"Fit for Purpose: How Modern Businesses Find, Satisfy, & Keep Customers" (2017, second edition), co-authored with Alexei Zheglov, extends the kanban-method into product management and business strategy by introducing the concept of fitness-criteria — the specific, measurable attributes that make a service fit for the purpose its customers actually need.
The fitness criteria concept
The book's core argument is that organizations consistently fail to define what "good" means for their customers in terms that are specific enough to be actionable. "Fitness criteria" are the operational definitions of customer fitness: the lead time a customer can tolerate, the quality level required, the reliability expected. These criteria differ by customer segment — different customers need the same service to be fit for different purposes — and they differ by context.
This framing reframes the Kanban Method's goal. Where the kanban-book described Kanban as a mechanism for evolutionary improvement, "Fit for Purpose" describes what the organization is improving toward: fitness for specific customer purposes, as operationally defined by measurable fitness criteria. The question is not "are we delivering faster?" but "are we fit for the purposes our customers need us to serve?"
Connection to classes of service
The classes-of-service concept from the kanban-book is an antecedent: different classes of service (expedite, fixed-date, standard, intangible) represent different fitness profiles for different work types. "Fit for Purpose" generalizes this into a product management framework — the fitness criteria for a product or service determine which classes of service matter and how the organization should configure its Kanban system to meet them.
Extension into upstream work
The fitness criteria concept also connects to upstream-kanban — the management of discovery and planning work that occurs before items enter development. If fitness criteria define what the organization needs to deliver, upstream Kanban describes how the organization decides what to build to meet those criteria. The two books together extend Anderson's framework from delivery (the original Kanban Method) into discovery.
Organizational positioning
The book is positioned at the business strategy and product management level rather than the team operations level of the kanban-book. It reflects the maturity-and-enterprise-era expansion of Kanban from a team-level delivery practice to an enterprise-level service management approach. Alexei Zheglov's co-authorship represents Anderson's increasing collaboration with practitioners who brought different analytical frameworks to bear on the Kanban Method's evolution.