Kanban offers several additional advantages to task planning and throughput for teams of all sizes:
- planning flexibility
- shortened time cycles
Planning flexibility. A Kanban team is only focused on the work that's actively in progress. Once the team completes a work item, they pluck the next work item off the top of the backlog. The product owner is free to reprioritize work in the backlog without disrupting the team, because any changes outside the current work items don't impact the team. As long as the product owner keeps the most important work items on top of the backlog, the development team is assured they are delivering maximum value back to the business. So, there's no need for the fixed-length iterations you find in scrum.
Savvy product owners always engage the development team when considering changes to the backlog. For example, if user stories 1-6 are in the backlog, user story 6's estimate may be based on the completion of user stories 1-5. It's always a good practice to confirm changes with the engineering team to ensure there are no surprises.
Shortened time cycles . Cycle time is a key metric for Kanban teams. Cycle time is the amount of time it takes for a unit of work to travel through the team’s workflow - from the moment work starts to the moment it ships. By optimising cycle time, the team can confidently forecast the delivery of future work.
Overlapping skill sets lead to smaller cycle times. When only one person holds a skill set, that person becomes a bottleneck in the workflow. So, teams employ basic best practices like code review and mentoring help to spread knowledge. Shared skills mean that team members can take on heterogeneous work, which further optimises cycle time. It also means that if there is a backup of work, the entire team can swarm on it to get the process flowing smoothly again. For instance, testing isn't only done by QA engineers. Developers pitch in, too. In a Kanban framework, it's the entire team's responsibility to ensure work is moving smoothly through the process.