Kanban Meetings: What are they and how to conduct them

Meetings are necessary for agile development. But each of the three Scrum, XP, and Kanban meetings is unique and has its traits (as project management methodologies differ). In this post, we outline the key distinctions between Scrum and Kanban meetings and provide some justifications for the necessity of a daily stand-up meeting. 

It doesn't matter if the meeting is to discuss revisions before your product is released or the design of new furnishings. It offers the transparency concept. It is unnecessary to present meetings as a formality and to act extremely efficiently. Status meetings should be productive since even a 15-minute loss of productivity for each member may be costly to the business. Take Kanban certification course to get a better hold of the term.

Understanding Kanban Meeting  

You may track each task's progress while streamlining the tasks your team needs to finish using Kanban meetings. In your meeting, you'll check in with your team to reclassify tasks based on their current progress, handle any problems, and evaluate the entire workflow. You will identify flaws in your procedure and discover ways to better coordinate the team's activities to help the project get done. 

More on this will be explained later, but initially, Kanban stand up system calls for intricate tracking. But don't worry; Kanban meeting is easier to implement than it appears. Take a big breath. Simply group tasks for a project into "To-Do," "In Progress," and "Completed" categories during your meeting. Each category and associated tasks are listed on a Kanban board that tracks all progress. On this basis, everyone may establish communication and create a successful strategy. 

Kanban approach could completely alter your working process. Your product managers could decide to create new products just when you realize inventory is running short rather than continuously producing goods for consumers or clients based on projections. By doing this, you avoid having an excess of stock in your warehouse; after all, unsold stock restricts your ability to generate revenue and, consequently, your ability to generate cash flow. Reduced production costs are an additional gain for you. 

Therefore, Kanban is a wonderful justification for everyone to do less work, which is lovely. The only remaining things will be the most crucial ones, so it is not like you are just tossing chores out the window randomly. 

Types of Kanban Meetings  

The straightforward objective of the Kanban approach lies underneath its complexity: speeding up and enhancing team workflows. You may attain your goals more effectively by using a variety of Kanban meeting styles to allocate duties across your Kanban board. Regular Kanban meetings are a good idea if you want to keep track of how tasks are doing and figure out how to avoid duplicating or superfluous work. 

The many kinds of Kanban meetings and how they fit into the process are listed below. The intricacy of your tasks and how quickly your Kanban team can do them will greatly impact how frequently you decide to hold these sessions. 

1. One Wake-up Meeting Each Day  

The primary benefit of the Standup Meeting is that it is brief and effective. Because it is often conducted standing up, no one gets too comfortable. Answering the following three questions is the purpose of the Standup Meeting: 

• What prevents us? 
• How is the work going? 
• What needs to change? 

Regularity Suggestion: Dairid 

Duration Suggestion: 15 minutes 

This meeting is not to discuss long-term strategy; instead, to concentrate on the day and the immediate future. To maintain workflow efficiency, pay close attention to team members who have nothing to do, possible bottlenecks, and stopped work items. 

Everyone on the team should participate; more participation encourages a wider range of perspectives and ideas for progress. For consistency, we advise holding the Standup Meeting at the same time and location each day - arrive on time! 

2. Restocking Meeting  

The number of jobs in the backlog must be chosen such that a constant flow of work moves across the Kanban board. The replenishment meeting is when this happens. The Kanban daily standup Method proposes a backlog management strategy that does away with the requirement for manual backlog reordering. 

A Replenishment meeting should last 30 minutes; however, the frequency will depend on the team's needs. While a slower process with fewer but more intricately detailed activities could only need replenishment meetings once a month, a fast-paced workflow with numerous little tasks can require weekly meetings.

The Class of Service of new work items, anticipating Fixed Delivery Dates items, wider strategic objectives, and if any jobs require specialized team member abilities to be accomplished are important considerations during Replenishment meetings. Portfolio/product owners, product development management, and other parties should attend the replenishment meeting. 

Weekly is a suggested frequency. 

