Kanban Board for Kids

By Aldo Barbaran

WIP Limits (https://youtu.be/zEJn6eQO6FE)

Article Published on Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/personal-kanban-board-barbaran-mba-spc-icp-acc-ssmc-csm-cspo/?trackingId=L8CK2ANGQ7u2LcibTizFAw%3D%3D)

Hello Everyone, due to Covid-19 we have seen rapidly changes in our Digital and Technology infrastructure. Companies like Cisco and platforms like Webex and Zoom are essential for Virtual Meetings with more than 5 billion Minutes Spent in Remote Meetings amid Coronavirus. with that being said, how do we embrace remote work? for those that don't know me. I'm an Enterprise SAFe Agile Coach within the Federal space and part of Lean Agile Center of Excellence (LACE). My job requires me to be innovative and out-of-the box thinker and come up with solutions to problems very frequently for my clients and programs. One of the advantages of being an Agile Coach, is that I can apply best practices and learning into my personal and professional life. 

I have seen many articles explaining best practices, routines, workspace, working hours and communication, while Working from Home. However, I haven't seen Articles on the importance of kids and work life balance for Parents. It is extremely difficult to balance with kids at home and have productivity.

Humans have the tendency to learn faster by "Visualizing the work" being done. Kanban is a technique that was introduced by Toyota in the 1940's. Kanban means "Single Card" in Japanese. 

Here are some best practices to get your Personal Kanban Board Started

• Kanban follows the scrum process. The biggest differences between the two is that Kanban workflow is based on cycle time. As Kanban is a pulled system NOT Pushed.
• During Kanban, Teams will agree on WIP Limits. Which represents the swim lanes limits as a team.

For example if you have (3) Developers and (3) Testers then your WIP limit will be the following:

Dev Lanes and Test Lanes (6) for developers and (6) for Testers. The idea is to decrease the cycle time as Kanban typically releases 2 times more than Scrum teams per iteration.

When the teams complete their work,they can self-manage and pull more work based on backlog priorities. 

Lastly, similar to Scrum, when teams have done few iterations, they should have a velocity or cycle time as a whole.

I have tried creating a Personal Kanban Board for my 7 year old son. He has been able to prioritize the work using WIP Limits and highest value to the end user in this case- School Teacher and reading. I will highly recommend setting one up. It will connect you better with your kids and at the same time increase engagement and productivity.