Use Kanban to maximize efficiency, predictability, quality, and value
With Kanban, every minute you spend on a software project can add value for customers. One book can help you achieve this goal:
Agile Project Management with Kanban.
Author Eric Brechner pioneered Kanban within the Xbox engineering team at Microsoft. Now he shows you exactly how to make it work for your team.
Think of this book as “Kanban in a box”: open it, read the quickstart guide, and you’re up and running fast. As you gain experience, Brechner reveals powerful techniques for right-sizing teams, estimating, meeting deadlines, deploying components and services, adapting or evolving from Scrum or traditional Waterfall, and more.
For every step of your journey, you’ll find pragmatic advice, useful checklists, and actionable lessons. This truly is “Kanban in a box”: all you need to deliver breakthrough value and quality.
Use Kanban techniques to:
- Start delivering continuous value with your current team and project
- Master five quick steps for completing work backlogs
- Plan and staff new projects more effectively
- Minimize work in progress and quickly adjust to change
- Eliminate artificial meetings and prolonged stabilization
- Improve and enhance customer engagement
- Visualize workflow and fix revealed bottlenecks
- Drive quality upstream
- Integrate Kanban into large projects
- Optimize sustained engineering (contributed by James Waletzky)
- Expand Kanban beyond software development
Author(s): Eric Brechner
Edition: 1
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Year: 2015
Language: English
Pages: 160
Tags: Kanban; Software Projects; Agile; Agile Project Management; Project Management;
Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1 Getting management consent
An open letter to your manager
Problem
Solution
Risks
Plan
Moving forward
Checklist
Chapter 2 Kanban quick-start guide
Step 1: Capture your team's high-level routine
Step 2: Redecorate your wall
Step 3: Set limits on chaos
Step 4: Define done
Step 5: Run your daily standup
Troubleshooting
Checklist
Chapter 3 Hitting deadlines
Populate your backlog
Establish your minimum viable product (MVP)
Order work, including technical debt
Estimate features and tasks
Track expected completion date
Right-size your team
Basic approach
Advanced approach
Checklist
Chapter 4 Adapting from Waterfall
Introducing Kanban to a Waterfall team
Working in feature teams
Completing features before starting new ones
Dealing with specs and bugs
Specs
Bugs
Engaging with customers
Celebrating performance improvements
Rude Q & A
Checklist
Chapter 5 Evolving from Scrum
Introducing Kanban to a Scrum Team
Mapping the roles and terms
Evolving the events
Celebrating performance improvements
Rude Q & A
Checklist
Chapter 6 Deploying components, apps, and services
Continuous integration
Continuous push
Continuous publishing
Continuous deployment
Checklist
Chapter 7 Using Kanban within large organizations
Deriving a backlog from big upfront planning
Ordering work based on dependencies
Fitting into milestones
Communicating status up and out
Dealing with late or unstable dependencies
Late dependencies
Unstable dependencies
Staying productive during stabilization
Checklist
Chapter 8 Sustained engineering
Define terms, goals, and roles
Consistent vocabulary
Challenges and goals
Define roles and responsibilities
Determine SE ownership
Lay out support tiers
Tier 1
Tier 2
Tier 3
Collaborate for efficiency
Triage
Quick-solve meeting
Implement Kanban SE workflow
Escalations
Bugs/Other Work
Kanban tools
Troubleshooting
Checklist
Chapter 9 Further resources and beyond
Expanding Kanban to new areas of business and life
Scaling Kanban up, down, and out
Personal Kanban
Mixing Agile and Lean with Kanban
Why Kanban works
Single-piece flow
Theory of constraints (TOC)
Drum-buffer-rope
Improving beyond Kanban
Critical chain
Lean development
Global optimization
Checklist
Index
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
About the author
