Practical Kanban
$19.00
Minimum price
$24.00
Suggested price

Practical Kanban

From Team Focus to Creating Value

About the Book

The Kanban board is constructed, the swim lanes are drawn and the blockade stickers are positioned. Now what?

Kanban is not able to reach its full potential in many companies. Often, the meaning behind the individual practices, such as WIP limits, is not correctly understood. All hope is placed in a method instead of actions. Kanban helps uncover the weak points in a work system, and as a result, reveals how to better generate value for the customer. This book can help in tweaking an existing Kanban system, as well as expand your own repertoire of solutions.

Klaus Leopold describes in detail the principles and functionality of Kanban, which are not always intuitive. He discusses typical problems that he has observed in his work with real-world Kanban systems. Klaus illustrates the possibilities that exist when the entire value creation chain of a company is taken into account and how tools such as Cost of Delay and forecasting can become strategic aids. Thus, it should become clear that Kanban is not a team method, but rather a method for improvement that considers the entire value creation chain of a company. 

  • Share this book

  • Categories

    • Agile
    • Lean
    • Project Management
    • Management
    • Leadership
    • Consulting
  • Feedback

    Email the Author(s)

About the Author

Klaus Leopold
Klaus Leopold

Dr Klaus Leopold, computer scientist, Kanban pioneer and creator of the Flight Levels Model, has many years of experience as a top management consultant with about 1000 workshop participants per year. He advises companies worldwide on how to act agile on the market. Klaus is author of the bestseller Rethinking Agile, Practical Kanban and co-author of the standard work Kanban Change Leadership. He regularly speaks at renowned conferences and publishes his current thoughts and experiences in the world of Flight Levels and organisational development on his blog www.LEANability.com. You can follow Klaus on Twitter at @klausleopold.

Team Discounts

Get a team discount on this book!

Up to 3 Team Members
Minimum price$47.00Suggested price$60.00
Up to 5 Team Members
Minimum price$76.00Suggested price$96.00
Up to 10 Team Members
Minimum price$133.00Suggested price$168.00
Up to 15 Team Members
Minimum price$190.00Suggested price$240.00
Up to 25 Team Members
Minimum price$285.00Suggested price$360.00

