It slightly sets my teeth on edge to see the work items in Kanban referred to as “tasks”. The goal isn’t only to minimise wasteful multi-tasking locally, but to see deliverables flow through to the point of customer impact as smoothly as possible.
For me, the Zen of Kanban in product development is to work the board from right to left, working backwards from a "done" that means "someone's need was met" [1], stickies staying on the board until the learning is accounted for. You just don't get those senses of impact and learning if you think in tasks, and when tasks are managed at an unnecessarily fine granularity, I would consider it dysfunctional.
For what it's worth, I'm the author of Kanban from the Inside (celebrating its tenth anniversary in September) and Right to Left: The digital leader's guide to Lean and Agile (2019).
Edit: In case I am suspected of being anti Scrum, the reverse is true. Scrum done well can be truly great. Moreover, Scrum and Kanban are highly complementary to each other – they not only work in different ways, they do different things. As the article eventually acknowledges, there is no either/or here.
For me, the Zen of Kanban in product development is to work the board from right to left, working backwards from a "done" that means "someone's need was met" [1], stickies staying on the board until the learning is accounted for. You just don't get those senses of impact and learning if you think in tasks, and when tasks are managed at an unnecessarily fine granularity, I would consider it dysfunctional.
For what it's worth, I'm the author of Kanban from the Inside (celebrating its tenth anniversary in September) and Right to Left: The digital leader's guide to Lean and Agile (2019).
Edit: In case I am suspected of being anti Scrum, the reverse is true. Scrum done well can be truly great. Moreover, Scrum and Kanban are highly complementary to each other – they not only work in different ways, they do different things. As the article eventually acknowledges, there is no either/or here.
[1] agendashift.com/done