Implementing Done, In Process, and Ready Queues in LeanKit Kanban

Posted by indomitablehef | Filed under LeanKit, Lean, Kanban, Tools

In two blog posts, “A Variation on Queues - Pipelines for WIP and Done” from December 2008, and WIP Queues: Done vs Ready from September 2009, Derick Bailey, (with comments from Scott Bellware) examined ways to break down WIP queues into Ready, In Process, and Done queues. Ideas from these blog posts made it into our electronic Kanban implementation in LeanKit Kanban, and I’d like to show you how they can be implemented and analyzed using those features in LeanKit Kanban.

In “A Variation on Queues - Pipelines for WIP and Done” Derick describes how:

we can use the concept of a pipeline and split our existing queues into a WIP and Done step. For example, we want developers to pull work from the Analysis queue into the Development pipeline. We can show which cards are ready to move by splitting Analysis into sub-columns of WIP and Done.

I’m replacing his illustrations with mine, from LeanKit Kanban:

Then in September of 2009, in WIP Queues: Done vs Ready he took it a step further describing how the pipeline can be modeled to include a “Ready” state just before an “In Process”, _or_ a “Done” state just after the “In Process” state.

Like this, showing the LeanKit Kanban board in “edit mode”. (we’re proud of our “inline”, wysiwyg board editing features, too)

Notice the drop-down lists in each column/subcolumn header - these allow you to specify that a particular column is a “Ready” Queue, “In Process” queue, or “Completed” queue.

Or, in some cases, you might want both a “Ready” Queue and a “Completed/Done” Queue in your pipeline:

Notice the little Queue Type icons in each sublane header - shown in the call-out bubble. These allow you to see at a glance what kind of queue you’re looking at.

As Derick and Scott Bellware discussed in the WIP Queues: Done vs Ready post and comments, having a “Ready” queue may indicate a “Push” situation in your pipeline:

An important distinction of “Ready” is that it receives items via push rather than pull. It’s a thing that’s usually found and the seam between two process stages or two parts of an organization that aren’t easily reconciled by pull.

Before we move on to how you can use these distinctions in your analysis of process efficiency, here is one more illustration from LeanKit Kanban, showing a Ready/WIP pipeline modeled as a horizontal sublane, instead of a vertical one:

Efficiency Analysis Based on Queue Type

Now let’s look at how making these distinctions on the types of Queues in your process, along with the automatic statistics capture your get from an electronic tool, and the Efficiency Analysis chart in LeanKit Kanban can show you valuable information about the efficiency of your process, and how much “dead” time there might be in waiting for handoffs.

Let’s take, as an example, a more complex value stream, shown below (click to enlarge):

Notice how the parent “In Development” and “Testing” lanes are broken down horizontally into “Feature Groups”, each with a Ready Queue, In Process Queue and a Completed Queue. The Bugs section of the “In Process” lane is modeled with an In Process and a Completed queue, whereas the Bugs section of the Testing Lane is modeled using a Ready queue and an In Process Queue.

Using the Efficiency Diagram in LeanKit Kanban, and all the flexibility it provides to define the parameters used to analyze the data, we can take a closer look at

1. Just the “In Process” and “Testing” lanes and their children/sublanes
2. For the first 3 weeks in January
3. Taking Card Size into account

… in order to see

What percentage of the Cards on the board were “In Process”, as opposed to “Ready” or “Completed” at any given time over the course of those three weeks?

Check out the diagram below in detail, with annotations: (click to enlarge)

So, for this completely made-up data set I used to generate this chart, it looks like we’re running a fairly efficient process. What do those occasional spikes in “Completed” queues mean? Maybe those are Fridays, when people push to finish the work they currently have on their plate. Or maybe it’s no big deal - but noticing patterns like that, and asking the questions that they inevitably bring to mind, can be an important part of the “continuous improvement” of your Kanban system.

Thanks to Derick and Scott, for their contributions to the Lean Software Development and Kanban community and to my own learning process over the past couple of years. Thank You for reading this far down, and please do go and give LeanKit Kanban a spin. You can sign up for a fully functional free account, which includes all the advanced features and analytics described in this post, and allows you one Kanban board and up to 5 users for free.