Over at the ITSM Review, Ros Satar writes about ITSM Projects and how the Kanban methodology might bring value.
In these uncertain economic times the watch words of the moment seem to be:
"Do more with (continually) less"
The effects of outsourcing both to clients of service providers and within their own organisations too means that support groups need to be as efficient as they can with (quite frankly) what they have left.
Could the visual scheduling tool LeanKitKanban, a web-based virtual signboard and card system, help Service Management support groups manage their time more efficiently and perhaps help bring about a more proactive approach to certain disciplines?
I enjoyed reading Ros' article - I think she presents the benefits of Agile and Kanban well and offers some sensible words of caution for IT Service Management organisations that are considering adoption.
A few additional thoughts:
There can be only one #1 priority
One of the principles of Kanban is that the priority ranking is absolute. There is precisely one "Priority 1 task" and precisely one "Priority 2 task" in a stack.
This ranking is constantly evaluated and the ranking of individual cards (or tasks) will change to reflect business priorities. This is great to provide team focus on a small number of urgent issues and to limit the amount of work in "WIP" status.
Does this map well onto ITSM processes such as Incident Management?
Sadly I suspect not - imagine the poor user who's incident is represented in a Kanban stack but never makes it to the top of the stack. Incident models tend to be autonomous - that is they exist in a list of open Incidents but make their way from "Open" to "Resolved" independently of each other. You'd expect to look at a Kanban card halfway down the stack and understand that it has a long way to go until completion.
That isn't necessarily the same for Incidents in a list, regardless of whether it's a P1 or P2 incident. They will be fixed "as soon as possible" according to the SLA etc, not in sequential order.
However - for Infrastructure and Operations teams Kanban is a good methodology for tracking maintenance and "loose" pieces of work.
One stakeholder should manage the stack
The number and allocation of Kanban boards should be carefully designed. The principle of limiting the Work In Progress and having a single "Priority 1 task" doesn't sit well in teams that have commitments to multiple stakeholders.
Valid designs could be to have a single board per team with multiple stakeholders with the understanding that they will agree on which of their priorities is the only "Priority 1 task".
Or a team could work with multiple boards where stakeholders manage their own backlog.
Not an impossible problem for teams to manage but it should be considered.
You can try this in ServiceNow!!
I signed up for a LeanKitKanban account and I'd recommend it as a point solution for teams wanting to try the methodology. It's smooth, beautiful and works really nicely.
Of course - your organisation also values the integration, extensibility and licensing model of ServiceNow so you should check out our Progress Boards in Berlin.
Progress Boards are part of the Scrum process pack - another Agile methodology that is considered heavier than Kanban, so this isn't an exact fit but my development team have used our product as a Kanban tool when we find ourselves with an unstructured set of requirements.
You are able to prioritise cards by dragging and dropping and move cards across the Progress Board from Draft to Complete
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