Kanban Maturity Model was developed at Kanban University by David Anderson and Teodora Bozheva. With the help of KMM, you can see how your organization is doing in Kanban adoption (how mature is your Kanban adoption) and start a discussion of what are the most appropriate future improvements. Therefore, KMM is the ultimate Kanban coaching tool.
The model emerged from the community’s experience after years of coaching Kanban adoptions and relating those to organizational maturity and leadership maturity.
Let me illustrate its practical applicability with a very typical example, which is finding why some practice doesn’t “stick” or even if “implemented” brings no value. Imagine an organization that is struggling, let’s say, with capacity allocation. At the same time, they don’t have consistency in their process. That is a mismatch or a gap. Capacity allocation is Level 4 (Risk-Hedged) practice. Process consistency is characteristic of Level 2 (Customer-Driven). The general advice is that practices make sense according to the level. The higher-level practice is unlikely to work for the lower-level system.
Explore a bit more on KMM by watching David’s keynote called “Pragmatic, actionable, evidence-based guidance: Why we need the Kanban Maturity Model”:
Now, how it could be practically used… I can make a KMM assessment with your team to see where you are. It’s not me assessing you, a better description would be you assessing yourself under my guidance. Given that newly created understanding of where you are, the next natural step of this discussion would be selecting the most appropriate next steps.
I could teach the model in the KMM class. That is the next natural step in your professional development of Kanban-related knowledge and skills after KMP.