Agile Project Management with Kanban

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

Eric Brechner is the development manager for Microsoft's Xbox Engineering Services team. At Microsoft, he has also been development manager for Xbox.com, engineering learning and development, and Office Media Store. He has previously worked at Boeing, Silicon Graphics, Graftek, and Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The author of a book and blog on software best practices (as I. M. Wright), he holds eight patents and a Ph.D. in applied mathematics.

Introduction ix Chapter 1: Getting management consent 1 An open letter to your manager 2 Problem 2 Solution 2 Risks 3 Plan 3 Moving forward 4 Checklist 5 Chapter 2: Kanban quick-start guide 7 Step 1: Capture your team's high-level routine 7 Step 2: Redecorate your wall 8 Step 3: Set limits on chaos 10 Step 4: Define done 13 Step 5: Run your daily standup 14 Troubleshooting 17 Checklist 24 Chapter 3: Hitting deadlines 25 Populate your backlog 25 Establish your minimum viable product (MVP) 27 Order work, including technical debt 28 Estimate features and tasks 29 Track expected completion date 31 Right-size your team 33 Basic approach 34 Advanced approach 35 Checklist 37 Chapter 4: Adapting from Waterfall 39 Introducing Kanban to a Waterfall team 39 Working in feature teams 42 Completing features before starting new ones 43 Dealing with specs and bugs 44 Specs 44 Bugs 45 Engaging with customers 46 Celebrating performance improvements 48 Rude Q & A 51 Checklist 56 Chapter 5: Evolving from Scrum 57 Introducing Kanban to a Scrum Team 58 Mapping the roles and terms 60 Evolving the events 61 Celebrating performance improvements 62 Rude Q & A 65 Checklist 70 Chapter 6: Deploying components, apps, and services 71 Continuous integration 72 Continuous push 75 Continuous publishing 77 Continuous deployment 79 Checklist 83 Chapter 7: Using Kanban within large organizations 85 Deriving a backlog from big upfront planning 86 Ordering work based on dependencies 87 Fitting into milestones 91 Communicating status up and out 92 Dealing with late or unstable dependencies 94 Late dependencies 94 Unstable dependencies 95 Staying productive during stabilization 98 Checklist 100 Chapter 8: Sustained engineering 101 Define terms, goals, and roles 101 Consistent vocabulary 102 Challenges and goals 102 Define roles and responsibilities 103 Determine SE ownership 104 Lay out support tiers 105 Tier 1 106 Tier 2 106 Tier 3 106 Collaborate for efficiency 106 Triage 106 Quick-solve meeting 108 Implement Kanban SE workflow 108 Escalations 109 Bugs/Other Work 109 Kanban tools 111 Troubleshooting 112 Checklist 115 Chapter 9: Further resources and beyond 117 Expanding Kanban to new areas of business and life 117 Scaling Kanban up, down, and out 118 Personal Kanban 120 Mixing Agile and Lean with Kanban 120 Why Kanban works 123 Single-piece flow 124 Theory of constraints (TOC) 124 Drum-buffer-rope 126 Improving beyond Kanban 128 Critical chain 129 Lean development 130 Global optimization 132 Checklist 136 Index 137 About the author 145