Exploring the use of a Kanban coach for student teams

Recent research has noted the benefit of using Kanban, both within industry and for team-based student projects. Unfortunately, there has been minimal research on how to improve student learning of the Kanban process. This paper starts to address this gap by reporting on the results of an in-class experiment that explores how to implement a Kanban Coach (KC) for student teams that use Kanban. We first outline the key KC responsibilities and interaction mechanisms that enables the KC to efficiently guide student teams, and then report on the results of our experiment. Our results suggest that a KC can be implemented efficiently within an educational context, and that the use of a KC improves student learning and the quality of the team’s project. Hence, our initial results suggest that the use a KC should be considered as part of the project support for student team-based projects and that a KC helps students internalize how to effectively use the Kanban process methodology.