Are we Kanban-ing WRONG?

  • 7 March 2022
  • 9 replies
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Max Harper
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Provocative Question: Are we Kanban-ing Wrong? 


Sitting down to clean-up and sprint-prep our work planning board with a client recently I began to scratch an itch that had been bothering me…  

Tasks in GANTTs/PERTS etc flow one way with respect to time and task and Kanban conventionally flows the opposite way. 
 

GANTT:  Right to Left task flow

GANTT, PERT and other such time planning visualization systems (In western convention, as far as I know, any way…)  layout time as: left is earlier and right is more future. To read these over time a ‘now’ window slides across the time line from left to right. The “to do” items start off to the right of the time window, the ‘done’ items end up on the left of the window and the ‘doing’ live in the middle of the window.  The flow of tasks with respect to this time window is from right to left. 


Kanban: Left to Right task flow

Conventionally a Kanban works in the opposite direction; where tasks flow from left to right. 

 


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Our progress in a board is almost always a general flow of adding new ideas and work product (design, solution architecture, testing, documentation) to the right and down. That you start on the board in the upper left and move right and down. Past and completed is left on board, future is out to the right. 
 

SO: We’re experimenting with inverting our Kanban: 
 

Past sprint is left, current sprint is center, and placeholder for a future sprint sits to the right. With our ever-growing core-backlog above it.


Our sprints progress from left to right. Our future sprints can be planned out to our right looking at our core backlog above. Progress on our current sprint takes place . 

When time progresses we move the Kanban and the backlog over to the right ( sliding the time window). And completed and tested/accepted story cards remain above the sprint in which they were implemented. History is scannable then over to the left. 

Our Kanban has its future blue-sky back log out to its right ready to be fed in sprint planning. 
Like a PacMan heading to the right eating task after task. 
 


It requires some re-learning/re-orientation to the new Kanban flow.

Done is on the left, Backlog on the right. 



Completed and accepted items that exit the Kanban and are placed permanently above their sprint.

_________


Conclusion:

 

It is at first a bit odd to re-orient to the Kanban, but its starting to solve the problems and cognitive dissonance we had before where our future lived on our board’s right side but on our kanban’s left side and visa versa for the completed items. Now all prospective work can take place on the right. All history lives on the left.  Our kanban and backlog can now flow much better, perpetually. 
 

Curious...

… what others think. LMK in comments.  

Think visually. Work brilliantly. || visualthinking.tools || Creators of 'PowerPack', 'Clusterizer' and 'Totally Random' Miro Apps: || max@refractivestrategy.com || Support Community Miro Plug-In Creation: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/refractive

9 replies

Henrik Ståhl
Userlevel 7
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@Max Harper Conceptually speaking, this is really interesting. Although I’m reluctant to say I like it due to the simple fact that you’re taking inspiration from Gantt… :joy: (I really dislike Gantt and that sort of linear project management.)

Anyway, an innovative approach in all its simplicity. I like what you’ve done Max! And Pac-Man is a funny detail. :grin:

Max Harper
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@Henrik Ståhl yeah - I hear yah, Gantt is a mixed bag of pros and cons.  But more than any particular methodology, I’m aiming this questioning at ANY project management layout on a board where time is represented— or even less so, any time when using a Miro board to just do project work over time (where you consciously choose where to place future work … and where past work ends up - and in what relationship to this structure does one organize their kanban… Kanban is linear, and by convention; future tasks are left and past tasks are right— (To Do, Doing, Done). Many people I see organize their project boards with the future to the right and the past to the left, and GANTT, PERT, roadmaps, fishbone; the many flavors of time-based or activity-process-based (“first we must do this, then we can do this”) planning visualizations tend to, by-in-large, be organized similarly with the future to the right and the past to the left.  
 

Kanbans that are structured conventionally with (future left and past right) make sense on their own when we accept that we have mapped the x axis to “level/stage of progress” and righter = more progressed. But, when one zooms out of a kanban to its larger context, one that is embedded in a larger board where the most progressed-upon things were things we acted on yesterday and happen to be more left than our current work - that dimensional mapping of the kanban is now counterposed to the larger mapping of progress. 

Granted, as we endeavor to convert multidimensional information into 2D positions and few-D visualizations; not all dimensional mappings in a single board will correspond, cohere or harmonize. But having the time dimension of (future-past) and/or progress dimension of (to do, doing, done) harmonize between Kanban and outer board context — seems a very low friction rearrange, with very high upside and cognitive leverage — a very low hanging fruit. 
 

 

Think visually. Work brilliantly. || visualthinking.tools || Creators of 'PowerPack', 'Clusterizer' and 'Totally Random' Miro Apps: || max@refractivestrategy.com || Support Community Miro Plug-In Creation: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/refractive
RGKD
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Hey @Max Harper,

  Great write up and presentation. Maybe it’s because I’ve only ever worked in small teams or had the product management tools clearly separated but this has never really been an issue for me. Seeing it now side by side it’s actually very weird to consider and think I’ll transition to a “forward log” from now on.

  As an aside, I love the pros of a GANTT chart and wish Miro had a nicer way to manage timeline dependant/spatial relationships between elements.  

I branch out from: linktr.ee/rgkd
Kiron Bondale
Userlevel 7
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@Max Harper -

If you are sticking with a Scrum-style work board (and not a “true” Kanban board), another non-linear option is to use a story map and change the color of the stickies to reflect their status (e.g. yellow for not started, green for done, blue for in progress, pink for blocked). 

I do like the team’s creativity in switching the direction of the flow. When you have a team of teams with inter-related features, it can almost look like a network map when you connect the multiple work boards together!

Kiron

Kiron D. Bondale, PMP, PMI-ACP, PSM II, ICP-ACC, DASSM, DAC, DAVSC, PMI-RMP
Henrik Ståhl
Userlevel 7
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@Max Harper If I had to choose, I'd pick your workflow with past to the left and future to the right every day of the week.

It's actually the whole linear approach that doesn't sit right with me, the “start and end” of development. But that's another topic for another post.

(I've actually created a Build-Measure-Learn template in Miro. Might submit it to Miroverse. 😊)

Henrik Ståhl
Userlevel 7
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I submitted the template to Miroverse! 😄

https://miro.com/miroverse/build-measure-learn/

 

Colleen Curtis
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Love this @Henrik Ståhl!

::::Colleen::::
Henrik Ståhl
Userlevel 7
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Thank you @Colleen Curtis! 🙏 Did you take a closer look at the example sticky notes? The whole example template is kind of an easter egg. 😁

J

I always like to see some creative problem solving.   

You may be thinking about kanban differently, typically a kanban board does not refer to time or timescale that is captured in your sprint planning.  These kanban boards are visual indicator of the status of the task not its place in time and comes from a different methodology to that using gantt charts and work breakdown structure planning.

That said if it works for you and you are getting great results then 👍

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