When implementing Kanban, don't underestimate step 8 of STATIK

When you first start of with Kanban, you might hear that there is a very clear cut way to introduce it – it is called STATIK, the Systems Thinking Approach To Introducing Kanban.

For me this is not always the way to go, but it definitely is a way you should know. As long as you don't think that you can introduce the Kanban method with a half day (or one day) STATIK-Workshop.

Let's look at STATIK briefly: The way David Anderson describes it on his linked-in post STATIK consists of 9 steps. (There are other descriptions as well, most notably Mike Burrows' version from the Book "Kanban from the inside")

• Step 0: Identify Services
  [For each service]
  • Step 1: Understand what makes the service fit for purpose for the customer
  • Step 2: Understand sources of dissatisfaction with the current system
  • Step 3: Analyze demand
  • Step 4: Analyze capability
  • Step 5: Model workflow
  • Step 6: Discover classes of service
  • Step 7: Design the kanban system
  • Step 8: Socialize the design and negotiate implementation

(I just quoted the summary, the full description is available in David's above mentioned post on LinkedIn )

Starting with step 1 through 7

While it is true that you could hold a STATIK Workshop for the steps one to seven in a really short amount of time, I have never seen the Kanban method implemented this way. I have seen quite a lot of Kanban systems implemented this way. But that's not quite the same – defining a system that reflects a certain point in time is different from embodying a method that fosters ongoing change.

Why I think step 8 is the most important one

Remember – as the titel of the defining book says - it is an approach to change: "Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Business". And I have yet to see a system with human actors that can be changed in a day. Especially because the goal is not to change it only once, but to enable it to continue to do so in an evolutionary manner.
Therefore I think that step 8 is the most underrated Step of STATIK and would strongly suggest to use the result of steps 1 to 7 (a hypothesis the current system) only as a starting point for the work that starts with step 8 – implementing an approach to collaboratively strive for improvement through evolutionary change.

till next time
  Michael Mahlberg

P.S.: For some inspiration on steps 1 to 7 you might also want to look intoAlexei Zheglov's Posts on the approach and the Canvas/A3.