The Kanban Method rests on 6 core principles and 9 values. David J. Anderson and Kanban University split the principles into 3 change management principles and 3 service delivery principles; the 9 values go back to Mike Burrows. This article explains both, plus the 3 Kanban agendas. Part II covers the 6 core practices.
Kanban is a method for making knowledge work visible, managing the flow of work and improving your organization step by step. Our Kanban board guide shows how to set up a board. This article explains the foundation underneath: the principles and values. It draws on "Essential Kanban Condensed" by David J. Anderson and Andy Carmichael (2016), the official Kanban Guide by Kanban University and "Kanban from the Inside" by Mike Burrows.
What are the 6 Kanban principles?
The 6 Kanban principles are the ground rules by which the Kanban Method shapes change and service delivery:
- Start with what you do now.
- Agree to pursue improvement through evolutionary change.
- Encourage acts of leadership at all levels.
- Understand and focus on customer needs and expectations.
- Manage the work; let people self-organize around it.
- Regularly review the network of services and its policies in order to improve outcomes.
Principles 1 to 3 are the change management principles, principles 4 to 6 the service delivery principles. This is how the Kanban Guide by Kanban University lists them. Older editions phrase the sixth principle as "Evolve policies to improve customer and business outcomes".
The 3 change management principles
People meet change with skepticism because it makes the future less certain. An organization is a network of people who are psychologically and socially connected and who resist many changes. The three change management principles take this attitude seriously.
1. Start with what you do now. Understand your current processes as your team actually practices them. Respect existing roles, responsibilities and job titles. Valuing current practices and experts lowers resistance to change. Current processes have weaknesses, but they have proven themselves in daily work; otherwise they would no longer exist.
2. Agree to pursue improvement through evolutionary change. Change grows from within your own organization. Don't adopt solutions from other companies that developed in a different context. Instead, measure your current performance and judge every change against this baseline.
3. Encourage acts of leadership at all levels. Improvement needs people who take responsibility, from individual contributors to senior management. Kanban does not separate leadership from management: anyone who spots a problem on the board and raises it is leading.
The 3 service delivery principles
Every larger organization is a network of interdependent services. The three service delivery principles align this network with the customer.
4. Understand and focus on customer needs and expectations. Find out which criteria your customers use to judge a service. Design your Kanban system to meet exactly these criteria. Dissatisfied customers show you where your service has to improve.
5. Manage the work; let people self-organize around it. Traditional service management looks at people and working hours. Kanban looks at the work itself: how many items are open at the same time, and how do they move through the organization? A Kanban board makes this unfinished work visible. The team decides who pulls which card.
6. Regularly review the network of services and its policies. A process is a set of policies that govern how you handle work. Make these policies explicit and understandable to everyone. Two policies belong there from day one: When a problem occurs, we solve it. and When a policy no longer makes sense, we change the policy. If you stop changing policies, you stop improving. Discussions about policies also stay more objective than discussions about blame.
Are there 4 or 6 Kanban principles?
Kanban University counts 6 Kanban principles today. Older literature names 4 foundational principles, for example Mike Burrows in "Kanban from the Inside" (2014): the three change management principles plus "Initially, respect current processes, roles, responsibilities and job titles". This idea is now part of the first principle. The three service delivery principles were added later. David J. Anderson explains why in his post Kanban’s Service Delivery Principles: service delivery has been core to Kanban since 2004, but the literature has only emphasized it recently. People who speak of "3 Kanban principles" usually mean the three change management principles only.
What are the 9 Kanban values?
The 9 Kanban values describe why the principles and practices of the method exist. Mike Burrows identified them in "Kanban from the Inside" (2014); Anderson and Carmichael adopted them in 2016. Respect is the foundation on which the other eight values rest:
Transparency
Open sharing of information and a clear, unambiguous vocabulary create transparency in every area.
Balance
A team performs well when it balances the demands, perspectives and capabilities of everyone involved.
Collaboration
Kanban improves the way people work together. Collaboration is therefore one of its core concerns.
Customer focus
Customers and the value they receive are the natural center of interest for everyone involved.
Flow
Work is a continuous or occasional flow of value. Applying Kanban starts with recognizing this flow and then sustaining it.
Leadership
Leadership is needed at every level to create value and reach a better state.
Understanding
Understanding primarily means self-knowledge, of each individual and of the organization as a whole. Improvement needs change, and change needs understanding: you have to know your work and your processes before you can improve them.
Agreement
Everyone involved commits to pursuing shared goals. Different opinions remain welcome; the shared commitment to improvement brings the positions closer together.
Respect
Respect for people, in the form of appreciation, understanding and consideration, is the foundation of all other values.
You apply Kanban in the spirit of the method when you embrace these nine values. They also explain why Kanban is not just a productivity tool: it is a management method built around a value system.
Which 3 agendas does Kanban pursue?
Kanban pursues 3 agendas for change in organizations: sustainability, service orientation and survivability.
The sustainability agenda looks for a sustainable pace of work. It balances demand with available capability. When demand exceeds capacity, the team is overloaded. Make the workload visible and match it to capacity; then the team completes its work at a regular rhythm without burning out.
The service orientation agenda turns attention outward to the customers. It calls for services that fit the purpose of the company and meet or exceed customer needs and expectations.
The survivability agenda keeps the company competitive and adaptable. Technologies and processes that suffice today must adapt to new conditions tomorrow. Kanban's evolutionary approach fits this agenda because it introduces change in small, measurable steps.
How do Kanban principles relate to the core practices?
The principles describe how you approach change; the practices describe what you do every day. Kanban has 6 core practices: visualize, limit WIP, manage flow, make policies explicit, implement feedback loops, and improve collaboratively and evolve experimentally. Part II of this series explains each one: The 6 Kanban core practices explained. The practice "limit WIP", for example, puts the fifth principle into action: you manage the amount of work, not the people.
How do you apply Kanban principles in Merlin Project?
The Kanban board in Merlin Project turns the principle "manage the work" into WIP limits. For each status value you can set a Minimum Count and a Maximum Count of cards. If a column contains more cards than allowed, Merlin Project reports a strong conflict; if it contains too few, a weak one. Each status value also maps to a completion percentage: when you drag a card into another column, the activity takes on that value, and the Gantt chart shows the new progress immediately.
Merlin Project supports the principle "start with what you do now" with templates for the status field, such as Simple Kanban, Software Development or Editor, or with your own status values for your existing workflow. You structure large boards with swimlanes. The article Kanban with priority shows how to sort cards by priority as well.
If you have any questions about this blog article or would like to discuss it, we look forward to your contribution in our forum.
