Questions tagged [kanban]
Use the Kanban tag for project management questions about how to implement Kanban as a methodology. This tag is not for questions about software recommendations. However, questions about how to integrate a specific software solution or tool as it relates to Kanban is on topic.
295
questions
6
votes
3answers
7k views
How to handle epics in Kanban?
We are about to start working with Kanban instead of Scrum for our product development. We have identified that we will ahve the following flow:
Backlog -> Analyze -> Development - Test
Nothing ...
6
votes
2answers
959 views
What are some ways to improve team motivation and sense of achievement using Kanban?
I manage a development team using Scrum extremely successfully. When I started there was no organization to development, so we implemented Kanban as a stepping stone to provide visibility into the ...
1
vote
4answers
438 views
PM for non IT business
I am a software developer and am familiar with Scrum. However, I have also started a very different type business. I raise different types of poultry for the fine dining industry. I don't think ...
3
votes
1answer
456 views
What criteria are best suited to compare various Kanban tools in terms of maxmizing ROI?
We are a service oriented business catering our service to various agaencies offering us software development projects with tight deadlines and frequent updates. As a team, we are focusing to manage ...
22
votes
4answers
7k views
Should defects flow through the Kanban board, or should they be tracked as issues?
One of the things that I'm still trying to wrap my head around is defect tracking.
Should we put defects on the Board and track them alongside the other items (new features, refactoring work etc), ...
4
votes
3answers
569 views
Should the Kanban CFD be weighted with estimates?
I am working in a Kanban process with a team the tries to estimate Cycle time, Lead time as well as completion time based on applying FIFO wherever possible on our queues.
Using the Cumulative Flow ...
16
votes
6answers
5k views
Is Kanban a part of Scrum, and is it simply the task board?
I am new to Scrum and Kanban. So far, I understand that the Task Board is something that is originally from Kanban, but I am using an online Scrum tool that also also offers that board.
Is the Task ...
12
votes
6answers
2k views
What is the standard for evaluating team maturity?
There are ever so many references to the team's 'maturity' in the Agile/Lean related books and articles/blogs.
Using my common sense I think I can get the idea. I can see how my team has evolved over ...
5
votes
2answers
892 views
Visualizing individuals' efforts with kanban. Is it a wrong approach for measuring the team's throughput?
I'm new to kanban and agile as such but I'm really positive and enthusiastic and I have a clean vision of it's potential for us. I made a decision to start off with a first board and take it from ...
13
votes
4answers
1k views
How to effectively combine different (project and non-project) activities in Kanban?
In our company, we're currently trying to get started with Kanban. When discussing about how to handle the different work items / user stories / tasks, this question came up:
How do you effectively ...
6
votes
7answers
1k views
Can we use a electronic Kanban board to track actual time spent?
My title sums up my question pretty well. We're investigating whether we can use a Kanban-based system to manage and track some internal projects and one of our requirements is to track time spent on ...
20
votes
4answers
9k views
Difference in responsibilities between lead developer and project manager for support workload
Full disclosure: I am working as a lead developer for a team of around 6 developers, not as a project manager. But this seemed like a good place to ask.
Background: Recently the team is covering more ...
8
votes
2answers
1k views
How can I effectively track story points with Trello?
I'm exploring Trello as a Kanban tool, and am hung up on how to track story points with it. This isn't something that Trello natively supports, so I've been re-purposing labels to carry this ...
17
votes
5answers
1k views
How to cope with the Hawthorne effect and sprint improvements?
Hawthorne effect: the phenomenon in which subjects in behavioral studies change their performance in response to being observed.
Background: I'm using Kanban as a tool to analyse and improve the team'...
1
vote
2answers
3k views
Managing team workflow using Asana and Kanban principles [closed]
Our team uses Asana, and we're quite happy with it as it has excellent tools for team collaboration and personal task management. However it falls down a bit when trying to manage workflow in Kanban ...
9
votes
2answers
607 views
Which is the best methodology to manage a distributed team, working in several short term one-man projects?
I lead a team of around 20 people, distributed around the world (different timezones, most of us haven't met in person).
Most of the projects we work on are short term (3-4 weeks) customizations with ...
16
votes
6answers
2k views
Why does the WIP limit for a kanban discipline apply to completed work?
In kanban, there is a hard work-in-progress limit that stops a discipline working on too much at once. In this example kanban board, the WIP limit includes work listed in the "done" column.
...
5
votes
5answers
2k views
Electronic kanban board [closed]
In my project we decided to use Kanban. We started with trello, the application is very nice but it has too few features. It doesn't support:
WIP limits
Class of service
Multiple swim lanes
Which ...
5
votes
2answers
3k views
Where do I find public JIRA/Greenhopper instance used by Kanban project teams?
I'd love to see Atlassian's JIRA/Greenhopper Rapid Board in action, i.e. actively used in a Kanban project.
So far I have not been able to find a public one. Do you know any (e.g. open source) ...
33
votes
7answers
6k views
Advice for dealing with a cowboy programmer in an agile team
We have a cowboy coder in our team i.e. he likes to take advantage developing some new features or tools that are not always requested nor useful. We use scrum/kanban for development, and it is quite ...
17
votes
4answers
5k views
Kanban and feature size
We are currently using Scrum within our organisation but are considering moving to Kanban (or Scrumban).
As part of our Scrum process we normally take into consideration size and complexity of ...
9
votes
5answers
5k views
Kanban for multiple projects
We've been using http://acunote.com to manage our work queue. It's great for the planning phase, because you can nest stories. This makes it easy to outline an MVP within a given sprint.
