This chapter covers
- How to avoid common kanban pitfalls and criticism
- The number-one mistake when starting to use kanban
- The fact that kanban isn’t a process at all, at least not as you might think
By now you should have plenty of reasons to use kanban in your process. You can show interested people that kanban has improved and continues to improve your process. Because of the approach that kanban takes to change management (“Start where you are and improve from there”), most teams and organizations don’t object too loudly to kanban and the principles it’s built on.
That said, some criticism comes up from time to time. It wouldn’t be fair if we didn’t at least touch on the most common issues and how to deal with them. For the most part, the criticism focuses on pitfalls that are easy to fall into if you don’t look out. We wrote this chapter so you know what to avoid.
The aim of this chapter is twofold: to introduce you to some commonly raised objections and then to help you avoid the pitfalls identified by this criticism. Learning about the ways people criticize is a great way to improve—it helps make sure you steer clear of bad things.
Let’s take the bull by the horns and start with criticism that came up in the early years of kanban, leveled by one of the founders of Scrum.