Antecedents to achieve Kanban optimum benefits in software companies

In 2004, Kanban successfully entered into the Agile and Lean realm. Since then software companies have been increasingly using it in software development teams. The goal of this study is to perform an empirical investigation on antecedents considered as important for achieving optimum benefits of Kanban use and to discuss the practical implications of the findings. We conducted an online survey with software professionals from the Lean Software Development LinkedIn community to investigate the importance of antecedents of using Kanban for achieving optimum benefits. Our study reveals that subjective norm, organizational support, ease of use, Kanban use experience and training are the antecedents for achieving expected benefits of Kanban. The potential benefits of Kanban use can only be realized when the key antecedents are not only identified, but also infused across an organization. When managing the transition to or using Kanban, practitioners need to adapt their strategies on the extent of various antecedents, a few identified in this study.