In today’s Agile and disruptive business ecosystem, it is critical to developing robust business models through more intelligent systems and processes. The delivery mechanism must significantly reduce the time between placing customer request and fulfilling it by committing and delivering exactly what is needed when it is needed, and in the exact amount needed.
So, in Upstream Kanban, ideas or requests are captured, evaluated, committed, and finally moved to the Downstream Kanban as a work item to be further executed and delivered to the customers or stakeholders. But, to maintain this smooth transition, you need a mechanism to first identify your Upstream and Downstream stages and then an option to filter out ideas and requests that are too fragmented or ambiguous.
The Upstream Kanban feature in SwiftKanban empowers you to effectively manage your commitments by:
- Defining particular stages in the value stream, known as columns or sub-columns as Upstream commitment points. The rest of the stages, by default, become the Downstream commitment points.
- Letting you discard a Kanban Card having details of a requirement in any of the Upstream columns or sub-columns.
- Letting you abort a Kanban card having details of the committed requirement in any of the Downstream columns or sub-columns.
- Gaining deeper insight into the wastage of time, effort, and system liquidity due to the Discard or Abort of cards via the Discard and Abort Analysis diagram.
So, be it a product management review, strategy discussion, ops review or replenishment meeting, the Discard and Abort analysis can always offer you a visualized, data-driven direction to the waste analysis and help you better manage the end-to-end flow in product, service, technology and process innovation and development.
If you are interested to know more about the Upstream Kanban, read this blog.
Configuring Column or Sub-column as Upstream
To use the Discard or Abort option, you must first define your Upstream and Downstream workflow stages in a value stream. In SwiftKanban, the stages are referred to as columns or sub-columns and value stream as Lane or Smart lane.
To define particular columns or sub-columns as Upstream, perform the following steps:
1. From the Kanban Board, click the Board Settings menu on the Top menu.
2. In the Board Settings page, select the Board Editor tile and open the Board Editor page.
3. On the Board Editor page, click the Set column to upstream icon 
. The information text box prompts you to select the column range to be set as Upstream. Click OK.
4. To select the upstream column range, which is the first and last column, click the column or sub-column header. They are now ticked and set as an upstream column.
Note: If you select a column as upstream, its sub-columns also become upstream.
5. Rest of the columns, by default, turns into the Downstream columns.
Creating a Master List for Reason Type
It is important to categorize the reason for discarding or aborting a card. You can create various reason types for both discard and abort in the Master List.
To know more about how to create the master List, see this Help topic.
Discarding Cards from the Upstream Column
To discard a card from the upstream column or sub-column, perform the following steps:
1. Right-click the card or click the Options icon.
2. Click the Discard option.
3. In the Add Comment box, select the reason type and enter your comment. Click Save.
Note: In case you have discarded any card by mistake, you can add it back to the Board by adding a card from the toolbar. Click the Add Card + icon on the toolbar, on the Add card view, go to the Search and add from Discard tab, search for the card that you have discarded, and then click the Add to Board icon to add it back to the Board.
Aborting Cards from the Downstream Column
To abort a card from the downstream column or sub-column, perform the following steps:
1.Right-click the card or click the Options icon.
2. Click the Abort option.
3. In the Add Comment box, select the reason type and enter your comment. Click Save.
Note: In case you have aborted any card by mistake, you can add it back to the Board by adding a card from the toolbar. Click the Add Card + icon on the toolbar, on the Add card view, go to the Search and add from Abort tab, search for the card that you have aborted, and then click the Add to Board icon to add it back to the Board.