Kanban Meetings: How to Run Them Successfully

Workflow inefficiencies cut business revenues by 20 to 30 percent every year. The good news is that you can reduce these inefficiencies by organizing Kanban meetings with your team. Kanban meetings are essentially lean management made into a meeting. With our guide, learn how to maximize your team’s efforts and properly complete your projects with Kanban meetings.

• What is a Kanban meeting?
• Types of Kanban meetings
• Kanban vs. Scrum: What’s the difference?
• 9 tips on how to hold a Kanban meeting
• Driving continuous improvement with Fellow

What is a kanban meeting?

A Kanban meeting helps you streamline the tasks your team must complete while tracking progress. During these meetings, you’ll check in with your team on task status, address any challenges, and assess workflows. You’ll find gaps in your process and see how to organize efforts for project success better.

During your meeting, you’ll divide project tasks into categories of “To-Do,” “In Progress,” and “Completed.” Each category and its respective tasks are placed on a Kanban board showing progress. This way, everyone can get on the same page and plan for success.

More about the Kanban methodology

The Kanban method can totally shake up how you work. Instead of churning out products for customers or clients based on certain predictions, for example, your product managers only make new items when you know inventory is low. This way, you prevent a surplus from piling up in your inventory – after all, untouched inventory blocks your potential revenue and, thus, cash flow. You’ll also get the added benefit of lower production costs.

Types of Kanban meetings

Several types of Kanban meetings can help you properly distribute tasks among your Kanban board and reach your goals. You should hold Kanban meetings regularly to get an up-to-date look at how tasks are progressing and find ways to avoid duplicated or unnecessary tasks.

Below are several different types of Kanban meetings you can leverage based on your Kanban cadence and team structure:

• Daily stand-up meeting
• Replenishment meeting
• Service delivery review meeting
• Delivery planning meeting
• Risk review meeting
• Operations review meeting
• Strategy review meeting
• Kanban one-on-one meeting

1 Daily stand-up meeting

The daily stand-up meeting, also known as the team Kanban or daily Kanban meeting, should start your team’s workday and set a basic plan of attack for completing tasks. Briefly gather your team for 15 minutes for quick updates on task progress and the previous day’s roadblocks. Use what you learn to set today’s goals. Focus more on which tasks will progress the project quickly rather than who will complete each task.

2 Replenishment meeting

During your replenishment meeting, your team will collectively decide on new tasks to tackle based on the “To-Do” section of your Kanban board. Think of this as planning in Kanban, identifying how to work through a backlog of tasks. Prioritize the ones your team must complete now so that other tasks can be done later. To help prevent task overlap and confusion among your team members, you should clarify everyone’s expectations and outline the specific details of the task at hand.

3 Service delivery review meeting

During service delivery review meetings, you’ll check on how well your team’s work meets your project’s and client’s needs, and the cycle time of your tasks. Start the meeting by looking at the “Completed” section of your Kanban board and moving backward to the “To-Do” section. This way, you get a retrospective look at your team’s progress and figure out how you can improve their workflows for optimal performance. 

4 Delivery planning meeting

You’ll set deadlines at delivery planning Kanban meetings. Before a delivery planning meeting, your tasks should be complete or at least extremely close to being done. You should be nearly entirely ready to hand the product to your client or sign off on the project’s completion. The real challenge is planning deliverable dates that are realistic for every team member to achieve given their other tasks.

5 Risk review meeting

Risk review Kanban meetings are intended for you and your team to discuss issues that have arisen during workflows. You should discuss how these issues threatened the successful delivery of your product or the completion of the project. You should also establish and analyze strategies that your team can use to monitor, discuss, and manage risks. This way, you’re all prepared to absolutely nail it next time around.

6 Operations review meeting

The operations review meeting examines the ecosystem your teams share and determines where improvements are needed. It also helps you identify unresolved issues within and across teams. For example, let’s say your dev team has been waiting many days for marketing resources. In that case, you’ll need to review operations to see how marketing can quickly get the dev team their resources so no time is wasted.

7 Strategy review meeting

Strategy review meetings require you to look beyond your business and its clients. You must assess how your team’s efforts compare to industry standards, market changes, and your company’s competition. This perspective can help you identify broader goals for your team and implement them every day.

8 Kanban one-on-one meeting

During a Kanban one-on-one meeting, team members gather to touch base and evaluate the progress of tasks at each stage, ensuring a comprehensive overview of the current workflow. It’s the perfect opportunity to address any blockers that may be hindering progress and make adjustments to tasks based on their current status. Make sure to use Fellow’s Kanban 1-on-1 Weekly Check-in meeting template to ensure you cover all the important items.

