Understanding Kanban for Agile Software Development

Since long time I was planning to capture a short tutorial on Kanban. Completed it now. Please find the topics covered with link to read the complete article or watch the Video.

Basics of Kanban

Kanban is a framework for managing the product development or enhancement by giving continuous delivery as key focus. while optimal utilization of development team. Like Scrum, Kanban is a process designed to help teams work together more effectively. Click here to Read More  on Quick History and Principles of Kanban.

Relate Kanban with Real life

Lets try to relate the Kanban flow with Real life. Assuming you already know and practicing scrum, where we do Iterations of defined timebox. we commit bundle of stories, work on them for 2 to 3 weeks and complete the Iteration and again plan for new bunch of stories for next iteration. In Kanban we don’t commit stories for iteration or time box or sprint. we do it little differently. Click here to learn, how.

Kanban Board   

Now Lets jump into the play. we got an fare idea of Kanban and its rules, principle. Lets start talking about how do we really implement that principle of Visualization of flow , Implement the WIP limits etc. You can definitely watch the video to get an understanding. I will try to explain it here also.

Well, So to have the work visible and transparent to all, we need to have a board of works , it can be physical (better for co-located team). How ever now a days most teams are situated distributed location, so we can have a digital board. You can use you ALM tool to configure a board like that.

Later this section you can browse through videos on different ALM tools like Jira, Rally, TFS etc to find out how Kanban can be configured and implement with in those ALM.

Click here to read more on

1.            Implementing Multiple WIP Columns

2.            Implementing WIP Limits

3.            Split the WIP Columns.

4.            Understanding the Pull Based System

5.            Working with Beyond Control WIP

6.            Policies or Exit Criteria

7.            Expedite Lane (Swim Lane)

8.            Making the Strategy

Benefits of Doing Kanban

Kanban is useful and beneficial if you use it to cater the work items that best fit for Kanban. like Production support, Adhoc Requests , unplanned work, portfolio or program level works etc. Few of its important benefits are mention below. Click here to read more

Scrum Vs Kanban

Assuming you already familiar with Scrum, Click here to read few differences between Scum and Kanban

Kanban Metrics

Lets get into reporting on Kanban

Click here to read more on

Cycle Time

Lead Time

Throughput

Cumulative Flow Diagram

Video Tutorials

Please find below 4 Videos to watch.