Effectiveness of kanban approaches in systems engineering within rapid response environments

In the last few decades, system contexts have multiplied, and the speed of change in both needs and solutions has accelerated. This has led to an inherent loss of determinism—requirements are less tangible, more evolving, and sometimes emergent, and systems are both complex and constantly adapting. Engineering principles involving agility and leanness have been adopted to address non-determinism in software systems. This paper examines one of those approaches, kanban (pull) scheduling techniques, to determine its applicability to systems and software engineering in a rapid response environment. The paper describes work in progress defining a general systems engineering kanban approach, a specific kanban process for rapid response, and the validation of that process via simulation.