Tag Archives: lean

Lean and Kanban in personal life

Posted on by technotravey

For decades water-fall was the traditional method of project management and developing software. But now a day’s many project management methodologies are used like Agile,RAD,FDD, XP , Lean development and many more. Out of this Agile is becoming more popular because of constant changing needs of customer and dynamic team structure.

I know about lean concepts but never got a opportunity to use it practically. Recently I got a chance to work on a project which was using both scrum and Kanban. And I realized that Kanban can be easily integrated with scrum to produce better result.

I was just thinking if Kanban can be used in personal life as well?

Here is my thought on the same.

PersonalKanban

Workflow:

  1. Backlog -At the end of the month prepare a list of to-dos which you want to do in next month. We will call this as BACKLOG.
  2. Prioritize – Pick the most important items which you want to do in next week .Assign priority to each item picked from backlog and put it in this column. You can add items from backlog as and when you have space in this column.
  3. Doing – Pick items from Prioritize column on which you want to work starting from high priority. You can distribute those among your family members.
  4. Done- Once done you move items from Doing columns to this. Give pat on the back 🙂 to family member to whom the task was assigned to make it Done.

Well as an added flavor 🙂 you can apply Lean concepts as well :

  1. Eliminate MUDA(waste): Eliminate delays in above workflow. Work on most important tasks
  2. Outsourcing: When you are working on a task think if it is adding value. For e.g. Family pick nick. You cannot outsource this task to your neighbor or relatives J . of course they can accompany you, but your presence is must. However tasks like car servicing can be outsourced.
  3. Kaisan :This is Japanese term which means “continuous improvement.” Always think what will make your process improve so that you can have more items done at the end of the month with grater satisfaction
  4. Respect yourselves and your family members: This will help in having good family environment, greater satisfaction, well prioritized to-do list.

Wouldn’t it help you make your life more organized?

 Well I forgot to mention what is meaning of term Kanban. Kanban is again a Japanese term which means “Visual board” or “Card you can see”.