Real-World Kanban, Second Edition
Do Less, Accomplish More with Lean Thinking
by Mattias Skarin
When your team is stressed, priorities are unclear, and nobody knows
what anyone else is doing, morale and productivity plummet. But it’s
never too late to improve team cohesion, boost engagement, and save your
derailed projects. Dive into five real-world Kanban case studies and
discover how teams like yours created a shared focus, improved time to
market, and turned things around. With illustrations of the Kanban
boards, diagrams, and graphs that led to success, you’ll get a look
behind the scenes. This updated edition even includes a diverse library
of Kanban board examples to jump-start your journey.
When teams and projects go off the rails, it can be tough to get
everyone and everything back on track quickly. But it’s never too late.
Leverage insights and expertise from five real-world Kanban case studies
to decrease time to market, improve engagement, and save your people and
projects.
Discover how software development teams just like yours went from
overwork, unclear priorities, and lack of direction to productivity,
focus, and cohesion. Uncover paradigm-changing improvements that made
all the difference, and use battle-tested expertise and experience as a
roadmap for your own success. Along the way, you’ll improve the full
value chain with Enterprise Kanban; boost engagement, teamwork, and flow
in change management and operations; help external teams keep pace with
rapid growth; manage the shift from individual contributors to a
well-functioning team; and improve cohesion in remote-first work.
Thoroughly revised and expanded with new chapters on using Kanban in
capital markets and improving remote work with Kanban, this updated
edition also includes a diverse library of Kanban board examples to help
you get turned around and heading in the right direction fast.
What You Need
This is a case studies book, so there are no software requirements. The
book covers the relevant bits of theory you need to know before walking
you through the case studies.
Resources
Releases:
2025/07/21
P1.0
First printing.
2025/07/07
B4.0
Production is complete. Now it’s on to layout and the printer.
2025/05/28
B3.0
*Changed format of some images.
*The book is content complete and heading to production.
2025/03/31
B2.0
*Added alt text for all images.
- Introduction

- Take Charge and Make Changes
- Who Should Read This Book?
- Helpful Books
- Online Resources
- Leading with Kanban
- Putting Your Flow Glasses On
- Improving Flow with Kanban
- Applying Kanban in Knowledge Work
- Next Steps
- Using Kanban in the Enterprise
excerpt
- The Challenge: Improving Time to Market
- How We Got Started
- How the Process Worked
- What Lessons We Learned
- Comparing Now and Before
- Make Your Own Improvements
- Next Steps
- Using Kanban to Manage Change
- The Challenge: Managing Dependencies Without Burning Out
- How We Got Started
- How Our Process Worked
- How We Continuously Improved
- What Lessons We Learned
- Comparing Now and Before
- Make Your Own Improvements
- Next Steps
- Using Kanban to Save a Derailing Project.
excerpt
- The Challenge: Restoring Trust by Solving the Right Problem
- How We Got Started
- How Our Process Worked
- How We Continuously Improved
- What Lessons We Learned
- Comparing Now and Before
- Make Your Own Improvements
- Next Steps
- Using Kanban in the Back Office: Outside IT.
excerpt
- The Challenge: Keeping Up with Growth
- How We Got Started
- How Our Process Worked
- How We Continuously Improved
- What Lessons We Learned
- Comparing Now and Before
- Make Your Own Improvements
- Next Steps
- Using Kanban in Capital Markets
- The Challenge: Solving the Seniority Catch-22
- Don’t Wait for the Perfect Timing
- A Detour to Alternative Process Frameworks
- Going Back to Kanban
- Lessons Learned
- Make Your Own Improvements
- Next Steps
- Using Kanban in Remote Work
- Building Remote-First Kanban Teams That Work Well
- For Your Journey Ahead
- Kanban Board Examples
- Product Development
- Software Development Flow
- Development Team with Multiple Clients
- Development Team Practicing Prediction
- Full Value Chain
- Mixing Product Discovery and Delivery
- Progress by Architecture
- Business Operations
- Corporate Legal
- Product Roadmap for Complex System (HW+SW)
- System Administration Team
- DevOps for Online Platform
- Release Management
- First-Line Support
- Marketing and Sales—-Sales Team from Lead to Deal
- Sales Team Respond to RFP
- Unpacking Vision and High-Level Goals
Author
Mattias Skarin trains leaders of complex products on transformation,
flow thinking, and decision-making under uncertainty. He has helped
companies like LEGO improve with Lean and agile techniques, and he is a
Product Development Coach at Snowdrop.se, the cofounder of
activeagileleadership.com, the author of Real World
Kanban, and a
coauthor of Kanban and Scrum.