A Comprehensive Guide to Kanban Ceremonies: What Are They & How To Run Them?

kanban-ceremonies

Time is one of the most important assets that you can have in your arsenal as a project manager or a product owner. No matter how important the task is if it is not executed according to the time allocated to it at the start of the project.

In project management, time is tracked and managed by the team members of the development team, and if they are not capable of handling it, then your whole operation is doomed.

To make sure that your development team is capable or not, you need to stay in constant communication with them so that you can learn their strengths and weaknesses. This constant communication between managers and the team members is done in the form of Kanban ceremonies.

So, let’s now take a look at what Kanban ceremonies are, what are the different types of Kanban ceremonies and how are they executed.

What is Kanban Ceremonies?

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Kanban ceremonies or Kanban meetings are gatherings conducted by the upper management or the people in charge in order to make sure that the tasks and processes that the development team has to perform are streamlined, while the progress of the tasks in question is tracked.

When you conduct a Kanban ceremony or meeting, you check in with the development team members to recategorize all of the tasks based on their specific status, while assessing the whole workflow and addressing any and every challenge along the way.

Let’s take a look at the different types of Kanban ceremonies that you can have with your team members.

What are the Different Types of Kanban Meetings?

One thing you need to know is that behind all of the different complexities that come with the Kanban method, there is always a single goal: Expediting and improving your team’s workflows.

You should hold these Kanban meetings quite regularly so that you as a project manager or a product owner can know the updated progress of the team.

Also, these meetings can help make sure that there are no unnecessary or duplicated tasks that can hinder the progress of the whole development process.

Here are the 7 different types of Kanban meetings that we are going to discuss in this article.

  • Replenishment meeting
  • Delivery planning meeting
  • Operations review meeting
  • Daily stand-up meeting
  • Service delivery review meeting
  • Risk review meeting
  • Strategy review meeting

Let’s take a look at these Kanban ceremonies in detail and find out how they can improve communication and collaboration among you and the team members.

1. Replenishment Meeting

During these replenishment meetings, the development team members and you will join hands and collectively decide on all of the new tasks and processes that should be done.

These tasks and processes should be pulled from the to-do section of the Kanban board of your project. These Kanban boards are the place where all of the tasks and processes have been mentioned for your team to accomplish.

During these replenishment meetings, you need to make sure that all of the tasks and processes are prioritized, so that the development team knows what to do and when to do it.

2. Delivery Planning Meeting

In the delivery planning meeting, you need to make sure that all of the deadlines related to the project and the project development process are discussed. Despite the fancy label on this meeting, it is really just the timetable to decide when the product would be delivered to the client.

One thing you need to keep in mind before organizing a delivery planning meeting is to have all of the tasks completed or at least close to being completed, so that whatever date that you choose in the delivery planning meeting, the product would be ready to be handed over to the client without any issues.

The real challenge while planning the delivery planning meeting is to set a realistic date that would be acceptable to each and every member of the project development process, so that they can deliver their part of the product to the project manager on time.

Related: 

The 20 Best Project Planning Tools of 2022

3. Operations Review Meeting

We see it all the time in the project management paradigm that when different teams work together on a single project, the issues in one team can cause issues in all of the other teams as well.

This is because all of their work is prioritized with one another, and if someone is not delivering their share, the others will have no choice but to not deliver their share either.

To avoid this scenario, the project managers or the people in charge organize an operations review meeting.

Basically what this meeting does is that it helps the project runners take a look at the entire ecosystem of tasks and processes that all the teams are sharing to develop the project, and helps them figure out the weak spots of the teams that need improvement.

4. Daily Stand-up Meeting

The daily stand-up meeting is a recurring Kanban ceremony or meeting that should be conducted at the very start of the workday. In this meeting, all of the tasks and processes that were performed by the development team members are discussed on a daily basis.

The meeting is supposed to be just 15 minutes long and that is why everyone keeps their speaking time to a minimum, and anyone who has a major issue and wants to talk to the other team members or the project manager, they can do so after the meeting.

Also, see:

Scrum Standup Meeting Questions – A Comprehensive Guide For 2022

5. Service Delivery Review Meeting

In the service delivery review meeting, the project manager checks whether the development team’s work or the tasks that they are performing are actually in accordance with the needs and requirements of the client.

In this meeting, you also check out all of the issues and the problems that might be hindering the productivity and the performance of the development team and try to eradicate those problems, so that the team can deliver their work on time.

6. Risk Review Meeting

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Risk reporting and management in nTask

Risk review meetings are conducted to discuss all of the scope creeps and the project risks that may have arisen when you and your team members were working on the project development process.

This conversation helps you to understand the nature and severity of the problems or risks that you and your team are dealing with, which in turn helps you to make creative strategies in order to make sure that these risks and scope creeps are completely eradicated and that they are not going to come back and haunt you in the future.

7. Strategy Review Meeting

Strategy review meeting helps project managers to think out of the box and keep an eye on the strategies that the development team members are using.

They need to make sure that these strategies are matching the industry standards and that they are flexible enough to incorporate and every change that is happening in the market.

Helpful Tips of Hold the Perfect Kanban Meeting

Here are some helpful tips that you and your team members can use to hold a perfect Kanban meeting.

  • The entire audience should be punctual and no latecomers should be allowed
  • Keep your meeting short and precise for maximum efficiency
  • You should always come prepared for everything that is to be discussed in the meeting
  • All of the delayed tasks should be avoided
  • The entire audience is to be respected
  • The information should be shared and not reported
  • Digital devices apart from those that you need in the Kanban meeting should be banned for maximum efficiency

Conclusion

This was our guide on Kanban ceremonies and how you can perfectly execute them. If you have anything to share with us regarding Kanban ceremonies that we haven’t shared here already, then write to us. We look forward to reading your helpful insight.


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