How To Use Kanban BPM in your BPO Firm

Posted on August 5, 2021 by Jonathan Kidd

One of the key success factors for any business is to improve its process efficiency and to find ways that can help in managing tasks better. Businesses often use various tools and techniques in order to manage their workflow, but one of the most popular techniques these days is Kanban BPM.

In this blog post, we will take a look at how a Kanban board can be used by a business process outsourcing company along with the benefits.

What is a Kanban Board

A Kanban board is a part of Lean methodology which is the practice of maximising value by reducing waste.

The idea behind this is that if a business can identify all its processes, then it can design workflows in such a way to avoid unnecessary steps and thereby reduce the time needed for execution as well as wastages like materials or money.

Kanban boards were originally used in manufacturing operations. However, principles of Kanban have become popular in other industries as well. 

Some companies may apply the Kanban method by dividing Kanban cards as work in progress, completed projects, or other project management terms that is best suited for their team’s workflow. 

But the simplest Kanban system that teams use is usually the To Do, Doing, and Done boards.

Kanban vs Scrum

While Scrum and Kanban system are both good planning tools. There are, of course, pros and cons to each method. And they are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Both Kanban and Scrum have benefits—while Scrum is more prescriptive than Kanban with its work organised into two- or four-week sprints.

Kanban has the advantage of being highly adaptive. Scrum puts certain constraints on your sprint forecasting, such as not adjusting the forecast during a sprint. 

The Kanban system is a lean tool for organisational transformation and innovation management. It’s even more powerful when used as an element of running projects, which you do in the context of your outsourcing company.

You find that sprints are reset while Kanban stays persistent so it can help you to stay on track with your long-term goals alongside ongoing operational demands.

Kanban boards can be customised to suit any size of business from small-to medium-sized enterprises and even large corporations with their own in-house development teams, where it might make sense for a Scrum board.

Kanban helps you work towards your goals by focusing on what’s currently important.

How to use Kanban BPM for your Business Process Outsourcing Company

Business process outsourcing companies can use Kanban boards to keep track of customer projects in progress and their status, thereby reducing wastages like over-production or late delivery. This is because it helps them reduce the number of jobs pending while also utilising resources more carefully.

The Kanban board is usually set up with columns for To Do, Doing and Done 

Once the team members are assigned tasks from a customer project, they will make their task card to be in the “To Do” column. Once that has been completed, move it over to the next column where cards on this rotation must wait to progress based on the process of the workflow. 

Teams can use a Kanban board to assess the amount of tasks that they have on their board, work in progress (WIP), backlog of work scheduled , completed, and the number of open tasks on their board.

Kanban boards are a game-changer and they can be used anywhere in the business to help you or your team manage projects or processes easier.

Teams can create a Kanban board using physical boards or more commonly now using software. A Business Process Outsourcing Company can benefit from leveraging Kanban Boards as they are more efficient, easy to adapt and achieve their goals quicker with the help of limited resources. 

If you work with more than one team – the board will likely be different for each. Avoid imposing a standardised board on all teams; this can stifle creativity and innovation among employees, instead let those performing the tasks design their own boards. Remember that they are not “set in stone” and should be flexible to meet changing business needs.

Kanban Board Type

You don’t have to limit yourself to one Kanban board. You can create boards for each of your project teams

Personal Kanban – Tracking your to-dos is simple with Kanban boards. It’s a great way to see and prioritise all the things you have on your plate. The benefit of Kanban boards is that they help you avoid taking on too much work at once and make your progress visible to others. The “done” section of the board can also serve as a motivator, reminding you of all your completed tasks.

Team Kanban – Kanban is a time-based, lean thinking enhancement that can provide significant improvements to cross-functional teamwork. Kanban boards can also be used to share and manage large projects that are too big to fit in with an agile-based sprint.

Project Kanban – Kanban boards are good for project teams that don’t need or want the constraints imposed by using a SCRUM approach.

Program Level Kanban Board – Kanban boards are most appropriate for long-term work that is not a project, as they will exist indefinitely.

Benefits of using Kanban Board for BPO 

Business process outsourcing companies can introduce Kanban workflow to encourage continuous improvement in team member project and process management.  Project Kanban is best for projects that don’t require or want the constraints of a scrum approach. Program level Kanban Boards are appropriate when work will exist indefinitely, such as long term strategic initiatives.

For more on how to apply Kanban in your organisation, download the Process Optimisation Blueprint…

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Visualise the progress of tasks

Use Kanban Boards to serve as a visual representation of what needs to be done – line up all the tasks that you have on the board according to process steps. List out the tasks to be done in order.

Once you complete a task, move it to the right side of the board and label it as done. This will help identify which tasks are completed and what’s still pending.

Make sure to include all steps in your workflow in your Kanban cards. 

If you are using a Kanban board in a team setting, don’t forget to include the name of the team member that is responsible for the project. You can also use a scoring system, to indicate which tasks are at risks or going smoothly.

