Kanban Planning - An Essential Overview

The Gantt chart is one of the most often used tools in traditional project management for scheduling tasks, giving them beginning and ending dates, and monitoring project activity about the original plan. Whether this is correct or wrong, we won't debate about it. But let's be clear that creating a Gantt chart is acceptable in situations with little fluctuation. They may, however, be a true nightmare in the flexible and dynamic work environment of knowledge employment. Kanban planning offers a different approach based on your workflow's historical data rather than on your intuition. In other words, planning with Kanban forces one to change their perspective from adhering to rigid deadlines to depending on probabilities based on facts. Take Kanban certification online to stay ahead of the mass.

Kanban Planning: An Overview

With this idea, Kanban is a straightforward answer. With the use of Kanban planning, operations may be visualized and divided up into more manageable tasks. You can stay focused, ensure that you are acting appropriately, and make sure that you finish the job in the time necessary or requested by using Kanban. Manufacturing operations worldwide implement the planning and technique known as Kanban, which may quickly increase the operation's planning and efficiency. 

Why you should use Kanban instead of a to-do or to-do list application is a topic of discussion. While a to-do list is excellent for much smaller activities, a huge project makes it quite unmanageable. Kanban planning may help different departments by providing a shared knowledge of what has to be done and when especially when used in conjunction with software that also applies lean methods. It enables the team to meet around the board and discuss which tasks must be completed, in what sequence, and by whom. The same Kanban board may be used to organize and manage your work, helping keep everyone on task and coordinated as the project progresses.

How to Plan on Kanban Board?  

The planner Kanban board is referred to as "The new Gantt Chart" at Kanbanize. There is a reasonably decent link between the two, making Kanban Planning conceivable; however, you cannot transfer one into the other without losing some of the qualities. The Kanban board allows you to organize your work weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc. 

Imagine Kanban board's "Not Started" section as a reversed chronology, with the leftmost column representing the future and the rightmost column representing "now". We can simply utilize stickies for scheduling when products are most likely to be delivered once this basic timetable is in place. 

Consider the scenario when one thing must be rushed through or put off. In such a situation, we reorder the Kanban card by moving it to a different column on the Jira Kanban board. Rearranging the stickies such that they are in the right column is pretty much the Kanban Planning method. Of course, if we're using Kanban software for this, we should use Kanban cards. 

Your teams may organize their daily and weekly tasks with the Kanban project management software board. It provides a continuous, up-to-date picture of the state of every work item in the pipeline and the relative importance of the various tasks. People will then be fully prepared to move on to the most crucial duty at the front of the queue when space opens. 

Dedicated columns on your board may be made to symbolize the various planning horizons, depending on how you choose to plan your strategic goals. In this approach, preparing on a Kanban board can assist you in maintaining awareness of your next tasks and long-term objectives. 

Weekly Kanban Planning  

What's nice about weekly planning is that it provides the most straightforward and efficient approach to track progress with a limited number of iterations, making it the ideal lens for doing so. The weekly format is just the appropriate size to plan far in advance without having to make many course changes to your plan. Yes, there are many levels of planning, from annual strategic goals to daily tactical chores. However, this format is the best choice when it comes to achieving traction. 

Act I: Stephen Covey's The Weekly Compass®  

Lead by example so that the examples you provide the students connect more with them because they are genuine. This is one of the finest life lessons you can learn as a facilitator of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Therefore, I first used The Weekly Compass®, but I soon understood the tremendous advantages of this method, so I've been weekly planning ever since. 

One of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is to prioritize. The Big Rocks lecture by Stephen Covey is the greatest experiment to demonstrate this notion. By establishing clarity around your objectives and preparing first your large rocks connected to these goals every week, you will automatically start getting closer to your goals. 

The Weekly Compass® style was excellent because it emphasized the need to consider the main roles you play in your life as well as the four dimensions of renewal (physical, social/emotional, mental, and spiritual). I followed this approach for a time since it helped me become more productive as a person, but then Agile techniques like eXtreme Programming (XP) and Scrum came along... It was time to improve efficiency by completing weekly planning as a team member. 

Act II - Scrum/XP Sprint/Iteration Planning  

Before software, project management entailed utilizing a predictive planning method by sequencing project phases. Because of the more elusive nature of picturing software vs hardware that you could touch and see, it became impossible to anticipate the outcome of a project with software. 

With XP entirely focused on software, it became clear that fewer planning cycles resulted in better software planning and releases (iterations). Scrum calls these planning cycles sprints, which can last from one to four weeks. 

To stay on track and exploit expertise over the week, the optimal strategy to get software produced to please the client was to make modest weekly plans and introduce the Daily Scrum. 

