Measuring performance in kanban

Question

Let's assume I decide to manage a certain project using Kanban. This happens to be a customer service kind of project where the dev team delivers continuous improvement so Kanban is definitely well suited and scrum would probably be over the top and ultimately unnecessary.

Let's also assume I want to measure the performance of the team. I know someone prescribes to take a, say, two weeks activity and count the number of tasks delivered in that timespan. You can repeat that process every two weeks and so monitor performance. It is advisable to break down stories so that they are kind of comparable and basically become a unit of measure.

I have never used Kanban before but being able to break down stories into similar sized ones sounds like a not very feasible goal to me. In fact the more I think about it the more it seems difficult.

What about adding story points to each task on the board before starting development as we do in Scrum? Would that be a theoretically sound practice?

Answer 1

The idea of managing a project with kanban is subtly off the mark and may cause frustration for you. Kanban is a method of optimizing process. This means you absolutely can apply kanban to the development process and improve that process. A more efficient process will often support a more successful project, there is a ton about project management that kanban doesn't cover that you need to account for.

I'm not certain how the size of items is connected here. "Small batch sizes is an idea that comes from lean and most kanban teams find that the size of their items when they start are problematic and need to be smaller, but size is relative and you will have to decide in your context. Similarly, story points often don't add value in teams using kanban, but if they add value for you, great.

On to performance measurements. Some very common ones are:

• Throughput: amount of items done in some period of time (5 backlog items per week or 3 features per quarter for example)

• cycle time: time it takes from start of work until delivery

• lead time: time from when a need is identified until it is delivered

• escaped defects: number of bugs that slip past the team

• value delivered: like throughput, but measured in some value units realized instead of work items done.

It is important to keep in mind that kanban is much more than the board. If you aren't familiar with the kanban method, you probably want to learn more about the practices in it. In my opinion, it can be harder than scrum because, while it is very lightweight, it takes a lot of discipline and transparency. Also, if you are starting with Kanban, I would highly recommend looking into STATIK as an approach to starting with kanban.

Answer 2

My suggestions for measuring performance in a Kanban team would be:

• Customer feedback - including internal customers like people from the business side of your organisation
• Collaboration - time spent supporting other team members, etc.
• Adaption and innovation - track ideas and solutions arising from the team