Kanban boards are a visual tool that can help you identify which tasks need to be completed first and what will happen if they aren’t done.

Sometimes, you might feel like there is too much work on your plate with nothing being finished. Kanban boards help to organise and give you a more succinct view of task priorities, deadlines, and which stage that the task is at in the Kanban process.

Identify bottlenecks and inefficiencies with their workflow

The perfect tool to visualise potential problems is the Kanban Board – try using it next time you find yourself wondering how to track your critical processes and projects.

Kanban is a philosophy for business which, simply put, posits that when you see tasks arrive in one column faster than they leave another, the job will pile up and it becomes visible to the whole team. This could be due to a temporary issue or a bottleneck in your process.

A visualisation of your organisational workflow will help you better understand where improvements can be made.

When there is a column that isn’t healthy, take action to resolve the issue and prevent it from occurring again.The simplest thing to do is limit the work in progress earlier in the flow.

This is because those who perform this stage will be able to alleviate the bottleneck. In order to meet the new requirements, one option is re-distributing the responsibilities of your team members. Kanban offers maximum flexibility and puts you in control of all key decisions.

Limit Work in Progress (WIP)

The Kanban board is a great way to be more productive by discouraging your team from multitasking and apply work in progress limits according to your capacity. 

It is possible to move work among the columns, but it’s not recommended as a solution because of its negative effect on throughput.

Before an established Kanban culture can be developed, it is important to acculturate members of the team to the system. One way this can be done is by teaching employees how to not add extra Kanban card when a column has already been filled. Another way to do this is to set up repeatable step-based processes so that they automatically follow the procedures and only move between the Kanban boards as defined in the process.

Business process outsourcing companies also use this to set boundaries of their team Kanban for their personal bandwidth. Kanban boards help businesses keep balance in their workloads and meet deadlines – without losing sight of the quality.

This way, they will stop starting new work and concentrate on finishing assignments that are already in progress.

Dashboard to measure productivity and performance

The Kanban Method is a process management philosophy outlining the benefits of visualising work, establishing a sequence for production and improving one’s capacity to meet customer demand. One key component of this philosophy is monitoring progress and measuring performance. 

Business Process Outsourcing Companies must track two Kanban metrics to make sure their team is delivering results: cycle times and throughput. These metrics measure the efficiency of your flow of work and how quickly you are delivering on customer demand.

Cycle time is the average amount of time it takes to fully complete a process or task, which includes both processing and waiting periods. If your cycle times are too long then customers will not be happy with their wait-time before getting work done by your team. Throughput is the number of tasks completed in a workflow cycle. 

Kanban BPM empowers an evolutionary change to the way your BPO operates

Kanban BPM is based on some very simple principles: visualising work as a set of cards or items in several columns, limiting the number and length of these columns, applying policies and procedures for how work moves through each column

There are many Kanban tools now available these days so it’s a challenge to find the right one. Actively choose wisely where your Kanban BPM tool is going to be run and what features you need in order for them to work with your project management system. 

A Kanban Business Process Management tool is necessary because it is an implemented system that can monitor and record what work has been completed. There are a number of reasons to consider using a Kanban Business Process Management software:

– It’s fast and adaptable

 – Online Kanban boards offer real-time updates, which means you can see the changes as they happen. This is extremely helpful in adjusting tasks or deadlines

– It can be customised to work for your company in a way that meets the needs of your project management system and other business processes. This includes features like custom fields, filters to find tasks by type or status, notifications when deadlines are approaching.

– You have access from anywhere you want – If your team has to update information from mobile devices or tablets, this is a perfect option.

BPM solutions don’t have to be expensive. There are now low code and no code BPM tools that  offer a lot of features for a reasonable price.

BPM technology has come along way, and it’s not just for big companies anymore! For any size company Kanban BPM can help you to make changes in your process that will save time and money, as well as making sure tasks are done more efficiently.

Get the right Kanban BPM for your digital process automation and process improvement. Embed your business rules and embrace digital transformation. 

Boombirds Kanban BPM

Boombirds business process management software offers real-time updates and customisable features for your Kanban Board. 

As you can see Boombirds have an option for teams to see the team Kanban board and personal Kanban board. Your Kanban Board is not only a way to visualise your work, it’s a process management system that will help you meet deadlines and achieve goals more efficiently. 

You can embed every step of your workflow and monitor projects with a bird’s eye view of operations in your team Kanban board! Team members can adopt Agile project management and apply continuous improvement for your business workflow!

The Kanban board in Boombirds is made for teams to collaborate and manage projects together, so that you can track your team’s progress on the same screen.

The Kanban Board is a powerful tool that can be used to manage workflow and improve process efficiency. If you’re not sure how this technique could work for your business, let us introduce you to Boombirds – an easy-to-use software platform built on the principles of Agile and Lean management.