Agile Project Management Kanban Principles and Practices 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: A team's board shows the 'Testing' column constantly full while 'Development' overflows behind it. What does this most directly signal?
- A bottleneck at the Testing stage (Correct answer)
- Too few features in the backlog
- A need for more daily standups
- An overly large product vision
Correct answer: A bottleneck at the Testing stage
Work piling up before and within a stage is the classic Kanban signal of a bottleneck constraining flow.
Question 2: What is the primary purpose of setting a Work In Progress (WIP) limit on a column?
- To guarantee a fixed delivery date
- To reduce multitasking and expose bottlenecks (Correct answer)
- To assign more people to each task
- To eliminate the need for prioritization
Correct answer: To reduce multitasking and expose bottlenecks
WIP limits curb context-switching and make flow problems visible so they can be addressed.
Question 3: In Kanban, lead time is best defined as the time from when a work item is:
- Started in development to when it is tested
- Committed/requested to when it is delivered (Correct answer)
- Estimated to when it is assigned
- Designed to when it is coded
Correct answer: Committed/requested to when it is delivered
Lead time measures the full duration from commitment or request until the item is delivered.
Question 4: A pull system in Kanban means that new work is started when:
- A manager pushes it onto the team
- Downstream capacity becomes available (Correct answer)
- The sprint planning meeting begins
- The backlog reaches a certain size
Correct answer: Downstream capacity becomes available
In a pull system, items advance only when the next stage has free capacity, preventing overload.
Question 5: Which Kanban practice most directly helps a team make its process policies clear to everyone?
- Making policies explicit (Correct answer)
- Limiting WIP
- Visualizing the workflow
- Measuring cycle time
Correct answer: Making policies explicit
Making process policies explicit is the core practice ensuring shared, transparent rules for how work flows.
Question 6: A cumulative flow diagram shows the 'In Progress' band widening steadily over time. This indicates:
- Throughput is increasing
- WIP is growing and flow is degrading (Correct answer)
- Lead time is shrinking
- The team finished early
Correct answer: WIP is growing and flow is degrading
A widening in-progress band means work is entering faster than it exits, increasing WIP and lead time.
Question 7: Why does Kanban favor evolutionary change over a sweeping reorganization?
- It avoids any improvement to the process
- It reduces resistance by starting with current roles and process (Correct answer)
- It requires firing underperformers first
- It mandates new job titles immediately
Correct answer: It reduces resistance by starting with current roles and process
Kanban starts with what you do now and improves incrementally, lowering resistance to change.
