InfoQ Article: Lean Kanban Boards for Agile Tracking

Posted by Deborah Hartmann Preuss on Aug 25, 2007

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Process & Practices

Topics

Teamwork ,

Collaboration ,

Agile Techniques ,

Agile

Tags

Collaborative Technologies ,

Kanban ,

Lean ,

Value & Metrics ,

Planning ,

Management

Agile projects are not the only ones to use “big visible charts” - Lean manufacturing, for example has its Kanban Boards. In Japanese "Kanban" means, loosely translated, 'card or sign'. In a Lean production system, each Kanban card is "pulled" into the system only when the work represented by an "in progress" card is retired.  In this InfoQ article, Visualizing Agile Projects using Kanban Boards, Kenji Hiranabe explore visualizations currently used in Agile, then proposes using Kanban Boards to organize three viewpoints (Time, Task, and Team) to track project status and enhance collaboration.

The visualization tools he talks about are:

• Kanban Boards. Use a card as a token (Kanban) of a task, story, feature and stick them to a timeline (board). There are several levels of granularities, in three main combinations:
  • Release-Feature,
  • Iteration-Story and
  • Daily-Task
     
• Burndown Charts. Count the number of Kanbans (backlog tasks) and track it in a timebox to show the trend of work accomplished. There are also several levels of granularities.
   
• Parking lot Charts. Summarize the top-level project status.
   
• Calendars. There are a lot of variations of using calendars to show project status or plan.

In the article, Hiranebe introduces a uniquely Japanese addition to status tracking: the Niko-Niko Calendar, on which team members track their mood from day to day.



Hiranabe also mentions his software tool “TRICHORD” that implements Kanban Boards to realize project visualization from the three viewpoints.



Kenji Hiranabe is a frequent blogger and has translated a number of English Agile and XP books into the Japanese language.

Read the InfoQ article: Visualizing Agile Projects using Kanban Boards by Kenji Hiranabe.

1. Back to top

   Tracking relative to budgeted/available hours

   by John Rusk

   Burndown (or burn up) charts can easily be suplemented to add tracking against budgeted hours. That way, they track not just the work completed, but also the effort required to complete it. Details here: www.agilekiwi.com/agile_charts.htm

   Reply

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   Kanban Yahoo Group

   by HIRANABE Kenji

   David Andersen gave me a comment on Parking Lot.
   
   ----
   Hi Kenji,
   
   I liked the paper you gave me to read. I wanted to make a comment about the parking lot diagram. It was first introduced on the original FDD project in Singapore and was first documented in Peter Coad's 1999 book, UML Modeling in Color in Chapter 6, the chapter written by Jeff De Luca.
   
   David
   ----
   
   And he started up a new Yahoo Group about Kanban Boards.
   
   
   www.agilemanagement.net/Articles/Weblog/Kanbani...

   Reply

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   Re: Kanban Yahoo Group

   by Deborah Hartmann

   Looks like there's significant interest in Anderson's Kanban yahoo group, his site says "it's acquired members 80 members in only a few days," and he's looking for leads on who else is doing this kind of work.

   Reply

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   TRICHORD has been released English Available Version.

   by Kondo Hiroki

   Hi, I'm a member of TRICHORD Team.
   We have released English Available Version on Sep.11,2007.
   If you are interested in TRICHORD,Please visit our Site.

   Reply

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   Re: TRICHORD has been released English Available Version.

   by HIRANABE Kenji

   The above URL is wrong, should be;
   trichord.change-vision.com/en/index.html

   Reply

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   Excellent article

   by Bonnie Aumann

   I realize I am demonstrating confirmation bias here, but I really like this article's description of the connection between release, iteration and task boards. I look forward to testing out the TRICHORD software - the biggest problem I've had with existing solutions was this lack of hierarchy and association.

   Reply

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   Kanban should be real，touchable

   by yongji zhang

   Real kanban carry much information。I prefer its exposure. It is also a furniture for your team.

   Reply

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   Re: Kanban should be real，touchable

   by Alen Balja

   Ha ha ha, first time I hear about this Kanban and I just realized I've been doing this all along. To Do, Doing, Done - I had three color stickies Red, Yellow, Green. When green was pasted on the feature, that meant - SHIP! Smileys, another thing, I had thumbs up, thumbs down and neutral to emotionally tag events. Good stuff.

   Reply

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   a board based on a sharepoint blog

   by Bogdan Nedelcu

   A blog could be a easy storage for kanban cards, as posts. Categories can be used as areas of Kanban. Add some javascript and a visual representation is also available. Find here some inspiration

   Reply

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    Re: Kanban Yahoo Group

    by David David

    Not only Kanban Group but also KanbanTool is gaining popularity extremely fast. For me, it's exactly what I was looking for :)

    Reply

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    Online Kanban Tools

    by Sergei Podbereschi

    For online Kanban tools check the upcoming kanban tool - smartQ ( www.getsmartQ.com ). Designed to fit any industry.
    Works well when you have distributed teams, need history records, conversations recorded, etc.

    Reply

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    Kanban Tools

    by Sudheer Raju

    Great article. Glad to have come across this ever after 2 years of publish.
    
    Here comes all Kanban tools list....
    www.toolsjournal.com/tools-world/item/142-kanba...

    Reply

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