Startup Program
Because the intent of a startup is to grow into a larger more successful company, it is important to design an organization with the ability to scale. To create the ideal model, it’s critical to focus on identifying the key processes that will be needed to operate your organization. This is where using Kanban can help, to visualize your processes and flow work efficiently across your organization.
Identify your key processes
As a startup, you probably need to hire people, build something, and sell it. With our Startup Program, we assign a Kanban coach to your account to work with you to confirm the key processes that need to be visualized and mapped on a Kanban board. For example, the hiring process is often a very time-consuming process and the goal is to improve finding the right talent faster. We can leverage our hiring template to help you create a deselection process that will save you time and ensure only the right candidates actually make it through the process.
Based on your specific organization, we can help you set up other key processes on Kanban boards and establish the appropriate connections between boards to continuously focus on creating the ideal flow of work. Examples of common processes or board are marketing, sales, product development, etc… If you already have teams collaborating on work then we can map these teams on simple Kanban boards to start tracking all the work consistently and use metrics to measure the effectiveness of each team.
Design Kanban boards
To get started, your Kanban coach will help you build your first boards to ensure that we create a full Kanban system to create efficiencies across your entire organization. Even if your company is just starting out, designing with future growth in mind will help you validate the flow of your activities while your teams are still small and the volume low.
As your company grows, new team members can quickly access the board associated with their job function and start delivering cards fast by simply moving these across the board. The onboarding process can be simplified on a Kanban board as the entire process is explicitly detailed within each column. The explicit policies assigned to each step details the criteria for moving a card to the next column. In addition, the work is fully detailed within each card and custom fields can be created to track, filter and report on data elements that are specific to your company.
Train your teams to be self-sufficient
Once the Kanban boards are created, your Kanban coach will deliver a team training session to infuse the benefits of the Kanban method by focusing on the 5 Kanban properties:
We will also illustrate the concept of establishing a pull-system to more effectively select and deliver the most valuable work faster to your customers. Our goal is to help you set your team up for success!
Join the Kanban Startup Program…
Simply sign up to our yearly Professional plan and contact us to get started on this program. We will assign a coach and partner with you in turning your startup into a lean startup, one that is continuously improving on the path to becoming the organization that you envisioned.
