Adaption from Scrum to Kanban

1. Kanban

2. Introductions
 Connie Barton – TD Ameritrade
 Dan Carroll – Microsoft
 Julie Weitzel – Ascend One

3. Agenda
 Onecompany’s adaptation from Scrum to
Kanban
 Our Challenges
 What is Kanban?
 Setting up Kanban Board
 Scrumban

4. Time-boxed iterative
development has challenges
Common problems include:
Short time-boxes give more frequent opportunity to measure progress
and inspect software but force development items to be smaller
Smaller development items are often too small to be valuable and
difficult to identify
Quality of requirements suffers as analysts rush to prepare for
upcoming cycles
Quality of current development suffers when busy analysts are unable
to inspect software or answer questions during development
Quality often suffers as testers race to complete work late in the
development time-box

5. What is Kanban?
kan·ban [kɑhn-bɑhn]
看板 – Kanban literally means “visual card,” “signboard,” or “billboard”
Developed more than 20 years ago, by Mr. Taiichi Ohno, a vice
president of Toyota
A method of inventory control, originally developed in Japanese
automobile factories, that keeps inventories low by scheduling needed
goods and equipment to arrive a short time before a production run
begins
A visual signal that’s used to trigger an action
A simple-to-operate control system
Fits nicely into an Agile SDLC

6. Properties of Kanban
 Visualize what you do today
 Limit the amount of work in progress
 Improve flow
 Pull not push
 Request In, Value Out
 Minimal Marketable Feature

7. Kanban Board

8. Setup Kanban Board
 Need to identify Team Goals
 Need to identify limit for On Deck
 Need to identify limit for each phase
 Move highest priority stories onto On Deck
 Setup TFS for workflow
 And Go!

9. Lead Time vs. Cycle Time
 Lead Time
 Starts when story goes On Deck
 Ends when story is Released to Production
 Cycle Time
 Starts when story goes into Analysis
 Ends when story moves into QA Done
Customized to our teams

10. Kanban Board

11. Kanban Board
Analysis Phase
1. Cycle Time starts
2. Number of stories in this phase is
limited
3. Team member will pull from On Deck
when work is needed

12. Development Phase
Kanban Board 1. Number of stories in this phase is
limited
2.Team member will pull from Analysis
Done when work is needed
3.Development tasks with hours are
created
Analysis Phase
1. Cycle Time starts
2. Number of stories in this phase is
limited
3. Team member will pull from On Deck
when work is needed

13. Development Phase
Kanban Board 1. Number of stories in this phase is
limited
2.Team member will pull from Analysis
Done when work is needed
3.Development tasks with hours are
created
Analysis Phase
1. Cycle Time starts
2. Number of stories in this phase is
limited
3. Team member will pull from On Deck
when work is needed
QA Phase
1.Number of stories in this phase is limited
2.Team member will pull from Dev. Done
when work is needed
3.QA tasks with hours are created
4.Cycle time ends when story leaves QA

14. Development Phase
Kanban Board 1. Number of stories in this phase is
limited
2.Team member will pull from Analysis
Done when work is needed
3.Development tasks with hours are
created
Analysis Phase
1. Cycle Time starts
2. Number of stories in this phase is
limited
3. Team member will pull from On Deck
when work is needed
Ready to Deploy Phase
1.No limits
QA Phase 2.Team will decide when to release stories
1.Number of stories in this phase is limited in RTD
2.Team member will pull from Dev. Done 3.Proposed 2-week release schedule
when work is needed
3.QA tasks with hours are created
4.Cycle time ends when story leaves QA

15. Work In Progress (WIP)
& Limits
 The limit should be large enough to keep the
team busy (i.e. there is always something in it
for the team to start work on), but small
enough to avoid premature prioritization (i.e.
having things sitting in the queue for too long
before they are begun).
 WIP limits are designed to reduce multi-
tasking, maximize throughput, and enhance
teamwork.

16. Work In Progress (WIP)
& Limits
 To improve cycle time there are two options:
 reduce the number of things in process
 improve the average completion rate
 Byhaving fewer work items in progress, then
the team is able to focus more on the larger
goals, and less on individual tasks, thus
encouraging a swarming effect, and
enhancing teamwork

17. Work In Progress (WIP)
& Limits
 Limiting WIP like this can seem unusual for teams, and there is
often a worry that team members will be idle because they have no
work to do, but are unable to pull any new work. The following
guidelines can be useful to help in this situation:
 Can you help progress an existing story? Work on that.
 Don’t have the right skills? Find the bottleneck and work to
release it.
 Don’t have the right skills? Pull in work from the queue.
 Can’t start anything in the queue? Is there any lower priority to
start investigating?
 There is nothing lower priority? Find other interesting work.

18. Scrumban
 Team will decide when to release stories in
RTD
 Proposed 2-week release schedule
 Conduct daily stand-ups
 Retrospectives conducted on an as need
basis, minimum of one per month

19. Remains The Same
 ProductBacklog
 Business Prioritization of Product Backlog
 Release Definition of Done
 Demo
 Retrospective

20. Daily Standup
 Identifybottlenecks – Congestion or gaps?
 Blocker not handled?
 Working within process limits?
 Are priorities clear?
 Did yesterday? Plan for today?
 Post-standup
 Update charts
 Remove done items

21. Backlog Grooming / Estimating
/ Planning
 Planning, Grooming, and Estimating occur at
the same time
 Planning occurs when On Deck phase has a
few stories left
 The team will groom the new stories as
added to On Deck
 Estimating will consist new size chart:
 Small / Medium / Large (<4 week Cycle Time)

22. Bugs/Defects
 Bugs found in Staging environment during
testing of a story in QA Phase
 Work type item “Bug” will be created in TFS and
linked to a story
 The Bug will go to ‘On Deck’ and Assigned To
story developer; story remains in QA phase
 QA can continue testing or work on another story
 Developer will pull Bug into Analysis or
Development phase when ready to take in work

23. Bugs/Defects (cont.)
 The Bug will flow through the workflow similar to
a story
 On Deck > Analysis > Analysis Done >
Development > Development Done > QA > QA
Done > Closed
 Bug will not go to “Ready to Deploy” or
“Released”
 Production Bugs
 A story will be created and prioritized

24. Implementation
 Team Foundation Server Process Template
 Based on http://techdayskanban.codeplex.com/
by Adam Gilmore
 User Story and Bug customizations with
workflow
 Separate customizations for each Team
Project.
 MVC3 KanBan Board website
 Excel Reports

25. Other Guidance
 VS ALM Rangers Practical KanBan
Guidance
http://vsarkanbanguide.codeplex.com/

26. Closing
 Questions?
Thank you!