Kanban Board

Overview

Open Kanban is an "Agile and Lean based method to deliver value for knowledge work like information technology, software development, business, product development or personal organization". For Makers, this can be used to help work on single or group projects, let others know what neat things are being worked on, and allow people to help out on projects that might be stuck.

There are four major practices that a Kanban board will encourage (pulled from the Kanban Wikipedia page):

1. Visualize the workflow. You cannot improve what you cannot see. Knowledge work needs a way to show progress. Kanban boards are one of the ways to display progress.
2. Lead using a team approach. Without a team and leadership, nothing of significant value can be created or improved.
3. Reduce the batch size of your efforts. Science and the work from Donald G. Reinertsen has shown that when the batch unit of work is decreased, more can be accomplished. This principle goes beyond simply limiting work in progress.
4. Learn and improve continuously. This practice implies reflecting so that one can learn from experience, and it aligns with performing retrospectives and embracing Kaizen. In addition Open Kanban itself is open source and it welcomes contributions or extensions to the method.

Participation

If you'd like to participate, it's easy! Just create a sticky note with your name and a task, and place it in the first column of the board. When you have started work on the task, move the sticky note to the middle In-Progress column. When the task is complete, move it to the final Done column.

Clearing the Board

At each month's Members Meeting, all of the sticky notes in the Done column will be collected, photographed, discarded, and posted here. The latest collection will be embedded on the page, but previous months' collection will be linked to in the Done section of the page.

Done