It was wonderful to see work divided into small weekly increments of software that were prioritized on a weekly basis. The finest Agile secret is to devote a few people to work that does not change for a limited period. This weekly planning perspective was essential for achieving alignment and responsibility while remaining focused on promoting positive human behaviors. 

Finally, Kanban was revitalized, and the spirit of continual development in terms of effectiveness and efficiency reached new heights. 

Act III: Using Kanban to Visualize your Week  

Kanban, like Stephen Covey and the Agile Manifesto, is founded on ideals and principles that serve to influence human behavior. Kanban's basic qualities are what make it fascinating for weekly planning: 

Visualize the project 

Limit your work in progress (WIP). 

Make your work's process explicit. 

Workflow should be measured and managed. 

Improve every part of your job on an ongoing basis. 

The Weekly Compass®, as seen above, was a graphic card including precise features to highlight the most critical activities to be completed within a week. Kanban depicts work as separate cards that move across a board (Kanban property #1). 

Each card can have a unique name to categorize each objective within the Stephen Covey dimensions, or any other category in which you choose to visualize your cards. 

To be honest, Stephen Covey attempted to envision the week by combining his company with the Franklin Planner, but the effort was mostly centered on a daily plan. Workflows as quickly as feasible in Kanban by adhering to WIP constraints (Kanban property #2). This implies that, depending on the size of your team, there is an optimal amount of work to handle concurrently in order to do it in the most effective manner. 

This is when Kanban completely embraces the pull process, requiring an employee to complete one work item before beginning another. This capacity to limit labor until it is entirely done helps to a smoother flow and, eventually, better results over time. 

The last three Kanban features are equally useful in weekly planning, but they bring longer-term advantages. 

By clarifying the process (Kanban property #3), you can specify your best practices inside the board, ensuring that each card always adheres to the appropriate degree of inspection as it flows through the board. By monitoring and regulating the flow of work (Kanban property #4), you may use metrics to fine-tune your process and improve your outcomes over time... Finally, apply the continuous improvement habit (Kanban principle #5) to everything you do regarding the work that flows on this board. 

Kanban Planning for Productivity  

Kanban reduces the need to go back and forth between "planning" and "doing." This procedure consumes a significant amount of our day and can be mentally tiring, making the operation less productive overall. Without Kanban, it takes a lot of mental work to track everything that must be done. 

Therefore, Kanban is essential for these processes because the approach allows us to document and preserve ideas that arise throughout the planning process, eventually assisting us in ensuring that they occur. Using Kanban to plan and organize your work will not only increase your productivity, but it will also enhance the overall quality of the operation. As a result, use Kanban planning in your business and realize the benefits of the technique. 

PlanetTogether's Advanced Planning and Scheduling Program is a software program that may simply assist with implementing Kanban planning and methodology. PlanetTogether's APS software is a must-have for manufacturers looking to increase efficiency while lowering costs and improving profitability. Advanced Planning and Scheduling Software is critical for industrial operations worldwide to maintain a competitive advantage and stay up with industry innovations. 

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Software for Advance Kanban Planning and Scheduling  

Due to consumer demand for expanded product variety, quick delivery, and downward cost constraints, advanced planning and scheduling (APS) software has become a must-have for modern-day manufacturing processes. APS may be readily linked with ERP/MRP software to cover gaps in planning and scheduling flexibility and accuracy where these systems fall short. Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) saves time while increasing agility in updating ever-changing priorities, production schedules, and inventory plans. 

• Create optimal schedules that strike a balance between production efficiency and delivery performance. 
• Increase income by maximizing output on bottleneck resources. 
• To minimize inventory, synchronize supply and demand. 
• Increase capacity visibility within the organization. 
• Allow for scenario-based data-driven decision making. 
• Implementing Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) software will take your manufacturing operations to the next level of production efficiency, leveraging the operational data you currently have in your ERP. 

Conclusion  

We arrange weekly planning in the board template example above by visualizing "This Week" and "Next Week." The idea is to choose cards you feel you can complete in a week and place them in the "This Week" column at the start of your week. We usually recommend preparing additional cards under the "Next Week" column in case you finish the task for this week faster than expected. So Kanban capacity planning is a must. 

At the end of the week, you will be able to clearly see if you accomplished your goals. If all the cards that began in "This Week" are now in the "Done" column, you had a successful week and should rejoice. Every week, plan and go through the previous week's outcomes. Over time, use your experience and information, such as the throughput report to better establish your weekly objectives. You can try KnowledgeHut Kanban certification online. 

Although we currently feel that Kanban sprint planning is the best answer for weekly planning, it requires structure and discipline from various sources, including Stephen Covey's motivating work and all the amazing lessons from adopting Agile approaches. The goal is to embrace weekly planning in the style that works best for you.