In the last weeks I've been promoting FlowKaizen on Twitter as the new revolutionary tool for physical Kanban metrics. I've posted some photos and screenshots and many many people of our community have been asking how it works. Right now I'm at Santa Monica, California getting ready to attend Lean Systems and Software Conference 2011 (hash: #LSSC11), the worldwide Kanban conference, and this is the best opportunity to share my vision about FlowKaizen with the community.

I'm really happy that my first post about visualization was widely accepted. In fact, I'm surprised that almost 10.000 people have read this blog in less than one week. Physical Kanbans are extraordinary tools. Usually I see that when the card wall drives team's self-organization, flow and metrics, it becomes some sort of "process catalyst" that helps both team members and managers to solve problems and increase understanding.

If you read the outstanding David Anderson's book called "Kanban", you'll see David discussing the pros and cons of physical and electronic card walls. He says:

Electronic tracking is necessary for teams that aspire to higher levels of organizational maturity. If you anticipate the need for quantitative management, organizational process performance (comparing the performance across kanban systems, teams or projects), and/or causal analysis and resolution (root-cause analysis based on statistically sound data), you will want to use an electronic tool from the beginning.

FlowKaizen challenges some David's thoughts about quantitative management and statistically data for physical card walls. FlowKaizen prime objective is to provide physical Kanbans metrics that will power teams with good systemic data, asking for minimal team discipline (non invasive tool). Let's go straight to the point now. 

FlowKaizen is quite simple:

FlowKaizen was designed to extract metrics from YOUR physical Kanban. Your real Kanban tool is your physical card wall. FlowKaizen will not substitute your real tool. FlowKaizen was designed to be least invasive as possible and ask minimal team discipline to deliver good and reliable metrics. Let's elaborate these steps better...

When you access FlowKaizen.com you will register and login using your Google (Gmail, Orkut), Yahoo or Hotmail (MSN) account. I promise you that this is fastest register process you will ever see. We will not confirm your email (no spams here), we will not ask anything than your team name. Go to the nearest store and buy 3x3" stick notes and also some White Full Sheet Labels for Laser/Inkjet printers. You will also need a Laser/Inkjet printer and a good digital camera.

After you created your value stream in just one step and got all the materials in hand, the next step is to use FlowKaizen and print your first QRCodes batch. FlowKaizen uses QRCodes to identify cards and also to mark the Kanban boundaries. We call these special QRCodes as "board markers". The three board markers are necessary to FlowKaizen's image processing mechanism that interprets your daily Kanban photos.

FlowKaizen can recognize card colors. To simplify and avoid mistakes FlowKaizen can recognize blue, yellow, pink and green stick notes colors. You can filter data using these colors. Your card with FlowKaizen's QRCode label looks like this:

With your FlowKaizen's QRCodes in hand, use a scissor to cut all labels and carefully place your board markers in the correct position. Replace your old cards with new stick notes with QRCode labels. You're ready for the first picture!

The picture above explains how your board photos are seen by FlowKaizen. Board Markers delimit your Kanban boundaries and enable FlowKaizen's magic.

FlowKaizen became possible because of the recent advances in the digital cameras market. Nowadays, digital cameras with 10 mp resolution are easy to find with an affordable price. FlowKaizen requires good digital cameras to work properly. Your cell phone's camera (no matter if it's a US$ 1000 iPhone or Android) will not work. The camera that will suit for you will rely on things like the Kanban size, room light and so on. Bigger Kanbans (above 7') will require better light and better cameras. If your office is too dark your photo quality will be compromised. Your daily Kanban photo needs to be clear: good light, good resolution and no blurry. Ask your photographer team member that he or she will help. Every team I know has someone addicted to photography!

After you upload your first board photo you can tell FlowKaizen how your Kanban works. Use the Board Design feature to draw the regions of your Kanban like Backloged Items, Queues, Work In-Progress, Finished Items and Swimlanes. This is simple and intuitive just like a photo tag feature you use on Facebook. You can also define a limit for every region you mark. Check the screenshot below.

 

If you are a seasoned Kanban user you know that the board design changes every time your team has a fresh idea. FlowKaizen can deal with that. You can create new board designs every time your card wall visualization changes. Metrics are kept consistent even if your board design changes.

 

This post is just some basic information about how FlowKaizen works. Let's open the discussion. Some details will be posted here and we expect a lot of feedback. We are getting ready to launch our beta test program in few days. Stay tunned!