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Practice Lean Development? You Bet You Kan(ban)


Japanese company applies Toyota production techniques to software

By David Rubinstein
October 4, 2007 — 
What do the manufacture of automobiles and the development of software have in common? If you're Japanese project management tool maker Change Vision, the similarity rests in the concept of “kanban.”

Loosely, kanban means sign or billboard in Japanese, but it also is the word used to describe the "pull" production methods developed at Toyota to ensure that what is made meets the actual demands of customers. Change Vision is taking that concept and applying it to software, seeking to ensure that the only new features added to software are those defined by the users of that software.

"Kanban generates tickets that make the work self-directing," explained Kenji Hiranabe, CEO of Change Vision, who was at the mid-September SD Best Practices event in Boston to give the first showing of his kanban-based Trichord agile project-management tool in the United States.

"In the Toyota Production System, no process produces output without having a real need from a downstream process," Hiranabe continued. "This prevents making work in progress" or inventory, which in the Toyota system is kept to a minimum. "In agile [software development], the customer is defining the output that pulls value from the project team. It's not 'analysis-design-code-test' then 'customer.' That's backward."

Conventional methods can leave organizations with unwanted code and features that are not fully developed—or excess inventory. "Our goal is to have no inventory," Hiranabe said.

Using kanban to develop software, Hiranabe said, "allows for the creation of valuable software. This is akin to lean production. The customer is first." Hiranabe is so taken with lean production for software that he has translated Mary and Tom Poppendieck's seminal work on the subject, "Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit for Software Development Managers," into Japanese.

Trichord is a simple project management tool that utilizes kanban-style boards to describe stories, tasks or features, which are then placed into a timeline for completion. The tool also includes burndown charts and so-called "parking lot" charts that give a higher-level view of a project's status. In addition, the tool works with the open source Trac project for issue tracking; a symbol will appear in the kanban card if the issue originated in Trac.

One feature that directly lifted from Japanese manufacturing is a "niko-niko" calendar, which tracks the mood of team members from day to day via facial-expression icons and to which comments can be posted, such as "I've been working for seven solid hours and I'm exhausted!" A manager can then decide to give that team member a break, or a pep talk.


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