Kanban Change Leadership: Creating a Culture of Continuous Improvement

PREFACE

We are pleased to provide the English edition of our book on Kanban Change Leadership. As the kind appraisals show, this edition builds on encouraging resonance both from readers and from clients working on their specific culture of continuous improvement.

From both groups, we have learned a lot since the first German edition of our book had been published in 2012. In this regard, the current version is also a product of continuous improvement. For both the second edition in German and the English edition, we intensively reviewed the text, adapted new experiences, dropped some ideas, and changed others. The third part of our book, focusing on the practical implementation of Kanban, has probably undergone the most radical changes. Thriving on various lessons learned with many clients, we can now provide a simple four-phase model with clear goals and tried and tested tools.

As always, coming up with a new version does not necessarily mean to achieve perfection. The process of reviewing and rewriting our initial insights amplified a few question marks too. There are some limitations we were not able to overcome such as the emphasis of Kanban on team level, the rather weak focus on whole value streams, or the missing examples of portfolio or change management Kanban.

To effectively overcome these limitations, we would have to write another book—a book with a fresh approach to the broad field of Kanban, change and leadership, with different case studies, cocreating stories ...