This chapter covers
- Introducing kanban principles
- Getting you started using kanban
- Defining what kanban is
In chapter 1, we introduced you to kanban through a short story. The purpose of this story was to show you, in a practical way, how kanban can be used to help you improve. We hope you already feel that you could use kanban now; but you probably have a few questions, too, such as
- How did Marcus and Joakim come up with all those ideas? Did they pull them out of thin air, or was there some method to the madness?
- That all sounded good, but my team and its situation don’t look much like the Kanbaneros; how can I use kanban in my team? What do I need to change?
- Was that all? It seemed a little simplistic, didn’t it? How can we expand on this?
All of these questions and many more will be addressed throughout the rest of this book. In this chapter, we want to show you the principles that kanban is based on, by looking back on what we did with the Kanbaneros.
But fear not, this is not a lengthy theoretical write-up on everything kanban. If you really want to, you can always go directly to section 2.2 and skip the theory. We’ll still keep the theory part short and practical; this is a practical book focusing on practical needs. That’s why we’ll keep the theory to a minimum and serve it to you in bite-sized chunks as you need it. We’ll also give you a quick recipe in this chapter for how you can get up and running with kanban quickly.