- A lot of agile teams
also use many of the concepts from Kanban.
Kanban is a scheduling system
that was used in Lean manufacturing.
Many agile teams like to display their work
on a Kanban board,
but Kanban's influence on the agile mindset
goes well beyond just the board.
The Kanban system is actually a popular way
to apply lean thinking to software development.
Lean thinking is about focusing
on what's valuable to the customer
and then continuously improving the product over time.
You've seen this in the very first principle
in the Agile Manifesto.
Remember that agile teams focused on continuous delivery
of valuable software,
but lean also emphasizes people over process.
It encourages companies to have respect for people
and trust them to deliver high quality work.
You've also seen this in the first value
in the Agile Manifesto.
And principle five says that organizations
should build projects around motivated individuals
and trust them to get the job done.
So you could probably summarize lean thinking
into two core values.
You should have respect for people and continuously improve.
Even though we haven't talked about lean,
these ideas are probably already familiar.
In fact, a lot of the agile mindset is just a restatement
of lean thinking.
Self-organized teams are just a way
to have greater respect for people.
Retrospectives and software refactoring
are just another way to continuously improve.
That's why when you're working in an agile team,
you should think very carefully
about how you use your Kanban board.
A Kanban board is a swimlane diagram with four more columns.
These columns typically have the labels
Stories, To-Do, Doing, and Done.
Scrum teams will call this the task board
because they use yellow sticky notes
to keep track of their tasks.
But a Kanban board or scrum task board
is more than just displaying your work.
It's actually a way to organize your work so that
your team is focused on delivering the greatest value.
That means that the work should flow through the board
in a very particular way.
The stories at the top
should have the highest customer value.
Then the team should work on this top story
until it's finished or in the Done column.
Once that work is done,
then the team can work on the story second from the top.
Remember that agile teams should avoid multitasking.
Your team should also make sure
that you don't have too much work in each column.
If you have a lot of sticky notes stuck in the To-Do column,
then it usually means that the team
is having trouble finishing the work.
All the work on the board should be self-assigned.
So when you're working in an agile team,
you will pull a task from the board
during the morning standup meeting.
And that assigns yourself the work.
Remember that lean encourages your team
to be self-organized.
The team should also look for ways
to continuously improve themselves and the product.
So you wouldn't want too much work stuck in any one column.
If you do, then it's a sign that your team
might have trouble delivering.