Kanban vs. Scrum: What’s the difference?

You’ll often see Kanban meetings discussed alongside scrum meetings since Agile often uses one or the other. Plus, both methodologies break down complex projects into more manageable goals. Though they have similar goals, Kanban and Scrum strategies have major differences. Where Kanban is all about time, Scrum meetings center more around your team and product. Key differences include:

Project vs. Individual

Kanban meetings focus your team’s attention on the most important tasks at hand. After a project wraps up, you’ll assess the whole team’s workflow and efficiency. Scrum team members, however, would reflect on their individual efforts and how they can improve solely their own efforts the next go-round.

Task vs. Execution

A Kanban meeting involves reducing the time it takes to accomplish. Put another way, the goal is to move tasks as quickly as possible through the whole team’s Kanban board. On the other hand, a scrum meeting focuses on each team member’s specific plans for accomplishing their tasks. It’s like looking at how each player makes the team an excellent whole.

Flow vs. Product

Kanban meetings allow teams to visualize the process of working through a project. Even brief daily meetings, for example, focus on workflow, starting with discussions of which tasks need to move across the board before others can be started. Scrum meetings focus on the end product instead and consider factors like product quality and functionality.

9 tips on how to hold a kanban meeting

Before you hold your first Kanban meeting, it’s important to figure out how to maximize your and your team’s time during the meeting. After all, that’s the purpose of everything Kanban! Follow the below tips to make the most of your Kanban meetings:

• Don’t be late
• Keep your meeting short
• Avoid delayed tasks
• Be prepared
• Stay specific
• Respect the audience
• Share information; don’t report it
• Improve your oratory skills
• Don’t allow devices

1 Don’t be late

Kanban meetings are all about time management and efficiency. Your meeting should follow suit. Start your meeting on time so your team can return to work as soon as possible and keep your project on track.

2 Keep your meeting short

Starting your meeting on time means little if it takes forever. Plan your meeting to be just long enough to cover the agenda. Then, simply update your team and get right back to work.

3 Avoid delayed tasks

Some tasks may require more work than initially expected. Instead of neglecting these tasks and moving on to others, it’s important to find solutions to these challenges now so your project isn’t delayed.

4 Be prepared

Nothing communicates disorganization like scrambling through a meeting. Have key information ready at hand so you’re not using meeting time to gather materials or locate a list of proposed tasks. Create a concise meeting agenda to inform attendees how the meeting will proceed, and refer to it if the discussion moves off-topic.

5 Stay specific

Avoid discussing big-picture ideas or concepts that don’t directly pertain to your project. Instead, focus on tasks and matters that contribute to efficiently completing your project.

6 Respect the audience

While it’s important to keep your meeting on track, try not to rush your team as they give updates on tasks. What team members say might be vital to the rest of the project, so let them speak uninterrupted. Help them feel comfortable sharing any challenges that might be slowing their progress to avoid any surprises later.

7 Share information; don’t report it

Reporting means delivering information only to you or a supervisor, which isn’t helpful for Kanban meetings. Everyone is working on the same project, so encourage your team members to share all their updates with the rest of the team. Open communication can help keep everyone informed.

8 Improve your oratory skills

When you speak, be clear. Set obvious expectations and include specific details. Vague language can breed confusion, which is counterproductive to your meeting and your team’s work.

9 Don’t allow devices

Replying to text messages or responding to emails can distract your team. When team members miss important information, you lose the very time you intend to save since you’ll have to explain again later. To avoid this issue, ask your team to leave their devices at their desks.

Driving continuous improvement with Fellow

Kanban meetings can help your team assess their workflows and identify inefficiencies. Focusing on your tasks at each meeting can help you ensure you’re on the most direct path to project completion. Plus, the many types can serve your team at every stage of your projects. To make them all easier, Fellow offers a range of features that can help you tackle Kanban meetings.

With Fellow, you can collaborate on agendas and notes for Kanban meetings, ensuring everyone has the context and information to show up ready to contribute fully. You can also assign action items and integrate them with your favorite project management or communication tools to ensure accountability across the team.

Make sure to use Fellow’s AI Meeting Copilot to save you time and ensure all important discussions and decisions from the Kanban meeting are captured. After the meeting, Fellow can even automatically identify action items based on the conversation, so everyone is aligned.

Take charge of your Kanban meetings and get started with Fellow today!