Marketing Kanban 102, Work in Process

So what is the next step: To Do, Doing, Done may not have been an earth shattering experience? The next step is a huge one, and I mean huge. You need to take your drawing and place a number under the Doing Column. Are you shaking yet?

This is how we will manage the Work in Process or the WIP. . If you limit yourself to what you are doing you will be more effective. In Covey’s 4 Disciplines of Execution he states and quantifies the 4 Disciplines:

Focus on the Wildly Important
Create a Compelling Scorecard
Transfer Lofty Goals into Specific Actions
Hold each other accountable – All the time

Putting just a number on the Kanban board we have done this:

Putting a limit on the work in process we will determine what really needs to be done.
Created a scorecard with just having a simple Kanban board.
Transferred our goals into action as we travel from left to right on the board.
The board keeps us accountable.
If this is a board for more than one individual, the tasks that are not being completed will encourage teamwork.

If it is a team effort, using more of a Scrum approach we may ask the same daily questions that are asked by a Scrum Team.

What have you done since the last meeting?
What will you do between now and the next meeting?
What got in your way of doing work?

We may see work piling up in the Doing column without being completing. We may be finding out that we are always reacting to a task in the “To Do” stage versus completing the doing. I know this sound a little childish but on a grander scale it is very much what happens. Just think of a salesperson that never asks for the order. He may be everyone’s best friend but is not getting the percentage of closures that he should. In a Kanban board it becomes readily apparent. The real secret to the board though is that we need to complete the task that is in the “doing” column before we pull from the To Do.

The other feature of using the board is cycle time. In a perfect world, when a task enters the To Do Column it immediately transfer to “Doing.” We complete the task and that would be our cycle time. If there are other tasks in the doing column and a task has to sit in the “To Do” column that time would be added to your cycle time. In Scrum this description is similar to a sprint. In Kanban we even may have different cycle times for different types of customers. This would allow us to create Swim Lanes horizontally across the chart.

Visualization is the key to effective Kanban. You may use different color post it notes to signify different marketing task such as PR, Social Media, Advertising and so forth. You may use different colors in your swim Lanes to recognize different marketing segments. You may even add additional columns to represent your marketing flow. That is actually Marketing Kanban 201.

We are establishing a Work in Process limit to create a proper flow in your marketing. The proper cadence per say. This is a term you will hear me say over and over again. Cadence is a key in today’s marketing which I will demonstrate in a later blog post. The WIP limit is at first, probably a guess. However, establishing one is very important. It is a key to a PULL System. Without, when would you know when to pull?