Kanban, a concept created within Toyota’s Japanese production and manufacturing plant, oddly enough, has been a system that has gone on to take the world by storm. The Kanban card system allows “just in time” tasking; and is comprised of a board made up of cards that are moved along in a left to right fashion. Kanban is a system often utilized in Agile teams to help keep track of software development work, and ensure everyone in the team stays on the same page.

Boards are structured into columns that are based on stages, with each stage accommodating zero to many cards. An example of columns might be the following:

Ideas - Ready to Start - Development - Testing - Sign Off - Done

Each card has a specific task name, and depending on how complex the system, an assignee, details, attachments, due dates, etc.

Why use this system? Let’s check out the benefits of Kanban from a software development perspective…

1. Keeps everyone on the same page

When you’re using the Kanban system, it’s easy to see what the current state of a project looks like, whether your cards are skewed to the left (which may indicate you’re early on in a project, not working as hard as you could be, or not being as effective as you should be), or skewed to the right (which means you’re nearing the end of a project, or need to add more tasks to the pipeline).

This way developers and managers can see exactly what’s going on at all times and pose questions if the board doesn’t look quite right.

2. Keeps workloads even

In a team environment, everyone should be doing an equal share when it comes to effort. In a Kanban system that allows assignations, it’s easy to see whether workloads are relatively equal.

Do keep in mind that senior developers may be assigned a greater number (or larger or more complex tasks), whereas junior developers may be assigned fewer tasks on average as they are not as fast to complete them as yet.

3. See the stages where backlogs are forming at a glance

With Kanban boards, it’s easy to see if cards are piling up in the one column without being moved on to the next. You can then dive into why this is occuring.

Are the tasks too large and taking too much time to move along the board (they may need to be broken up into smaller chunks)? Are some team members not pulling their weight, or having other issues stopping them from achieving what they need to (it might be time for a chat)? Are people not remembering to assign tasks to someone else (a gentle reminder, or build in some automation)?

4. Allows fast task assignation

With an intuitive Kanban board system, it becomes easy to assign each card to a specific person, then reassign if need be. You can also add items like due dates, links, attachments, information, tags, and more.

Kanban boards can be as simple or as complex as you need them to be, but for teamwork, the ability to assign tasks (cards) quickly to actual people is brilliant.

5. Makes team members more accountable

Because of the high visibility of a Kanban board to anyone that’s on the team, it can make team members more accountable - as they know that everyone else is able to see their progress or assignations at a glance. This can push them to complete their assignments on time.

Do be aware that if a team member is underperforming, that this may put stress on them, so you need to deal with the situation with diplomacy and delicacy.

6. The ability to generate ideas quickly at any time to add to the beginning of a board

Have a million ideas for the project but not sure which ones are going to fly? You can brainstorm all your ideas out and put them in an Ideas column. This way they can be checked over by other people, or come back to later, before approving for development purposes. It’s fine to leave cards in the Ideas column, or get rid of them altogether if they don’t sound like they’ll fit after further consideration.

7. The feeling of reward when moving cards along the board

Moving cards along the board is similar to ticking tasks off a task list, or gamification of reviews on sites like Google Maps. It gives the person doing the task a little sense of reward that can be like a little energy boost or spark. It might not be Kanban’s biggest drawcard but it’s a nice accompaniment to the system.

There are plenty of tools available to help teams do Kanban. Sometimes it’s simply just a noticeboard with post-its or drawn up on a whiteboard in the team room. For more complex Kanban boards for software development you can create a Kanban board within Jira, or with dedicated Kanban apps like Trello.

At CodeFirst, we often use Kanban in our projects to help keep us organised, accountable, and on track. It allows both us and our customers to get a good overview of what’s going on in the development process at any given time, and make any changes to the system if we see that there are any problems forming which need addressing.

If you’d like to partner with a software development house that takes organisation and teamwork insight seriously, then reach out to us about your next project .