What are some best practices for customizing a Kanban board?

When customizing a Kanban board, consider aligning columns with your team's workflow stages, using swimlanes to represent different work categories, and incorporating visual cues to highlight priority or status. Regularly revisit and adjust the board based on team feedback and evolving needs. Prioritize simplicity and clarity to ensure that the board effectively communicates the project's status and facilitates streamlined workflow management. Customization should enhance, not complicate, the visualization of work progress.

?? Customizing a Kanban board is essential in Agile for maximizing team efficiency. I'd start by understanding the workflow thoroughly, using value stream mapping. Setting work-in-progress limits is crucial to maintain flow and reduce delay. The board should be tailored to manage workflow effectively, using lead and cycle time metrics for constant improvement. Incorporating feedback loops is vital for adaptability and growth. Remember, customizing a Kanban board is an ongoing journey. Continuously experiment with layouts and features to align the board with your team's evolving needs and feedback. ??????

When designing a kanban board to understand the process and flow of the project is the key element to streamline the board and make sure to create well defined components to distinguish teams

Customizing your Kanban board is key to making it truly work for your team and workflow. 1. Think of steps you take to finish tasks, like "Start, Do, Done." These become your board's "lanes." Begin with just those three, you can add more later! 2. Don't put too many tasks in each lane, or things get stuck. Use colors or tags to highlight urgent stuff. 3. Clearly show who's working on each task, like "Ramesh does design" or "Suresh fixes bugs." Have quick meetings to share updates and help each other out. 4. As things change, your board can too! Add new lanes if needed, and don't be afraid to try different setups. Keep it simple, fun, and flexible, and watch your awesome work flow through!

Understand the process being followed by the team. Identify 'minimal' possible statuses - each status should have meaning and clarity on next possible status(es). Create Kanban board with columns representing these statuses.

Setting limits on Work in Progress (WIP) is essential in keeping your work moving smoothly. By deciding on how many tasks can be worked on at a time in each stage of your process, you prevent things from getting too crowded. This helps your team concentrate better, finish tasks more efficiently, and avoids the chaos that comes with trying to do too many things at once. It's like putting a manageable cap on the number of tasks in progress, allowing your team to focus and get things done with more ease.

I have been in a team that's afraid to put a WIP limit as they have not done it before. After several discussions, we manage to agree to try and put up a number based on best estimate. For the first few month, we keep on adjusting the number. However after having more past data to refer, it become easier to reach to a stable number which is suitable with the team. If anyone's facing the same problem, my only advice is to just start!

Planning the sprint in detail and carefully is essential to avoid overload and idleness. Like Kanban, limiting work in progress (WIP) in Scrum allows you to focus on priority tasks. Careful Sprint planning, considering the team's capacity, promotes consistent delivery and avoids wasted resources. Balanced management between demand and capacity is the key to a productive and successful sprint.

You can also focus on finishing tasks without a WIP limit as this creates a natural limit. Always focus your effort on moving the item closest to completion, as this stops you building high WIP.

Agree. Complete one task before taking another task. It will improve efficiency and refuce bottleneck. If multiple items are in progress state then it will slow down progress.

In my opinion, the core issue is to provide visibility to the team on priority of the tasks and ensure that it is reviewed and adjusted to reflect the current true state. Limiting WIP tasks can be recommended and setup based on the team velocity. Also, it would be helpful to capture capacity to allow for distractions due to urgent asks and engineers availability. We could also look at some other metrics such as, why certain tasks are in WIP status longer than expected, may be due to dependencies, incorrect estimation or scope of work, additional requirements popped up, software quality issues, etc. These metrics can help teams limit the WIP tasks and allow them to have better confidence on the commitments.

Kanban was really helpful method to help me in my projects by visualizing my tasks in this way, I can see the entire workflow at a glance. If I notice that the "In Progress" column has too many tasks, I know I need to focus on completing them before taking on new ones. If the "Review" column is empty, I may need to spend more time gathering feedback. Kanban helps me manage the flow of my work, ensuring a smooth and efficient process from start to finish. It's a flexible system that allows me to adapt to changes and continuously improve my workflow.

As per my experience we need to focus first on high priority tasks. Be ready with prerequisites like test cases, test data collection before deploying build.

Managing the flow and monitoring metrics are crucial aspects of optimizing a Kanban board. Here's more on that: Workflow Separation: Swimlanes offer a horizontal division on the Kanban board, allowing teams to segregate work based on different criteria like priorities, teams, or specific workflows. Priority Isolation: Isolating urgent or critical tasks in a dedicated swimlane ensures these tasks receive immediate attention and don't get lost in the regular flow of work. Team or Workflow Allocation: Swimlanes can also be used to allocate specific lanes to different teams, enabling better visibility and coordination within a larger project. Incorporating swimlanes enhances transparency and empowers teams to identify areas of improvement.

One thing I found helpful is to manage your flow of work using swimlanes. This view allows everyone to quickly view the WIP in conjunction with the colors used to identify the workitems. Some used in my work are New (backlog ready to pickup), Development (In Progress), Testing (Ready to Test), Done (Ready for UAT), and Production Validation to close out the work items. It is best to work on one work item at a time and complete it before moving on to the next to increase velocity for the team.

Whatever method you follow, simply follow the four steps - Plan - Do - Check - Act This iterative process will bring improvements in your process.

