Introductory lesson explaining Kanban as a visual, flow-based work management system rooted in lean manufacturing. Emphasizes making work visible, smoothing flow between workflow steps, and contrasts Kanban’s less-prescriptive, continuous-improvement approach with Scrum’s timeboxed, prescriptive framework. Intended as a primer for teams (including Scrum teams) on applying Kanban principles.
Welcome to lesson one. Just a quick little background on Kanban and sort of what it is. You know, Kanban literally means signal or signal for work. The idea being if there's no signal for work, work can't move to the next workflow step. Now, Kanban is a visual work management system. So incredibly important, we're going to make all of our work visible and it can be used to manage any type of work. It has its roots in the early days of lean manufacturing, but we see it used today widely across many, many different types of projects and products. Now, Kanban is a flow based system. That is, its focus is on smoothing out the flow of work as it moves from one workflow step to another. Now, as you might be able to already guess, that's a little bit different than Scrum. Scrum is kind of focused in on the time box one to four weeks, with a preference towards a shorter time box. Scrum has a very prescriptive framework. Kanban is less prescriptive. The idea is that you start where you're at and then continually improve. So with that background, let's get into it. Let's get into like, how does this thing work for you on your Scrum teams?
