Practicing Kanban Using Azure Boards
All software development teams have a desire to increase their flow and throughput. With the powerful combination of Kanban and Azure Boards, they can do just that. This one day course will introduce Kanban and demonstrate how an agile team can configure and use Azure Boards to effectively practice Kanban, achieve flow, and begin improving throughput and predictability. To maximize learning, students will work in teams, in a common team project, on a common case study.
Who should take this class?
This course is appropriate for all members of a software development team, especially those who are actively involved with creating and refining a product backlog as well as planning and executing the work. This course will also provide value for individuals outside the development team (managers, Scrum Masters, coaches, and other stakeholders) who are interested in establishing and improving flow for their team.
Even teams currently practicing Scrum should consider attending this course, as Kanban is a great complementary practice for managing and improving their flow. For more information, read this guide.
Course content
This course contains several modules, progressively explaining Kanban’s principles and practices and how to use Azure Boards to support them.
INTRODUCTION TO KANBAN
Kanban overview
Kanban core practices
Kanban support in Azure Boards
Configuring an Azure DevOps project
Managing a product backlog
Hands-on
VISUALIZING THE WORKFLOW
Kanboard board overview
Kanban board vs. a backlog
Kanban board vs. a taskboard
Defining the workflow
Making policies explicit
Definition of “Done”
Defining classes of service (swimlanes)
Defining task checklists and inline tests
Filtering the board
Keyboard shortcuts
Hands-on
LIMITING WIP
Work in Progress (WIP) overview
Visualizing WIP limits
Creating a pull system
Splitting columns into “doing” and “done”
Challenges with limiting WIP
Bottlenecks
Hands-on
MANAGING FOR FLOW
Flow-based metrics
Cycle time vs. lead time
Little’s Law
Flow-based analytics
Cumulative Flow Diagrams
Scatterplots
ActionableAgile Analytics
Monte Carlo simulation
Achieving flow and predictability
Hands-on
