Kanban System Design
I design or redesign flow-based systems both at the team and org level. The Kanban board demonstrates the actual work your people do; it is not a generic board template. This is a consulting engagement on your workflow, not a course on Kanban theory.
Who This Is For
Teams or organizations running a flow-based system.
Signs You Need This
- The board on the wall (or in Jira) doesn't match how work actually moves - people route around it, not through it
- WIP limits get overridden under pressure
- No one agrees on what "done" means at each stage
- Work is stalled and delayed.
- Leadership asks "how long will this take?" and gets a guess, not an answer
- Expedite requests, standard work, and fixed-date commitments all sit on one swimlane
Our Approach
Understand sources of dissatisfaction
I find out what's actually driving the urge for change, from both the team's side and the customer's.
Analyze demand and capability
Classify the different types of work coming in and measure what the system can actually deliver.
Model the workflow
Map how work truly moves end-to-end, including the steps nobody put on the first board.
Discover classes of service and design the system
Identify the classes of service and the explicit policies
Roll out and socialize
Negotiate the design with the people who'll run it day to day, so it's adopted, not imposed.
What Changes
- A board design with WIP limits
- Defined classes of service with explicit policies
- A real workflow map that usually surfaces bottlenecks and blockers
- Flow metrics, like lead time, WIP, and throughput
Questions
Isn't this just relabeling our existing board?
No. Relabeling assumes your current board is close to right and just needs better column names. This engagement starts by mapping what's actually happening — often the real workflow has states, handoffs, and blockers that never made it onto the board at all. The design comes after that discovery, not before it.
How is this different from a Scrum/Agile training course?
A course teaches your team Kanban concepts in the abstract, using generic examples. This is consulting: I work directly on your board, your work items, your bottlenecks, with the people who touch them every day. Nobody leaves with slides — they leave with a system they helped build.