Recommended Duration: 30 minutes 

3. Review of Service Delivery Meeting

If the most crucial stakeholder—the client—is not happy, all the efficiency in the world is useless. The service delivery review aims to assess how successfully the team's output serves the client. Building trust with your consumer by acting clearly and speaking directly to their issues is another advantage of this encounter. 

The client (or its representatives), the service delivery manager, and members of the delivery team should all attend this meeting. Depending on the requirements of your project, you can decide that extra stakeholders need to be included. 

Consider how customer satisfaction requirements may be evaluated objectively when considering how Kanban is a data-driven methodology focusing on measurements. Targets can be specified for desirable lead/cycle times, lead time consistency, and overall delivery rates, among other things. 

Bi-weekly is a suggested frequency. 

Recommended Duration: 30 minutes 

4. Planning a Delivery Meeting  

Clients cannot always get work the same day it is completed; some release dates must thus be set. The team may forecast what needs to be released together with other work items that need to be done at a delivery planning meeting. Data-driven choices may be made using the cumulative flow diagram, throughput histogram, and cycle time scatterplot. 

Any hand-off needs or client training activities should be considered during this Kanban replenishment meeting. Making sure that work is transferred seamlessly makes a big difference in reducing inefficiencies and maintaining high customer satisfaction. A work item's Class of Service should shift from standard to fixed date when it is committed to a set delivery date. 

Recommended Periodicity: each delivery cadence (variable) 

Recommended Duration: 1–2 hours 

5. Risk Reviews  

The Risk Review, a self-explanatory Kanban meeting, looks at anything that might jeopardize the completion of the activity. Blockers and backlogs should be evaluated in this meeting to foresee any delivery issues. Identifying, reducing or eliminating the root causes of previous failures is important. Anyone knowledgeable about previous and current blocks is encouraged to attend; as the attendees will vary from month to month, this will be the meeting with the greatest variety of attendees. 

Suggested Duration: Monthly 

Recommended Length: 1 to 2 hours 

6. Review of Operations  

The internal teams and systems that are all interconnected are all seen holistically in the operations review. Inefficient hand-offs or one malfunctioning component might slow down the entire business, even if individual teams are highly efficient. 

Managers from various divisions, departments, and systems attend this Kanban meeting to discuss methods to boost the effectiveness of the group as a whole. It is important to pay close attention to any interdependencies across Kanban systems that may impact delivery timeframes as a whole. The Operations Review is also a great opportunity to identify underutilized capacity throughout the whole business that may be exploited to cut lead times. 

Recommended Interval: Monthly 

Suggested duration: two hours 

7. Review of Strategy   

The Strategy Review examines the overall operation from a broad perspective since even the most efficient vehicle is useless if it is driven in the wrong direction. This Kanban meeting evaluates recent changes, considers fresh developments, and contrasts delivery rates with the rate of market changes. Setting a Kanban roadmap may be done using the larger strategic goals and direction. 

Delivery Planning Meetings and Replenishment Meetings can translate guidance into monthly, weekly, and daily targets. The goal is to spot possible major issues and, as required, adjust strategy or improve teamwork. Senior executives, portfolio/product owners, and team members from customer-facing areas like sales and marketing are ideal participants for the strategy review. 

Suggested Period: Quarterly 

Time Allowed: Half a Day 

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Difference Between Daily Meetings in Scrum and Kanban  

The daily stand-up meetings held by the teams using the Agile development approaches vary from one another and their core concepts. 

Tracking whether the team can complete all of the iterations as early as possible and identifying the reasons why they cannot be completed is the primary objective of the daily Scrum stand-up meeting. In Scrum, a stand-up is focused on people. Team members pledge to complete specified tasks today at the brief stand-up meeting when they report their results from the previous day and the status of ongoing work. Any issues are also mentioned if any do arise. 

Minimizing the amount of time spent on tasks at all stages is the aim of daily Kanban meetings. Although they are not needed, Kanban planning meetings have a significant impact on working procedures. The team may discover any blockages thanks to the meeting, which revolves on a particular board. 

