Kanban Streamlines eLearning Development

In the context of eLearning development, is Kanban:

• A framework for implementing agile projectmanagement?
• A way to increase the efficiency of projectdevelopment teams?
• A clever strategy to reduce the number of teammeetings?

Kanban is actually all of these; it offers a way tostreamline the eLearning development process so that fewer projects or projectelements are in development at a time, allowing developers to focus on—andcomplete—one project or iteration before switching gears to work on somethingelse. It’s also a tool that can be applied to different types of projectmanagement.

“Kanban is a flexible, adaptable,visual system that, when set up properly, can provide a transparentrepresentation of an eLearning team’s workflow. Because it provides detailsabout each piece of work’s status in a workflow pipeline and who is currentlyworking on it, it mitigates the need for frequent status meetings and, instead,allows workers to collaborate effectively—asynchronously,” said AngellaDagenhart, a training specialist at Dickinson College, in an email interview.

The origin of Kanban

In the 1940s, Toyota engineers pioneered an approach toinventory and manufacturing based on “just-in-time” restocking of inventory, anidea they borrowed from supermarkets’ model of stocking inventory to meetconsumer demand, optimizing product flow.

Toyota applied the just-in-time approach to restocking tomanufacturing processes. Factory workers and suppliers would signal thewarehouse when fresh supplies were needed. This signal was a card or “kanban.”Teams would pass a kanban to other teams or to the warehouse to let them knowwhen they had available capacity for more supplies or work. The warehouses usedthe same system with suppliers.

The processes Toyota developed gave rise to lean softwaredevelopment in the 1980s (see “Lean Software Development Emphasizes Efficient Workflow for eLearning Projects”for more information). In 2007, David J. Anderson and other innovators appliedthe Kanban principles to knowledge work.

According to Dagenhart, Kanban can quickly “be deployed successfully with no knowledge of overarching agilephilosophies,” unlike other agile methodologies, like lean and scrum, whichhave much longer learning curves. Kanban can be used in conjunction with these agilemethodologies or on its own.

Key principles

Kanban is based on three principles:

• Create a visual model of workflow—This allows managers and team membersto see bottlenecks and other hindrances to progress.
• Limit the number of projects in process—Bystarting new tasks only when earlier ones are complete, teams minimize taskswitching, which slows down the process.
• Optimize flow—When a task is completed, the next item on a prioritized “to do”list is begun. Constant analysis of the workflow allows managers to predict andavoid blockages and other problems, while also ensuring that thehighest-priority tasks get the attention they deserve.

Kanban is not a system that is put in place then left torun. Teams constantly track flow, strive for greater efficiency, and pay closeattention to quality, production time, and other metrics—always with an eye toincreasing both the team’s effectiveness and product quality.

The Kanban board

Kanban’s name comes from the Japanese word for a card or avisual signal; Kanban project management implements this literally, with a physicalor virtual board of “sticky notes” that let managers and team members see eachstep of a process. Each card describes a single work item or task, estimateshow much time it will take, and likely identifies who is doing it. Each card isplaced in a “to do,” “in progress,” or “done” column. These might appear underlarger headings that represent stages, such as analysis, development, testing,and deployment.

If a task moves from “in progress” to “done,” a new taskfrom the “to do” list can take its place. When sticky notes are lined up in a“done” column, waiting to move to the next stage, it’s easy to identify thebottlenecks in the process or areas that need additional resources. The systemalso highlights areas where a team member is idle, waiting for more work orsupplies.

The Kanban process allows agile software development teamsto apply the Toyota engineers’ just-in-time principles to workflow capacity.They match the amount of work in progress to the team’s capacity. It isflexible and allows teams to focus on the task at hand, rather than constantlyjuggle multiple tasks. It also makes for better planning and helps teamsanticipate and avoid logjams.

“Because each member of a team can see their collective workand where it is in the workflow pipeline, they can get a clear picture of whatthe current workload is, as well as anticipate next-step actions to take tokeep things running smoothly. Too, because the system discourages having toomany items of ‘work in progress’ it discourages bottlenecks,” Dagenhart said.She added that universal participation is essential: “Ifnot everyone is managing the work assigned to them within the system, it is notan accurate representation of the team’s work.”

Kanban improves team performance

When applied to software—and eLearning—development, Kanban allowsteam members to focus on completing their tasks while sustaining a big-pictureview of the project’s progress.

“The primary advantage of using Kanban in instructionaldesign is its ability to significantly reduce the disruption to individualattention and distraction while maintaining or, better, boosting a team’sproductivity and the quality of the work they produce,” Dagenhart said.

She described how using a Kanban approach is helping hercampus during a migration to Microsoft Office 365 software. “The working group organizedto facilitate this transition is composed of individuals with differing areasof expertise from several different departments. Many of our responsibilitiesto the project are dissimilar, but interrelated. By using a Kanban system, weare all able to keep tabs on where the initiative is, what steps are currentlyin progress, issues that have come up during the process, and where ourindividual responsivities are in relation to everyone else’s.”

Using Kanban has produced a bonus effect that most developerswill celebrate. Keeping close tabs on progress “has drastically reduced thenumber of meetings that would have otherwise been required to stay on target,”Dagenhart said.

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