green, red x2);
  • Items done = 2 (green, red);
  • New items = 1 (blue)

In terms of the net reduction of tiles on the board, my output for the day was two. Whether that’s good or bad is unclear, but it’s a provisional standard. I made several small changes throughout the day while learning to use this Agile Kanban method.

Improving WIP Limit and Work in Process Section Design

The board’s WIP items are limited to 20, the number of tiles that fit on the two dry-erase panels minus the headers. Though arbitrary, it’s a starting point, and we’ll experiment and measure the trend of lead times to assess the effect. In column two, WIP items were reduced from 4 to 3, a 25% improvement. I nixed the room for additional items below the top three, which was only allowing cherry-picking and more task-switching.

By limiting WIP to 3 pieces and marking dates directly on tiles as suggested by John Santomer, I’ve created more space to the right of the tiles in the Work in Process column. This area is useful for breaking down projects into smaller tasks and jotting down working notes. It’s worth noting that the Work Items on the left column are all sizable projects that could be managed using a traditional 3-column Scheduled-Working-Done agile kanban task board.

Day 1 Summary and Next Steps

Here is the summary of kaizens to my agile kanban board on day 1:

  • Color-coded prioritization scheme in trial-If successful, we plan to set desired output levels for each category and establish limits based on productivity and lead time.
  • Tiles now include start dates- When they are finished, the completion date will be added below, and the elapsed time will be documented in a TBD (To-Be-Determined) file.
  • Work in process section redesigned-there are now three sections to limit WIP to 3. This creates more space to write task details. The total cost of implementing these ideas is zero.

*I will try this out for a few more days and report new findings. Please keep the suggestions and questions coming. It has been very helpful so far.

*There is an Agile Kanban course available if you are interested.

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Jon Miller

Jon has dedicated his 25+ year career to the field of kaizen, continuous improvement, and lean management. Jon spent the first eighteen years of his life in Japan, then graduated from McGill University with a bachelor’s in linguistics.

  1. Scott

    June 23, 2009 - 8:15 am
    Reply

    I myself use the dry erase board method but know that the minor issues can become a major problem if you do not take care of them early and then they will take 3 times as much time to resolve. That is why I allocate a time each day to take care of the quick hitters so they are closed and off the board. People say they can multi-task but in reality you can only do one thing at a time and the board ensures that I do not loose focus on what is still open.

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