Kanban Artifacts
One of the significant contributors to Kanban’s popularity is “Kanban Board.” In Kanban, we use a visual board to display the progress of the project in three simple and easy stages i.e.
· To Do
· In-Progress/Doing
· Completed/Done
A basic Kanban board structure includes-
Lists (columns to track progress):
Lists are the columns that are there on the mainboard. Each column represents a specific process step. These activities together compose a “Workflow.” Each card follows the flow until it reaches the last stage, which is “Done/Completion.” Any Kanban workflow can be as simple as “To Do,” “In Progress,” “Complete.”
Cards (items to represent a task) :
The most remarkable thing that makes it different about the Kanban board is visual cards/Signals (stickies, tickets, screenshots). One card usually has one work item written by the Kanban team. When the team starts working, and the Project Manager ensures that the board is updated, visual cards make teammates understand, what their team is working on and what stands finished.
Work In Progress
(WIP)
Limits:
as the name suggests “WIP limits” is used to limit “work in progress” tasks. It’s a maximum number of cards that can be present in one column at any given time. For example, if there is a column that has a WIP limit of five, then that particular column can’t have more than five cards. These WIP limits are critical as they control the workflow and give you an early warning sign that you committed to too much work.
Commitment point:
Kanban teams often have a backlog for their board. The backlog is nothing but a column where customers and teammates put their ideas for projects that the team can pick up from and prepare their To-Do list. The commitment point is the moment when an idea is picked up by the team, and they start working on that particular task.
Delivery Point:
The delivery point is the last point of a Kanban team’s workflow. It’s the point when the service, software, or product gets delivered to the customer. The team’s goal is to pick up cards from the commitment point to the delivery point at the earliest.
Basic Kanban Board Workflow
As we familiarized ourselves with artifacts so let’s try to understand the workflow of a basic K-Board
· In the above picture – tasks listed under the “Stories” column act as a Backlog for the team.
· Four columns (Stories, To Do’s, Doing, Done) are called lists.
· The tasks which are picked up by the team from the “Stories” column to work upon move to the To Do’s list. This Process of picking up stories from backlog and moving them to To Do’s is called Commitment Point.
· As and when the team starts working on a task, it moves to the “Doing” column.
· Stickies, pictures, and comments are called Visual Cards.
· There is a limit of tasks that can be there in “Doing,” and that the limit is known as “WIP limits.”
· And finally, when the task gets finished & it moves to Done from Doing, that moment will be called Delivery Point.
Board Example
for Software Development:
In software development, we can have the following columns-
· Analyze
· Design
· Develop
· Test
· Deploy
Note – A task can pass through as many columns as your chosen workflow allows.
For any new software development, there is a to-do list of activities; then the development team might pull items from To-Do to in-progress and move them to Work in progress, this is called the Pull system. In WIP, they will analyze it, design, and develop it, and the test team will complete Testing and move them to Deploy.