Table of Contents

  • Why did I write this book?
  • 1. Why do we use Kanban?
    • 1.1 Building Ships in a Workflow
      • 1.1.1 We Cannot Complete More Work, Even If We Work Faster
      • 1.1.2 We Have Enough Time for the Work We Never Have Time For
      • 1.1.3 When We Set Limits, We Become More Predictable
      • 1.1.4 When Everything is Important, Then Nothing Is
      • 1.1.5 The Later We Begin, The Better For the Customer
      • 1.1.6 Local Optimization Brings Global Sub Optimization
    • 1.2 Kanban: Long Live Evolution!
    • 1.3 Generating Value: Thinking About Service
    • 1.4 Layers of Design: Kanban Flight Levels
      • 1.4.1 Flight Level 1: The Operational Level
      • 1.4.2 Flight Level 2: Coordination
      • 1.4.3 Flight Level 3: Strategic Portfolio Management
    • 1.5 Summary
  • 2. Using and Improving Kanban Systems
    • 2.1 Visualization, WIP Limits and Work Flow
      • 2.1.1 Working with WIP Limits
      • 2.1.2 Value and Flow
      • 2.1.3 Dealing with several Work Types
      • 2.1.4 Changes to Work Types over Time
      • 2.1.5 Unplanned Work
      • 2.1.6 Definition of Done
      • 2.1.7 Summary
    • 2.2 Dealing with Blockades
      • 2.2.1 Blocker Clustering
      • 2.2.2 Dealing with Backflow and Defects
      • 2.2.3 Prioritizing Solutions
      • 2.2.4 Interview with Matthew Philip
      • 2.2.5 Summary
    • 2.3 Customer Validation
    • 2.4 Knowledge Transfer
      • 2.4.1 Capacity Constrained Resource
      • 2.4.2 Specialist Bottleneck (Non-Instant Availability)
      • 2.4.3 Specialist vs. Generalist
      • 2.4.4 Summary
    • 2.5 Coordination
      • 2.5.1 From Idea to Coordinated Input - Replenishment Meeting
      • 2.5.2 From the Input Queue into the Kanban System - Regular Standup Meeting
      • 2.5.3 Getting Better - Retrospective
      • 2.5.4 Summary
  • 3. Large-Scale Kanban
    • 3.1 A Practical Example: A Sales Platform with more than 200 Project Employees
    • 3.2 Scaling up Kanban
      • 3.2.1 Consolidating Services
      • 3.2.2 Connecting Services
      • 3.2.3 Shared Services
    • 3.3 Large-Scale Kanban at Bosch Automotive Electronics
  • 4. Forecasting
    • 4.1 Forecasting Requirements
    • 4.2 Forecast for a Work Unit
    • 4.3 Forecast for several Work Items without Historical Data
      • 4.3.1 Determining the Minimum and Maximum
      • 4.3.2 Monte Carlo Simulation
      • 4.3.3 Continuous Throughput Forecasting
      • 4.3.4 Interview with Troy Magennis
    • 4.4 Can You Trust the Forecast?
      • 4.4.1 Relationship between Work in Progress, Cycle Time and Throughput
      • 4.4.2 Measuring the Stability of a System
      • 4.4.3 Interpreting Stability Patterns
      • 4.4.4 Interview with Daniel Vacanti
    • 4.5 Summary
  • 5. From Prioritization to Risk Assessment
    • 5.1 Managing Demand with Cost of Delay
    • 5.2 Quantifying Cost of Delay
      • 5.2.1 Step 1: Determine the Value
      • 5.2.2 Step 2: Determine the Cost of Delay
      • 5.2.3 Step 3: Sequencing
      • 5.2.4 Determining Cost of Delay in Practice
    • 5.3 Additional Refill Factors: Risk Assessment
      • 5.3.1 Types of Risk
      • 5.3.2 Quantifying Risk
    • 5.4 An Interview with Markus Andrezak
    • 5.5 Summary
  • 6. Kanban in the STUTE Logistics Company
  • Terms used in this book
  • About the Author
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes

The Leanpub 60 Day 100% Happiness Guarantee

Within 60 days of purchase you can get a 100% refund on any Leanpub purchase, in two clicks.

Now, this is technically risky for us, since you'll have the book or course files either way. But we're so confident in our products and services, and in our authors and readers, that we're happy to offer a full money back guarantee for everything we sell.

You can only find out how good something is by trying it, and because of our 100% money back guarantee there's literally no risk to do so!

So, there's no reason not to click the Add to Cart button, is there?

See full terms...

Earn $8 on a $10 Purchase, and $16 on a $20 Purchase

We pay 80% royalties on purchases of $7.99 or more, and 80% royalties minus a 50 cent flat fee on purchases between $0.99 and $7.98. You earn $8 on a $10 sale, and $16 on a $20 sale. So, if we sell 5000 non-refunded copies of your book for $20, you'll earn $80,000.

(Yes, some authors have already earned much more than that on Leanpub.)

In fact, authors have earnedover $13 millionwriting, publishing and selling on Leanpub.

Learn more about writing on Leanpub

Free Updates. DRM Free.

If you buy a Leanpub book, you get free updates for as long as the author updates the book! Many authors use Leanpub to publish their books in-progress, while they are writing them. All readers get free updates, regardless of when they bought the book or how much they paid (including free).

Most Leanpub books are available in PDF (for computers) and EPUB (for phones, tablets and Kindle). The formats that a book includes are shown at the top right corner of this page.

Finally, Leanpub books don't have any DRM copy-protection nonsense, so you can easily read them on any supported device.

Learn more about Leanpub's ebook formats and where to read them

Write and Publish on Leanpub

You can use Leanpub to easily write, publish and sell in-progress and completed ebooks and online courses!

Leanpub is a powerful platform for serious authors, combining a simple, elegant writing and publishing workflow with a store focused on selling in-progress ebooks.

Leanpub is a magical typewriter for authors: just write in plain text, and to publish your ebook, just click a button. (Or, if you are producing your ebook your own way, you can even upload your own PDF and/or EPUB files and then publish with one click!) It really is that easy.

Learn more about writing on Leanpub