I recently completed my formal Kanban training. The trainer made a statement that stuck with me. He said

Try to think of your team as providing a service. You have a menu of services that people can request.

Jose Casal

It was the menu metaphor that hooked me. In my mind all I could see was a restaurant menu. It was a pizza restaurant. Each item on the menu was a service that we provided. The ‘prices’ were the cycle times for each service.

Back at the office, I fired up my trusty design tool and created my team’s restaurant menu. I had a lot of fun coming up with the descriptions of the work. I wanted the descriptions to reflect the restaurant vibe but not to be so obscure that it would be impossible for stakeholders (or should i say steak-holders!) to understand.

It is now published on our team room door and has attracted a lot of attention. One person actually thought we had opened up a a pizza restaurant in the office.

Now there’s an idea!