Kanban Project Management – Beyond Agile

My colleague Jeff really opened my eyes when he introduced me to Kanban project management.

I returned the favor by telling him about the best project management book I’ve read in years: Agile Project Management with Kanban, by Eric Brechner

You can read an excerpt here.

While I loved the Agile approach in concept, in practice the learning curve was really steep. My team would have to learn sprints, scrums, and velocity management. Team members would need to learn new roles. It’s easy to find semester-long courses on how to run Agile projects. How were we going to take this on while we were busy doing our day jobs?

The Kanban approach seems more straightforward to me, and apparently to many others. In fact, Kanban project management is now starting to supplant Agile in many places.

What is kanban?

Kanban is based on the deceptively simple concept that a project consists of a backlog of tasks to be worked that have not yet started. The project team pulls the highest priority tasks out of the backlog, works on them until complete, and then goes back and selects another set to work.

I spent a lot of time on the web reading everything I could about Kanban project management. Here are a couple of links to get started:
http://leankit.com/kanban/what-is-kanban/
http://www.versionone.com/what-is-kanban/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_(development)

Actually, you’re better off skipping the web search and reading Agile Project Management with Kanban, by Eric Brechner. It’s awesome.

Related articles

• Kanban – The Basics (neomobile-blog.com)
• Critical Action Planning – A New Approach to Project Management for Medical Device Companies (jaycaplan.com)