From the course: Agile Foundations

Kanban overview

From the course: Agile Foundations

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Kanban overview

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- A lot of Agile teams also use many of the concepts from Kanban. Kanban is a scheduling system that was used in Lean manufacturing. Many Agile teams like to display their work on a Kanban board, but Kanban's influence on the Agile mindset goes well beyond just the board. The Kanban system is actually a popular way to apply Lean thinking to software development. Lean thinking is about focusing on what's valuable to the customer and then continuously improving the product over time. You've seen this in the very first principle in the Agile Manifesto. Remember that Agile teams focus on continuous delivery of valuable software, but Lean also emphasizes people over process. It encourages companies to have respect for people and trust them to deliver high quality work. You've also seen this in the first value in the Agile Manifesto, and Principle 5 says that organizations should build projects around motivated individuals and trust them to get the job done. So you could probably summarize Lean thinking into two core values. You should have respect for people and continuously improve. Even though we haven't talked about Lean, these ideas are probably already familiar. In fact, a lot of the Agile mindset is just a restatement of Lean thinking. Self-organized teams are just a way to have greater respect for people. Retrospectives and software refactoring are just another way to continuously improve. That's why when you're working on an Agile team, you should think very carefully about how you use your Kanban board. A Kanban board is a swim lane diagram with four or more columns. These columns typically have the labels stories, to do, doing, and done. Scrum teams will call this the task board, because they use yellow sticky notes to keep track of their tasks. But a Kanban board, or Scrum task board, is more than just displaying your work. It's actually the way to organize your work so that your team is focused on delivering the greatest value. That means that the work should flow through the board in a very particular way. The stories at the top should have the highest customer value. Then the team should work on this top story until it's finished or in the done column. Once that work is done, then the team can work on the story second from the top. Remember that Agile teams should avoid multitasking. Your team should also make sure that you don't have too much work in each column. If you have a lot of sticky notes stuck in the to-do column, then it usually means that the team is having trouble finishing the work. All the work on the board should be self-assigned. So when you're working on an Agile team, you'll pull a task from the board during the morning standup meeting, and that assigns yourself the work. Remember that Lean encourages your team to be self-organized. The team should also look for ways to continuously improve themselves and the product. So you wouldn't want too much work stuck in any one column. If you do, then it's a sign that your team might have trouble delivering.

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