{"id":6990,"date":"2020-01-13T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-01-13T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lei.flywheelsites.com\/the-lean-post\/articles\/how-can-kanban-be-useful-in-software-since-we-never-produce-the-same-part-twice\/"},"modified":"2021-05-07T14:24:52","modified_gmt":"2021-05-07T14:24:52","slug":"how-can-kanban-be-useful-in-software-since-we-never-produce-the-same-part-twice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lean.org\/the-lean-post\/articles\/how-can-kanban-be-useful-in-software-since-we-never-produce-the-same-part-twice\/","title":{"rendered":"How can kanban be useful in software since we never produce the same part twice?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dear Gemba Coach,<\/strong><\/p>\n

How can kanban be useful in software since we never produce the same part twice?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Fair point. However, we see kanban cards on Toyota cars on the assembly line when no two following cars are identical \u2013 different models, different options. The cards do two things:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Tell you which parts to pick to assemble a unique car<\/li>\n
  2. Send a resupply message for the parts bin you\u2019re drawing from<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Granted, the bins themselves are full of identical parts. But if we take a step up and think car development, we can distinguish three types of functions:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Functions that you know how to get it right the first time because you\u2019ve done them several times in the past \u2013 they\u2019re repeatable.<\/li>\n
    2. Functions where you\u2019re not sure you\u2019ll get it right the first time, but know you\u2019ll get there in the end because it doesn\u2019t look too hard \u2013 not repeatable, but closed problem. Closed problems are problems where you don\u2019t have a complete solution yet, but you know you\u2019ll find one.<\/li>\n
    3. Functions where you have no idea how you\u2019re going to solve it \u2013 or whether it\u2019s solvable – but need to try stuff and see how it goes \u2013 nonrepeatable and open problem. Open problems are problems without any easy solution in sight, currently, and you need to explore and hope you crack it.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Kanban doesn\u2019t help you to plan \u2013 it helps you to see problems where they are.<\/em><\/span>Anything you do, whether a car, software, or writing this paper can be seen as the relative proportions of A, B, and C functions. The secret for a successful mass product is only A and B functions, and 99% A if you can, while still offering something sexy to users. To be able to do so, you need to explore new ideas with Cs offline, to learn to turn Cs into, at least, Bs.<\/p>\n

      Kanban doesn\u2019t help you to plan \u2013 it helps you to see problems where they are. Imagine you\u2019re working with a small team of three people: Jane, Jim, and Sue.<\/p>\n

      You\u2019ll start by planning the work so that it comes together and does the job. The challenge at this stage is to spot the \u201cHail Mary Passes,\u201d the C jobs masquerading as Bs. Kanban makes sense once you\u2019ve taken these out and solved them before you plan the rest of the work.<\/p>\n

      When you design the work, you\u2019ll try to arrange the jigsaw puzzle so that each person is responsible for a flow (a sequence of jobs) that the sequence makes sense in itself:<\/p>\n

      <\/p>\n

      If we\u2019re clever, we can also plan the job according to cross dependencies:<\/p>\n

      <\/p>\n

      Now, once we\u2019ve done our planning, the natural thing to do is to put all the jobs we know they\u2019ll do eventually on each of the devs desks:<\/p>\n

      <\/p>\n

      And let them get on with it:<\/p>\n

      <\/p>\n

      With kanban, There\u2019s only one job on each desk:<\/p>\n

      <\/p>\n

      So that when someone struggles:<\/p>\n

      <\/p>\n

      It shows and the rest of the team can come and have a look:<\/p>\n

      <\/p>\n

      To understand where the snag is and why something we thought was an A turns out to be a B (quickly corrected with help) or a C (let\u2019s take a step back and think this through).<\/p>\n

      That\u2019s it.<\/p>\n

      It doesn\u2019t solve the world\u2019s problems. It doesn\u2019t help if the plan was poorly done. It\u2019s nothing to write home about. What it does do is avoid having people keep slogging on with an unsolved difficulty without their colleagues knowing about it.<\/p>\n

      What this does, however, is enable bringing in value by capillarity, one increment at a time, and structure learning curves for long-standing productivity. It doesn\u2019t look like much, but it is a pivotal tool to seek economies of learning from problem-based training. Probably the most powerful idea to come out of Toyota.<\/p>\n

      Kanban is not a magical tool to smooth the flow. Kaban is a practical tool that causes you see when something is not as expected, stop, and look more deeply into how to fix it.<\/p>\n

      Obviously, if tasks are mainly Bs and Cs, kanban doesn\u2019t make sense, because it would crash all the time and nothing would get done. But on the other hand, if all jobs are Bs and Cs, you\u2019d better have genius devs and cross your fingers for the product to work in the end.<\/p>\n

      The question you\u2019re asking is not so much that we never make the same part but how much of it is not the same part. For instance, I never write the same gemba coach, but many aspects of the column are predictable, such as topics, length, research time, etc. So kanban makes a lot of sense, even though each part is different (and indeed, I work with a kanban from my editor). On the other hand, to write poetry or an entire book, kanban doesn\u2019t make sense because we don\u2019t yet know what the pieces will be, how they come together and which are predictable and which are not.<\/p>\n

      As so like many things in lean \u2026 it depends. But the only way to know for sure is to try to put a kanban in place and see what happens. Then you\u2019ll know more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Dear Gemba Coach: How can kanban be useful in software since we never produce the same part twice?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[29],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHow can kanban be useful in software since we never produce the same part twice? - Lean Enterprise Institute<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lean.org\/the-lean-post\/articles\/how-can-kanban-be-useful-in-software-since-we-never-produce-the-same-part-twice\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How can kanban be useful in software since we never produce the same part twice? 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