Planning in Kanban
Planning is, by definition, an activity that is done in advance of the activity. Kanban does not prescribe a precise planning routine like scrum. When we are planning, we are creating a stock of work items to work from, which helps the team know what they are going to start working on next time capacity allows for pulling new work. The Kanban approach suggests planning just in time when you need more work and not just in case by creating a stock of planned work.
The benefit of planning is that it informs us and the teams we depend on, or the teams depending on us, about where we are, and where we are going. Another reason to plan is to synchronize our work with other teams. In planning, it is important to consider dependency on other teams.
To remain more agile, create a little stock of work items to work from during planning, as it helps the team know what they are going to start working on the next time capacity allows for pulling new work. If a long list is decided and committed to by the team, it will make it harder for the team to remain agile when new urgent work items need to be prioritized as there will be a long list to consider, which will cause frustration and also waste time reprioritizing.
Planning done at the right time saves time.
- The Earlier we plan, the more chances there are of a change in situation and then the planning needs to be done again. E.g., if I have to go on vacation and I do my planning a year earlier, I will have to plan again when the time comes closer, as there will be many changes within a year.
- We do not want to plan too late either, as future is upon us already, so planning does not serve the purpose E.g., if a team is out of work, at that time we are not planning, we are just finding work to do at that time and many times there is dependency on other teams that can’t be taken care of right away. In these scenarios, sometimes higher priority work gets blocked and lower priority work is picked up by the team to work on.
Just-in-time planning
Planning for new work just in time for the team to start working on it and keeping the stock of preplanned work to a minimum helps the team remain more agile.
Scheduling planning at intervals like every two weeks or a month poses two risks:
1. When the planning session is held at that time, no more work is needed because there is still work in progress.
2. If the next planning session is after two weeks and the team is done with the work they planned to do, they will have nothing to do and everyone will have to individually figure out (with the PO) what to do next. Which increases the chances of not picking work items that are high value, as the whole team is not involved in that planning.
One way to plan is make it event driven. This means events in your process tell you that you have capacity to take on more work so you should plan, and since we will keep the stock of preplanned work low, it should not take a lot of time to plan.
The concept of an order point is handy for event driven planning. It is the level of stock of work items ready for development that triggers an action to replenish the to-do list. When a team reaches the order point, it shows that the need for work is imminent and more work needs to be planned for. Planning can be done at that time.
In summary, in Kanban, , way to plan is on-demand, event driven planning instead of planning on regular intervals. It saves time and keeps teams more agile.
How do you plan with your team when using Kanban?