A common way of obtaining feedback in a flow system is by measuring cycle times. However, the problem with this kind of feedback is that by the time you realize it, it's often too late because the delay has already materialized for your customer. This is because cycle time is a lag indicator. To address this, you can decide to use a lead indicator instead. One example is Work Item Age, where you check for work items that exceed a specific time benchmark or SLE. Another option is to check the work in progress by counting the work items in the queue. Using lead indicators allows you to promptly take action before the delay materializes, enabling you to mitigate potential issues in a timely manner.

One way to implement feedback and improvement cards in practice is to use a Kanban board software that allows you to create and manage feedback and improvement cards easily. For example in Trello, Jira or Azure Devops you can create a feedback column and a retrospective column on your board, and add feedback and improvement cards to them. You can also assign team members, add comments, attach files, set due dates, and track progress on these cards. You can review these cards regularly with your team and stakeholders, and move them to other columns as you work on them. This can help you improve your process and deliver value to your customers.

The biggest mistake on Kanban boards is when they end on "deployed to production". You need to add columns for obtaining feedback, checking if the intended outcome was achieved, and locking in what you learn.

I love this feature of ADO to implement a feedback column in order to provide a tool to allow all stakeholders to make comments, ask questions or state concerns to be addressed during the sprint. In standup. or at sprint review or the retrospective. Feedback allows the team to improve, and address inefficiencies or bottle necks and make small adjustments to increase the teams velocity.

One way to experiment with different Kanban board designs, layouts, and features in practice is to use a virtual board software that allows you to create and change your Kanban board in a collaborative and dynamic way with your team. Tools such as Miro let your team expirement and customize your board to your liking. You can also add comments, votes, timers, and videos to your board to facilitate communication and feedback. You can invite your team members and stakeholders to join your board and edit it in real-time. You can also export, share, and integrate your board with other tools, such as Trello, Jira, or Asana.

now in my expirence you can trully adapt your Kanban board to any project and situation you want from really small to mega projects Regularly review the overall progress of the project. Analyze feedback, reports, and the timeline. Based on your review, create a new list of experiments or improvements for the upcoming phases. This might include optimizing workflows, implementing new measures, or addressing unforeseen challenges. and keep this on the whole project life cycle

The challenge is to build your own board that reflects the way the team works - there are no blueprints for this. If you then manage to develop your own suitable metrics from which the team can make data-driven adjustments, you have taken the first big step towards continuous, evolutionary development.

In Kanban methodology, it's essential to experiment and evolve continuously. This means regularly testing new ideas, processes, or changes in your workflow to identify improvements. Experimentation allows teams to adapt and refine their practices to better meet their evolving needs. It involves a culture of openness to change and a willingness to learn from both successes and failures. By experimenting, teams can discover more efficient ways of working, streamline processes, and enhance productivity. Additionally, the ability to evolve is crucial for staying competitive and responsive to changing circumstances, customer demands, and market dynamics.

Un ejemplo de experimentación con Kanban es que la aplicación se puede dar en diferentes contextos. En nuestro caso tuvimos que adaptar el tablero con una columna adicional de validación (adicional a las 3 elementales) ya que no teníamos visibilidad y control de que las actividades fueran validadas antes del cierre y su entrega (al final tuvimos que agregar el de entrega). Kanban al ser un modelo adaptable y flexible nos permitió solucionar el inconveniente de visibilidad que teníamos en el día a día y en evidenciasr el valor entregado a nuestros clientes.

En mi experiencia me ha resultado útil el uso de herramientas para facilitar la gestión de actividades, seguimiento, control y feedback al usar Kanban. Al darle un uso eficiente y explotar las capacidades se obtiene una diferencia considerable en la eficiencia del proceso y enfoque en las metas a lograr. He visto y experimentado muchos casos en donde se tiene más de una herramienta con capacidades similares y no se cuentan con otras que pueden resultar útiles, muchas veces el presupuesto no se utiliza de forma eficiente, es por ello que es muy importante tomarse el tiempo para la elección de las herramientas que apoyan y aceleren los procesos. Herramientas como: Jira Trello Azure boards Kanbanize y otras similares

try to use some tools that will help you on your kanban journy like Trello and Jira they will make your follow-up much more easier

Keep it Simple. We spend far too much time trying to optimize how we label and track our work than doing it. Todo, Doing, Done. Start there. You do not need much in the Todo/Backlog section. Using a Just-in-Time solution for filling the backlog is entirely sufficient. Then, you are either doing the task or done with it. But, wait, you ask, what about deploying the code...make it a separate task. But wait, what about having someone review it. Please make it a separate task and put it in the reviewer's backlog. But wait, what about having an icebox, a backlog, and a ready-for dev. Your team is trying to track something far more significant than tasks. This is going to work for some. Try it. You may get lucky.

What I found valuable is testing the visualize workflow principle. Two, or more team members are asked to describe a task based on what they can see on the Kanban board. The stories can be different. It may be an indicator to make adjustments. It may be a matter of training or workflow adjustment.

Educate Team Members: Workshops and Training: Conduct workshops or training sessions to familiarize team members with Kanban principles, terminology, and best practices. Ensure a shared understanding of how the Kanban board functions and its role in the workflow. Documentation: Provide comprehensive documentation that serves as a reference for team members. This documentation should cover not only how to use the Kanban board but also the underlying principles and the rationale behind specific configurations.