Given that ...
51
votes
4answers
15k views
Kanban, moving items back? Or how do you manage mistakes?
Given that you have a feature tracking through your Kanban board, the dev marks it done, it's pulled into QA, and the dev pulls in new work.
QA fails the item.
Now what? You can't move it back into ...
3
votes
3answers
402 views
Going from Scrum to Kanban near āreleaseā
I am working as Scrum Master on a large software project. We are currently running Scrum. We have about one month left in the development phase before we are supposed to end our implementation phase.
...
14
votes
6answers
1k views
Is Agile Lean? Or are Agile and Lean totally separate philosophies?
Can I say Agile is "not" Lean and both Agile and Lean are totally different concepts or philosophies?
If I take lean principles:
"Self Organization"
"Kaizen or Cont. Improvement"
"Quality Assurance"...
1
vote
1answer
466 views
Reverse Auction “Kanban-like” methodology for agile development
I am trying to get some feedback on a methodology I would like to try with my team. Two problem areas I want to try and adapt this process to addess are:
A mix of time-critical (contracted ...
7
votes
2answers
325 views
setting WIP limits when devs are multi-functional
Our company has five distinct process competencies: UX, web, desktop,
data-mining and QA with a fixed number of engineers in each role. The
tools that each of these uses are quite different: photoshop,...
12
votes
7answers
1k views
How do you deal with developer holidays on a KANBAN board?
One of our developers has gone on holiday with some tickets associated with them on the Kanban board.
We were faced with the following two options:
Keep the work in progress limit the same for that ...
15
votes
6answers
3k views
How to use Kanban with small tasks?
I recently introduced Kanban in our software development team, but I'm struggling with some things. The main problem I have is how to handle 'small tasks'?
Let me explain some background: We develop ...
15
votes
3answers
642 views
How does “kanban” for project management relate to kanban in manufacturing?
I recently learned about kanban here and followed some of the links and read some of the recommended sites and PDFs.
It looks interesting, but one thing keeps confusing me.
In its original sense, ...
50
votes
4answers
16k views
What is kanban?
I'm curious as to what kanban is. I just learned about it seconds ago reviewing another question.
(a) What is involved that would consider it Kanban?
(b) Also how does it different from other ...
25
votes
9answers
9k views
Which sticky note is the stickiest?
The question might sound a tad silly, but I'm actually trying to solve a real problem.
Our team room has a glass wall, which we also use as our kanban board with hand-written swimlanes (= status) and ...
9
votes
5answers
9k views
Is there a list of good kanban books? [closed]
Looking for something that provides a good introduction into the topic as well as how to introduce it to an organization and how to apply it.
6
votes
5answers
979 views
How to implement kanban principles into one's personal life?
I'm impressed with kanban from a team perspective, and I'd like to suggestions on how to implement kanban from a personal perspective.
9
votes
2answers
1k views
Where to fit research/exploration work items into Kanban Board?
I'd like to move toward Kanban-style project management, but I'm finding it especially hard for a project where some of the technology is new and the developers have to spend time researching modules ...
3
votes
5answers
4k views
How to most effectively facilitate a value stream mapping exercise?
In the course of helping teams understand how their own project / service is structured and managed, I often facilitate value stream mapping (VSM) sessions.
What specific facilitation techniques are ...
4
votes
2answers
777 views
Who is using Cynefin for their Agile adoption?
I've listened to some David Snowden podcasts on complexity theory and the Cynefin framework. It looks as though it could be powerful for guiding Agile adoptions.
Who has used Cynefin for this work? ...
8
votes
4answers
4k views
Does anyone use a personal Kanban / Scrum board for project management activities (rather than work items)?
I've seen plenty of people using Kanban or Scrum boards to manage the work of a project.
However, I also use a personal Kanban board to manage my work at home, so I was curious - does any PM use a ...
16
votes
4answers
2k views
How do you kick-off new Agile teams?
I'm curious what others are doing with regard to getting teams up and running with Agile in a sustainable way. What do you emphasize first (practices, principle, process framework)? Or is there no one ...
27
votes
7answers
4k views
Scrum, Agile, Kanban looking for 'for dummies' type of information [closed]
I'm sure I'm not alone in this. I have heard and read a lot of snippets of information about this topic and I've formed my own understanding - probably not the best way to assess the value or try to ...
15
votes
3answers
701 views
What common techniques do Kanban teams use to make commitments to other teams in their organization?
When a team is first adopting kanban, they do not typically have reliable numbers for cycle time, and will struggle to make commitments based on a Service Level Agreement. What commitment techniques ...
4
votes
3answers
2k views
Scrum+Kanban SaaS tool [closed]
Do you want to use such tool?
It will be some tool with product backlog, sprint backlogs, Scrum/Kanban dashboard...
Me and my partners want to develop this.
50
votes
14answers
83k views
Where to Find a Desktop Kanban board application? [closed]
I have been looking for a week now, all over the net for a simple desktop based kanban management system. I work in a distributed team, but my company won't accept to use an exterior webapp like ...
16
votes
3answers
8k views
Useful charts for a Kanban system
I am aware that Cumulative Flow Diagrams are the norm for a Kanban / swimlane-style system, but I found I derived no useful information from them. I was hoping to see some patterns evolving, but I ...
6
votes
5answers
3k views
What information should be stored on Kanban Cards?
I am curious to the information and level of detail that people are storing on Kanban cards?
Or beter yet some templates of how they are put together.
For reference here is a description of a Kanban ...