At the beginning of 2025, Kanban University introduced four new training programs and professional credentials: introducing role-oriented training of Flow Manager, Delivery Manager, Demand Manager, and Enterprise Delivery Manager for the first time in our almost fifteen-year history. Why have we made this switch and why now?
Identity, Mission and Purpose
Since inception, Kanban University has been a management training company, focused on the professional services, intangible goods, knowledge worker economy of the 21st century. Research, by Barry Boehm, revealed that poor management increases costs more rapidly than any other factor, in disciplines such as software and systems engineering. Management training and guidance has remained rooted in the early 20thcentury based on experience and understanding of physical tangible goods industries such as manufacturing and distribution. Modern work is crying out for new approaches to improve time-to-market, service delivery times, predictability, quality, and responsiveness to changes in markets, economies, regulatory environments, political regimes, and disruptive technological innovation. Since 2003, with publication of his first book, Agile Management, Kanban University founder David J Anderson had been focused on this mission of bringing new management methods to modern workplaces. By 2010, his approach had evolved and become to be known as the Kanban Method.
20th century management expert, Peter Drucker, laid down a challenge for the 21st century: 20th century physical goods industries had improved their productivity by a factor 200 times, he challenged professional services organizations to achieve just a 50 times improvement over the next 100 years.
Kanban University´s has taken up the mission of Boehm and Drucker to dramatically improve management in the modern workplace.
Kanban
In 2011, the Kanban Method offered Kanban University the best available tool to deliver on its mission of a better way to manage modern work. The Kanban Management Professional (KMP) training program was introduced with two training classes: Kanban System Design (KSD) was oriented around the design of system of work that enabled cooperation, collaboration, empowerment and autonomy, for workers to improve service delivery outcomes – using the operational practices of the Kanban Method; the follow on class, Kanban Systems Improvement (KSI) taught the management practices that enabled the mechanism to drive evolutionary change and improvement – creating an organization wired with the DNA to survive, thrive, adapt and succeed in a world moving faster and faster.
The Kanban Method was rooted in the belief that installing processes and frameworks almost always failed at scale because the humans involved resisted change that affected their identity, their role in the social order, their self-esteem and social status, how they earned respect, and how they were recognized and rewarded for their contribution. To overcome this, change had to be led in an evolutionary manner, owned by those who implemented the changes, motivated by a shared purpose and a desire to contribute in a meaningful manner.
Leadership – the magic ingredient required for success
As Kanban adoption spread around the world, a great variety of implementation variations appeared – some organizations were much more successful with Kanban than others. It became clear that the vital ingredient was leadership – there needed to be someone who took responsibility for the flow of work and accepted accountability for customer delivery. Where this was present, dramatic results were observed with productivity improvements of 4 times sometimes as large as 20 times, and delivery times shrinking by 90% or more. Where leadership wasn´t present and didn´t emerge, the results were mediocre, lacklustre, and so much opportunity was left on the table. It became necessary to define this leadership responsibility as the service delivery manager role and recommend that these responsibilities were adopted by someone in an existing leadership or managerial role.
Flow Manager Emerges
For many organizations, the challenges of improving management and leadership met with significant cultural barriers, and many organizations continued to exhibit very low levels of organizational maturity, and very poor results and business outcomes. For many, just improving cooperation, and moving work through their larger scale organizations became the first step in the right direction. To make this happen, someone had to take responsibility for flow. More and more, we saw people being asked to step up and take on the Flow Manager responsibilities. More recently, we have seen it emerge as a job title particularly in Brazil and parts of central Europe.
More Relatable, More Meaningful, More Personal, More Directly Applicable
Our switch to role-oriented training programs was not made without considerable thought. There was a need to make our management training more relatable to the work people actually do, more meaningful in terms of the benefits, and the subject areas addressed, more personal with a direct relationship to the career path and development of people pursuing a managerial career, and more directly applicable such that senior leaders sponsoring and funding the training understand how it will be used and how it might impact their business.
Descriptive not Prescriptive
The Kanban Method has always been descriptive in nature – they have always reflected descriptions of practices and solutions that emerged in real world situations. Kanban literature, guidance and training has always used specific contexts and examples, to describe an approach and a set of practices from which students can choose to learn, copy, adopt and adapt. The Kanban Method has never been prescriptive – it has never mandated a formula, prescription, or framework of elements that must be present. There are no Kanban Police ensuring conformance. As such the roles of Flow Manager, Delivery Manager, and Demand Manager have emerged in the market, and our role has been to describe them.
Delivering on our mission
Kanban University believes that we can best advance our mission now and in future through the provision of role-based training and providing role-specific credentials to individuals pursuing a management career path.
