Member-only story
Definition of “workflow” in Kanban
Why understanding the definition of workflow is important
In my opinion, the section on the definition of workflow in the Kanban Guide is probably the most important section. If you don’t understand your definition of workflow, many other things don’t work that well in the Kanban Guide as a result. If you don’t get that part, it’ll be difficult to really make progress.
What is meant by “defining your workflow”?
In the Kanban Guide, we talk about having a definition of workflow.
For a start, you need to define the kind of work items that might flow through that system. Some people use stories, for example, features, experiments, etc. → what kind of items might be going through?
You don’t need to have work item types per se. In the Kanban Guide, they’re optional. In non-software, they are more useful in reducing antibodies from people.
People tend to say, well, some things take longer than others, and it’s often a debate not worth having in the early stages because there is actually some merit in non-software where some different work item types do take different lengths of time.
But putting it very simply → you need to define what kind of work goes through the system.
Are your work items delivering value?
One thing is clear: we do not have fake work items going through the system. In other words, you don’t have items that don’t deliver value. Each item should deliver value, or at least we hope it’ll deliver value; the idea is that it will deliver value.
So as soon as we deliver it, we can confirm whether it did deliver value or not, but we have the potential to release value, whether that’s customer value, end-user value, market value, organizational value, societal value, maybe a reduction of risk or it could be…
