The Seven Kanban Cadences

Scrum has prescribed events. Kanban has cadences—recommended regular meetings for specific feedback purposes.

The key difference:

• Scrum events are mandatory parts of the framework
• Kanban cadences are opt-in based on need

You don't need all seven cadences. Start with one or two. Add more as you mature.

The seven cadences serve three levels:

1. Team level: Daily operations
2. Service level: Delivery to customers/stakeholders
3. Strategic level: Portfolio and organizational alignment

Purpose: Coordinate flow, identify blockers, ensure smooth daily operations.

Frequency: Daily, 15 minutes max.

Focus:

• Walk the board right-to-left (start with items closest to done)
• Identify blocked items
• Discuss items at risk (aging beyond threshold)
• Make pull decisions

NOT focus:

• Status reports ("what did you do yesterday?")
• Detailed problem-solving (take that offline)
• Individual performance

Key questions:

• "What's blocking progress on this item?"
• "This item has been here 6 days—what's happening?"
• "Now that X is done, who will pull the next item?"

Difference from Scrum Daily: Scrum Daily focuses on people and progress toward a Sprint Goal. Kanban Meeting focuses on work items and flow. The board, not the team members, is the subject.

These cadences manage the relationship between the team and its customers/stakeholders.

1. Replenishment Meeting (Weekly)

Purpose: Decide what new work enters the system.

Participants: Product owner, team lead, key stakeholders.

Activities:

• Review incoming requests
• Prioritize the backlog
• Pull items into "Ready" (respecting WIP limits)
• Discuss upcoming capacity

Outcome: A replenished and prioritized Ready column.

2. Service Delivery Review (Bi-weekly or Monthly)

Purpose: Review how well you're delivering to customers.

Participants: Team, stakeholders, customers if possible.

Metrics reviewed:

• Lead time trends
• Throughput stability
• Customer satisfaction
• SLA performance

Outcome: Data-driven discussion about service quality. Are we meeting expectations? What needs to change?

3. Delivery Planning Meeting (As needed)

Purpose: Coordinate delivery/release of finished work.

Participants: Team, ops, anyone involved in releases.

Activities:

• Review what's ready to release
• Plan release timing
• Coordinate dependencies
• Identify release risks

Outcome: Clear release plan with dates and ownership.

These cadences connect team-level work to organizational strategy.

4. Risk Review (Weekly or Bi-weekly)

Purpose: Identify and manage risks to delivery.

Focus:

• Blocked items and blockers
• Items aging beyond thresholds
• Dependencies on other teams
• Systemic issues

Outcome: Risk mitigation actions. Escalation paths for unresolved blockers.

5. Strategy Review (Monthly or Quarterly)

Purpose: Align team work with organizational strategy.

Participants: Leadership, product, team representatives.

Focus:

• Are we working on the right things?
• How does our work connect to business goals?
• What strategic changes affect our priorities?

Outcome: Updated strategic direction, priority adjustments.

6. Operations Review (Monthly)

Purpose: Review cross-team dependencies and flow.

Participants: Representatives from multiple teams, management.

Focus:

• How is work flowing across teams?
• Where are inter-team bottlenecks?
• What policy or structural changes are needed?

Outcome: Coordination improvements, cross-team agreements.

7. Retrospective (Bi-weekly or Monthly)

Purpose: Reflect on the process and identify improvements.

Format: Varies (similar to agile retrospectives).

Focus:

• What's working well?
• What's not working?
• What experiments should we try?
• What did we learn from previous experiments?

Outcome: Concrete improvement experiments with owners and dates.

Kanban-specific retrospective topics:

• Are our WIP limits right?
• What's causing our current bottleneck?
• Are our policies helping or hurting?
• Is our lead time improving?
• What's creating blockers?

Integration with Scrum: If you're doing Scrumban, you likely already have Sprint Retrospectives. These serve the same purpose. No need to add another retrospective meeting.