• The attendees are gathered by a moderator for Kanban meetings. Project managers and product managers typically hold this position of distinction. 
• On one board, the squad concentrates. In most cases, a call is planned if the board is an online tool and the team is dispersed throughout the globe. 
• The group looks at the duties from top to bottom, right to left, and discusses the choices for moving on to the next step as quickly as possible. We encourage speeches from everyone. 
• Complete work should be placed in the far-right column. Priority is given to the work that is nearly finished. It will take less time to complete a task if it moves more quickly to the rightmost column (lead time). 
• What stops you from shifting a particular task to the done column is made clear by the Kanban meeting moderator. Specific justifications and presumptions exist. A note explaining the reason for the task's blockage is included when it is marked as blocked. Members of the team "sort out" the chores that were put off. Each person takes on chores to advance them to the next column by the following stand-up. 

So, the key distinction is: 

Kanban meetings concentrate on tasks; Scrum meetings concentrate on people. 

During the Kanban stand up, the same standard questions from the Scrum meeting might be asked, but this time with a task-focused approach: 

• What impedes the development? 
• How does the activity go along in the flow? 
• What needs to be enhanced? 

Kanban Stand Up Meeting	Scrum Daily Stand Up Meeting
Concentrates on duties	Concentrates on people
Minimizes the amount of time spent on tasks at all levels.	You monitor the team's ability to complete all iterations during the meeting.
Although it isn't always necessary, it frequently substantially impacts how things are done now.	The meeting aids in outlining the constraints that prevent them from being carried out as quickly as feasible.
Usually, the discussions revolve around a board that aids in identifying existing bottlenecks or with the use of online Kanban-focused software that allows product managers and teams to make their meetings more fruitful and profitable.	The outcomes from the previous day and the status of each participant's current duties are shared by all parties concerned. They make a commitment to do certain activities on this day and, if difficulties arise, to discuss them. Usually, the Scrum team talks about the schedule around the Scrum board.

Tips & Tricks to Improve Stand-up Meetings  

Following few guidelines may assist prevent work from becoming regular during daily stand-up meetings in Agile teams: 

• Remain on Time. It won't be forgotten that the internal meeting will have a set time and will gradually become a requirement in team members' calendars. The moderator should be in charge of scheduling Kanban meetings at a time that works for everyone and should also be responsible for this. 
• Avoid turning a stand-up into protracted sessions or processes. Business-related topics are briefly discussed as part of the short Kanban meeting style. Others utilize a microphone, while other imaginative teams use a gaming ball to "pass the word" to the following person. 
• In your workspace, leave all devices behind. Attend daily Kanban meetings with no supplies in hand. 
• In actuality, a 15-minute meeting is plenty for eye rest. 
• Don't attempt to address world issues. Big topic conversations are not appropriate for quick Kanban sessions. Setting out a certain time for them is worthwhile. 
• Instead of reporting, spread information. You must share data with everyone since a Kanban Stand-Up meeting is a team meeting rather than a meeting to report to your management. 
• Increase oratory abilities. Keep your language specific and communicate your ideas to everyone. It might be challenging to turn a complicated tech subject into an easy-to-understand speech. The most crucial information should then be shared, leaving out all the technical specifics. 
• Get ready. You must be fully aware of all task statuses prior to the daily meeting. 
• Observe the viewers. When it's your moment to speak at a Kanban meeting, don't interrupt and start talking about personal matters. 

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Conclusion  

Fresh ideas, unambiguous choices, and a short-term action plan are required for any stand-up to be productive. The project's state as a whole is fully understood by the product managers and other participants before they return to their jobs. In their product management platform Kanban boards, they create the appropriate notes and begin to plan the status meeting for the next day. You can also go for KnowledgeHut Kanban certification course to gain excellence. 

Do you attend your team's daily Kanban meetings with adequate attention? How does your usual stand-up go?