You can apply them to the Kanban columns (representing work stages) in your process. That’s why at Kanbanize, we use special “exit criteria” for our work items. While a simple way to portray your definition of done is through subtasks or to-do lists, this limits the work information you can visualize. There, you can visualize the policies for your entire process as well as specify the definition of done checklists for individual work items (represented by Kanban cards). In reality, this can be done with the help of the Kanban board. In other words, make your process policies explicit, which is one of the main Kanban practices. How Can We Help You Visualize Your Definition of Done with Kanban(ize)?Ĭontinuing from the last point, a “definition of done” checklist can be in the form of acceptance criteria that need to be met before your work can move forward.īut how can you make sure everybody on your team understands those criteria and then progressively meets them? A simple but effective way is to visualize them. As a result, you will be able to reduce the risk of reworks and create value every single time you deliver work. This means creating “definition of done” checklists or rules for both your work items and entire processes. Other than that, make sure you clearly define your process policies so your team members can understand them. Otherwise, it’s just unnecessary motion which is a pure waste from a Lean perspective. However, the major part of the work you start needs to be connected to your strategic goals, projects, or something else that generates value. Here, we should mention that there will always be “ necessary waste” in your process. At first look, everyone is very busy with their tasks, but the actual value delivery suffers, leading to unsatisfied customers. In fact, that’s a problem that many managers struggle with.
Our advice is that you do! Starting new work just for the sake of doing something can seriously harm your production of value. Do You Need to Have a Meaningful Definition of Done for Every Work Item? In turn, this leads to reworks and slows down the entire delivery to the end customer. For example, if the design engineers work without explicit policies on what it means for products to be fully specified before they’re manufactured, the likelihood of defects increases. The same holds true for an entire process that delivers some form of product/service to customers (internal or external). Unless you have some criteria against which to measure when the item provides value to the next stage of the process, then you might have to do reworks over and over again. To put it in a theoretical manner, “Definition of done” is agreed-upon evidence of completion of a process, activity, or some objective.įor example, imagine that you start working on an engineering work item that requires you to prepare the drawings of a new machine part. What Is the Meaning of the Definition of Done? So, to ensure that doesn’t happen, aim to define what “Done” means for your process and the work that flows through it. Otherwise, chaos ensues, which brings waste, which kills value. There, as you rarely know what the final status of a project will be, usually team members start working on things with ambiguous details.Īnd while that’s due to the nature of knowledge work itself, it doesn’t invalidate the need for some form of a consensus that classifies where a work item really “ends”.
The same thing applies to knowledge work projects. “What is the progress on…?” I am sure you will agree that’s one of the most asked questions by customers or other relevant stakeholders when you are working on a product or service.īut how can you measure the progress of something if you don’t know where it ends? It’s simple… you can’t.
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