Does A Kanban System Eschew Iteration

There has been some recent discussion on the blogoshpere and twitterverse about the relationship between Kanban Systems for Software Development and the concept of iteration. The often raised concern that a Kanban System is “Waterfall 2.0” came up again, along with the suggestion that a Lean perspective might view iteration as rework, and as a result be waste.

One of the conclusions was that both a Kanban and Time-boxed approach are independent of iteration. I like Jeff Patton’s description of iteration. Iteration is used to find or improve a single solution. Incrementing is used to build up additional solutions.

It is perfectly possibly with a time-boxed approach to define a product backlog based on already decided solutions, and then prioritise User Stories to incrementally build up the functionality for those solutions. I don’t think this is that uncommon. Similarly, a Kanban System could be used to only incrementally build up the functionality for pre-determined solutions.

Done well, both a time-boxing and Kanban approach will prioritise work to generate knowledge and feedback which will help discover or refine solutions. What is really being prioritised in this case is a problem, or an ROI Component (as the Real Options tribe like to call it). This is where I think a Kanban System can help by explicitly managing the work at both levels. The ROI Components, which I prefer to call Minimal Marketable Features, can be prioritised and limited as Work In Progress. The MMFs can then be expanded to candidate User Stories which can also be prioritised, managed and limited in order to iterate the MMF. Eventually, the User Stories will be collapsed back together to actually deliver the MMF as an increment.

Thus a Kanban System can explicitly visualise that MMFs are being delivered incrementally, and are being iterated using User Stories. While this same approach can be used with time-boxes, it will often be implicit.