Learn KANBAN by Playing a Game

TIMING: 1 hour

RECIPE: This is a game to understand some of the mechanics of Kanban such as balancing the work-in-progress, resource allocation, and waste management. Each team has to create its own Kanban board as they see fit and improve it as the game develops.

Ingredients:

• Teams: 1 or more of 5 to 6 people
• Color paper: 4 different colors (20 pages or each color per team)
• Glue sticks: 2 per team
• Scissors: 2 pairs per team
• Envelopes: 2 different sizes or colors (20 of each per team)
• Color pencils: 1 set per team
• Masking tape: 1 per team
• Post-its: 3 different colors per team
• Misc stickers (optional)

Recipe (cont.)

The objective is to create paper pamphlets to promote a vacation resort. Each pamphlet will have some drawn and some pasted artwork in addition to written information.Note: each paper and envelope has to pass through the entire production line and each person can do only one thing at a time (e.g. a person cannot be writing on a pamphlet and passing envelopes at the same time). One story per pamphlet, meaning it has to be broken into smaller tasks (think epic=pamphlet).

1. Each team will have:
   • Paper: 3 different colors (you keep the 4^th color paper for later)
   • 1 glue-stick (you keep the other one for later)
   • 1 pair of scissors (you keep the other one for later)
   • 1 kind of envelope (you keep the other one for later)
   • Color pencils
   • Stickers (optional)
   • Duct tape
2. Explain the roles and responsibilities:
   1. Header: writes company name and campaign name
   2. Cutter: cuts the artwork (sun, palm tree, flying bird, boat)
   3. Artist: draws the ocean line, the beach, and pastes the papercuts
   4. QA guy: verifies all is correct (all pamphlets must be similar)
   5. Folder/sender: folds pamphlet, puts it in envelope, writes customer name/address and puts on a stack for sending.
   6. Manager: manages the kanban board
3. Before starting:
   • Make sure all teams have their material available and roles assigned.
4. Explain the game:
   • They must create pamphlets, one at a time
   • Pamphlet, envelope, and paper cuts must be of different colors
   • All pamphlets must look the same
   • All envelopes and paper must start at the beginning of the production line
   • Nobody can do more than 1 thing at a time. (e.g. either I pass a sheet of paper to the next person or draw the beach but cannot be drawing and passing papers at the same time)
   • They must have periodic stand up meetings to improve the process.
5. The game:
   1. Give them 5 minutes to define and create their Kanban board on a wall
   2. Give them 2 minutes to get set
   3. Start!
   4. Each 6 minutes stop them so that each team has its own 2-minute stand-up meeting
   5. For iteration 3 ask the managers to expedite the creation of 2 pamphlets of different color with different artwork (palm tree, 2 boats and one diamond-shaped kite)
   6. For iteration 4 change ask managers to use the other kind/color of envelope.
   7. For iteration 6 change team sizes (merging 2 into one or breaking one team to integrate into other 2. This is even better if the teams end up being of different sizes)
   8. Let them play for 2 more iterations
6. Post-game discussion

Learning Points:

• Collaboration is key to success
• Some aspects that require changes on WIP are very obvious while others are subtle
• Roles and responsibilities continuously change (titles lose importance)
• Response to variability is highly effective
• Lack of iterations make the work smooth and efficient
• Regular discussions to improve process are key
• It scales because daily stand up duration does not depend on the # of people in the team

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