Finding ways to do things more efficiently is becoming a necessity - no matter what business you’re in. While Lean methodologies were developed in manufacturing environments, many Lean principles can be applied to any kind of business or activity; from software development to accounting systems to household chores.This short book introduces the core concepts of kanban and offers a step by step guide to getting started with kanban. This is a good place to start if you're interested in learning the Kanban Method. Using the lessons in this book, you will be able to begin using kanban to improve your process quality, visibility, and predictability. It's designed to be just enough to get you started with Kanban for organizing and improving software or other types of projects.

In my daily job as a change agent, I constantly need to reassure people that the path we follow is worthwhile traveling. This need is often expressed in the form of critique and difficult questions. When I coach Agile teams, this is often the case. The same thing happens when introducing Kanban. However, I noticed that Kanban raises much harder questions on a management and leadership level, once people are introduced to the basics and start to explore the subject on their own.

The type of questions Kanban raises, seem to be hard to answer without lapsing into an hour long discussion. I guess this is normal because Kanban is much less prescriptive than Scrum, for instance. In order to provide reassurance, as a coach, you need to trace the questions all the way back to the principles of Kanban, which are grounded in Lean thinking.By listing the 5 most common arguments against Kanban and my response to them, I hope to help people in their Kanban journey and build great organizations that create amazing products.

These answers are based on my own perspective and experience. It would be great to hear your answers and improve the book while more people are introduced to Kanban. The goal is not to explain Kanban scientifically, but provide insights why these arguments don't stand, in a language that is understandable by all.

Curated choice of blog posts from 3 years of blogging about Kanban and Agile at http://yuvalyeret.com. These are the posts that were reader favorites according to traffic, as well as my personal favorites.