Taking Kanban To the Bank
For several years our son Seth was a technical writer for a
large bank in the Midwest. He became
adept at translating a regular flow regulatory gobbledygook into clear written
instructions. His biggest surprise came
when the bank experienced a tsunami of 14,000 federally mandated regulations
with a deadline for full processing and compliance within six months.
The bank’s officials realized they would need to think out
of the box to meet this bureaucratic demand. Thus they turned to a project
management system invented in the 1950s to expedite Japanese car
manufacturing. Kanban is named for a
series of cards or signboards which help teams communicate the status of each
phase in a process where cost control requires a continuously adjusted balance
between inventory and production. In
other words, a project is broken into flexible, customized chunks and all of them
moved forward simultaneously without backlogs and delay. Sometimes this is called agile or
just-in-time manufacturing. Using kanban
to process voluminous regulations was an unusual and innovative solution.
This is where our son entered the picture. A calm
communicator and always able to teach and simply explain technical matters, Seth
was given a lead role for a team of 15 employees from different bank divisions.
Expected to isolate themselves in a
meeting room, surrounded by progress cards and lined with signboards, the group
was charged with rapidly churning out 14,000 pieces of procedural guidance in
short order. As the first team progressed, two more teams
were launched.
Project management like
this is a world away from my professional experience in public education. The closest comparison might be a music
director or a cafeteria manager. Perhaps
this is why I would fail as a chef who needs to have a multi-course dinner
arrive on time. The salad and dessert may involve only a step
or two, but preparation of the main course may entail many more steps. The ingredients for everything must be
purchased, coordinated, be available when needed, and prepared
simultaneously.
Motivation, training,
and practice make a big difference. Not
long after diving into the kanban project, Seth became an enthusiastic advocate,
often explaining what was going on in his conference room to visiting
executives. Also, he started to use an
interesting new vocabulary.
One day he called to
tell us he was planning to take a certification course to become a scrum master. A what? I almost told him he was too old to be taking
up rugby where the game begins with a scum of two teams who lock arms in a
circle and push each other around like sumo wrestlers until the ball gets
kicked free.
In agile project management, apparently a scrum is far
afield from rugby. It is a management
framework introduced by the Japanese. The
central idea is for teams to be pursue separate, yet completable tasks, each
focused on a “sprint” or relatively short period of time to complete and ship
out the partial result. A reassessment
of progress, including any backlogs or lack of focus, occurs after each sprint,
and changes may be made to improve effectiveness and efficiency.
The scrum master’s
role is to serve as a liaison between the product owner and the scrum sprinting
team. Speed is a priority for
scrumming. If something does not work, make
it “fail fast” and move on to what works. Internet literature on this topic describes
Netflix as a prime example. With the
user’s experience as a priority, new listings are issued regularly, and video
can be shipped or accessed fast. What is
not working can be excised quickly.
Whether it is kanban, or the more structured approach of scrum, all of
these methods focus on responding to change instead of following a lockstep
plan. They lend themselves to the use of
computer software. All of them take a
Japanese cue known as “kaizen”, in other words a process of continuous emphasis
on efficiency, quality and improvement.
Our son’s kanban team
reached their goal two months ahead of deadline. The bank proved it was able to adjust quickly
to new mandates, rely on teamwork, and ensure a continuous flow of
productivity. Agile systems like kanban
and scrum have surely become the cutting
edge of our economic future.
2/27/20
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