EXIN Kanban Foundation

1. Benefits of Kanban

1.1 Adaptability of Kanban

• Explain how Kanban can be adapted to fit many situations.
• Explain why no two Kanban systems are the same.
• Explain how kaizen culture increases business value more than any individual practice.

1.2 Kanban Culture

• Recognize a high-trust culture in a scenario.
• Explain why Kanban cannot exist without cultural change.

2. Continuous Improvement

2.1 Introducing Kaizen

• Explain why the essence of starting with Kanban is to change as little as possible.
• Explain the concept of kaizen culture as a fundament for continuous improvement.
• Explain how Kanban is used as an incremental method of change to reach continuous improvement in the organization.
• Explain why it is difficult to achieve a true kaizen culture.
• Identify if an organization has implemented all elements of kaizen culture in a scenario.

2.2 Visualizing and Improving the Process

• Explain how mapping the workflow works.
• Explain why it is important to map the actual process followed and not the process that was agreed.
• Explain why it is important to make policies explicit.
• Explain which metrics can be used to show performance and improvement.
• Explain the benefit of thinking of any process as a set of policies.

2.3 Requirements for Change

• Explain the relationship between slack and continuous improvement.
• Identify opportunities for continuous improvement in a scenario.
• Discuss the usefulness of daily stand-up meetings, after meetings, and operations reviews.

3. Implementing Kanban

3.1 Visualizing the Work

• Explain why it is important to track the workflow visually.
• Explain how to manage and track issues.
• Explain the process of drawing a card wall.
• Explain the use of swim lanes on a task board.

3.2 Creating Work Item Cards

• Explain which information must be present on or with a work item card.
• Explain why it is useful to define work item types.
• Explain the importance of distinguishing different work item types.

3.3 Limiting Work-in-Progress (WIP)

• Explain how limiting WIP shortens lead times in a scenario.
• Explain how to set work-in-progress limits (WIP-limits).

3.4 Managing Flow and Cadence

• Explain the meaning of the concept of cadence.
• Explain when it makes sense to make on-demand or ad hoc deliveries.
• Explain what allocating capacity according to demand means.
• Identify a bottleneck and the best solution using the five focusing steps from the Theory of Constraints (ToC) in a scenario.

3.5 Prioritization

• Explain the cadence and usefulness of queue replenishment meetings and release planning meetings.
• Identify the usefulness of backlog purge policies and an input cadence in a scenario.
• Explain how to use service level agreements (SLAs) with the help of classes of service.

3.6 Reducing Variability

• Explain why to establish a delivery cadence.
• Identify internal sources of variability in a scenario.
• Identify external sources of variability in a scenario.

4. Scaling Kanban

4.1 Kanban with Distributed Teams

• Explain how to deal with working from home and geographically distributed teams.

4.2 Kanban in Large Projects

• Explain how to scale Kanban to larger projects.