How To Choosing What To Do Next

In Kanban, the goal is to have a fast and smooth flow of work so it is important that the team has a clear understanding of how to choose what to do next and that each team member is able to answer that question without waiting for anyone to answer it for them.

Using different visualization techniques and setting explicit policies for the Kanban board helps enable the team to be more self organized, which leads to reduced wait times. Some of the visualization techniques are:

• Have the to-do list organized based on priority, and make it clear that whatever is at the top is the highest priority.
• Use blocked indicators on the work items and ensure that what is blocking the work item is also clearly mentioned.
• If there is something time sensitive, mention the due date on the work item. Also, a separate class of service (swimlane) should be created for time sensitive work items.
• Use the expedited swimlane, for any expedited work item.
• Having Work In Progress (WIP) limit set on the columns helps the team make decisions about whether work can be brought into that column.
• Have rules clearly stated, like start from right to left and top to bottom. Or stop starting and start finishing.
• Set a clear expectation for the team that if anyone is done with his/her work item, first see what he can help finish faster. If there is nothing that can be finished, bring in new work items from the top into the flow as long as the WIP limit allows.
• If there is nothing available, it’s okay to have slack time to use for learning or a pair program with a team member to learn. Remember, sometimes we need to slow down to pick up speed. Slack enables improvements if used properly.

The above mentioned are small steps that can help the team self-organize and not wait to get the answer about what to do next from a PO. If the team is keeping the status of the work items up- to-date and the Kanban board is painting the picture of the current state of work all the time, team members do not need to ask each other if any help is needed most of the time, e.g., if a work item is waiting for code review and it is in Ready for code review column, team members can pull that work item to do the code review without any need for discussion. Kanban being a pull system helps the team be more self organized.

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Reference: Kanban In Action by Marcus Hammarberg and Joakim Sunden